Daniel Engber, Quality Control: The case against peer review, Slate, April 5, 2005. Another look at the reliability of peer review after a notable failure, in this case the infamous "prayer study" published by the Journal of Reproductive Medicine in 2004 and repudiated and discredited in 2004. Excerpt: 'Why did this quackery get so far before being exposed? The prayer study seemed legitimate because it appeared in the pages of a "peer-reviewed" medical journal. That means the paper was vetted by an independent panel of experts in the field....More sweeping changes have also been suggested. Well-trained, full-time editors and professional statisticians might be able to perform the functions of peer review on their own. Or scientists en masse might be recruited: Paul Ginsparg, who runs a digital archive for unpublished physics papers, has suggested that putting "preprints" of scientific papers on the Web could let the community as a whole decide which papers are most useful. Unpublished work could be tracked by an objective measure --like how often it's cited or downloaded—and then passed along for formal publication.'
(PS: Both OA archives and OA journals are compatible with any kind of peer review, from the most traditional to the most innovative. Engber may present Ginsparg's position accurately, but he leaves the false impression that OA archiving is a step toward peer-review reform when it is an independent variable compatible with any position on peer review.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/05/2005 11:11:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
