Peer-to-peer

Richard Akerman

Peer review needs to adapt to the pace and volume of information published online

How does the role of peer review evolve when the body of scholarly knowledge expands from slowly circulating, static documents to the universe of rushing, dynamic interactions made possible by the Internet? Although traditional forms of scholarly communication are still used, the sheer volume and pace of information enabled by the Internet and publishing tools such as weblogs (blogs) demands novel solutions.

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Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 20, 2006 | Category: 4. Technical solutions | Permalink

Chris Anderson

Scientific publishers should let their online readers become reviewers.

Who are the peers in peer review? In journals such as Nature, they usually have a PhD and work in a field relevant to the paper under consideration. If they are academics, they may be tenured professors, usually people on a relatively short list of experts who have agreed to review papers. This is a little élitist, but credentials such as PhDs and tenure are given in part to reward those things – experience, insight, brains and the respect of other researchers – that also make for wise advice. The process is not perfect, for reasons ranging from cronyism to capriciousness, yet long experience has shown it to be better than the alternatives.

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Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 14, 2006 | Category: 4. Technical solutions | Permalink

Herbert Van de Sompel

What functions do we take for granted in print?

The Digital Library Research and Prototyping Team at the research library of the Los Alamos National Laboratory conducts research on various aspects of scholarly communication in the digital age, including peer review. Our research attempts simultaneously to analyse properties of the existing review system, and to formulate feasible alternatives.

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Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 05, 2006 | Category: 4. Technical solutions | Permalink