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June 06, 2008
Peer-Reviewed Web Sites?
Certifying Online Research by Gary A. Olson in today's Chronicle of Higher Education, Chronicle Careers
Olson discusses the dilemmas of some disciplines and scholars being more accepting of what he calls "e-scholarship" while others insist on the traditional interpretation of getting published for decisions involving promotion and tenure.
The author recommends a process for reviewing online content, by which I assume he means non-commercial content which would include the following process or steps:
* The major professional and scholarly organizations in each discipline should devise a certification process in which a site owner can apply to have a site reviewed and recognized, perhaps for a nominal processing fee. The site would be subjected to a formal and rigorous review by peers in the disciplinary area covered by the site.* Only those sites meeting the highest standards should be awarded certification.
* Once a site wins certification from the national scholarly society, it should be permitted to display that stamp of approval prominently.
* The certification should remain in effect for a specific and limited amount of time (since a site can change rapidly and without notice). The site should regularly seek renewal of its certification.
* Each disciplinary organization should issue a resolution recommending that departments construe certification of a site as indicating that it has met the highest standards of scholarship.
* Each organization should maintain an online registry of certified sites.
This is a noble idea but what's in it for the organizations? Right now they're making money, theoretically, on scholarly, peer-reviewed journals and have a vested interest in keeping the status quote. Is the author expecting these professional organizations to review this content out of the goodness of their hearts? Internet content springs up like mushrooms daily. This would be an impossible task.
I agree, self-regulation is not the answer but scholarly communication is changing but evaluation of this communication doesn't have to change that much just because the media changes. There will always be tiers of scholarship, including the highest tier of reputable works of rigorous scholarship. What form the media takes will not change the most reputable publications but other levels have already changed. Look at how Wikipedia is changing scholarship. It is not considered the highest level of research but as long as people are willing to invest the time writing articles which include citations to scholarly materials and as long as these materials have been vetted or can be traced what's the harm in using it as a starting point?
Collaborating scholars should be able to make much more progress on their research than in the past, with the ease of international communication and instant re-visioning of wikis and other online tools but as long as publishers can make money from research and as long as tenure and promotion decisions have to be made the peer-reviewed process will remain.
Posted by swortman at June 6, 2008 02:25 PM