BY GARY TOTTEN A highlight of my work as a journal editor is the pleasure of helping authors, especially early career researchers and graduate students, interpret conflicting peer review reports and improve their arguments and writing. The important work of academic journals to disseminate cutting-edge research in a timely manner and thus advance their fields…
BY RICHARD P. PHELPS With each public remark a scholar may add to society’s collective working memory or subtract from it. Their addition is the new research they present in a journal article or conference presentation. The subtraction, when it occurs, is typically found in the scholar’s portrayal of previous research on the topic. Editors…
BY AARON BARLOW “Peer review,” cried the provost, “that’s the gold standard.” Sometimes it seems like the only standard. And we are being told to grasp it strongly. Why not? It lets us off the hook. Accepting it without question, we can ignore at least a couple of the urgent concerns regarding Reappointment, Promotion, Tenure…
In the August 17 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education is an article by Beth Mole, “The Future of Peer Review in the Humanities is Wide Open.” She focuses on Peter Sigal, a Duke University historian and one of the editors of the Hispanic American Historical Review. His journal is experimenting with an “optional open-review process”: Authors who choose…