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Re: The religion of peer review

To ask if peer-review works is probably asking the wrong question. It's a ritual, not a scientific method. It's a cultural expectation. Just like wearing a necktie is in certain circles, and nobody asks whether they actually work. (They would, as a noose.) And to expect peer-review to act as an almost infallible filter is wholly unrealistic. If it is a filter of sorts, it is one that helps journal editors to maintain their journals' biases. If peer-review were a method of only ascertaining an article's scientific validity, we would neither need, nor have, so many journals. One in every discipline would suffice. But the ritual reaffirms bias. The bias of 'quality', for instance, or 'relevance' (though the question could be asked to what, exactly?). And why not? Just as bio-diversity is a good thing, 'publi-diversity' may be as well.
 
Talking about rituals, isn't it a ritual, too, to complain about prices inc! reasing faster than library budgets? Nothing remotely scientific about it. There would be a point if library budgets had broadly stayed in line with research spending. But they haven't. Isn't it an article of faith that the budgets "could not conceivably rise" in line with the production of scientific literature?
 
Open access publishing, in addition to all the other benefits it has, also keeps the cost of scientific literature in line with research spending.
 
Jan Velterop


Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca> wrote:
Those who opposed open access have been known to say that there
is no scientific proof that an open access business model will
work. I agree!

However - is there scientific proof that current methods will
work?

Pricing and terms of service is, at! ! best, determined by a
collegial approach to negotiations by librarians and vendors -
exactly the kind of work that many a liblicenser is engaged in.
This is a very fine thing; but it is a business model relying on
scientific evidence.

The current approach has also led to the serials crisis. If this
was developed through scientific methodology - someone must have
forgotten a variable or two. Such as the fact that raising
prices every year higher than library budgets could conceivably
rise would lead to a crisis, for example.

I also hear much about the sanctity of peer review. Here is an
interesting view on the matter:

"THE RELIGION OF PEER REVIEW

Despite a lack of evidence that peer review works, most
scientists (by nature a skeptical lot) appear to believe in peer
review. It's something that's held "absolutely sacred" in a field
where people rarely accept anything with "blind faith," says
Richard Smi! t! h, former editor of the BMJ and now CEO of
UnitedHealth Europe and board member of PLoS. "It's very
unscientific, really." This from a very interesting article -
worth reading through:

Alison McCook. Is Peer Review Broken? The Scientist: Magazine of
the Life Sciences 20:2, page 26. at:

http://www.the-scientist.com/2006/2/1/26/1/

thoughts?

Heather Morrison
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com