Is Peer reviewing so essential?

[Daniel L. Everett]

I think peer review by and large not only works very well, but is an excellent teaching tool. I have frequently taught courses on writing for publication in linguistics in which I begin with a ms of mine that has been labeled 'revise and resubmit' by a journal editor. I let students read it without telling them what the judgement was. Then I show them the comments from the journal reviewers. They are shocked at how, let us say, direct some reviewers are in their criticisms. Then I show them the ms after it has been corrected to respond to the reviewers' objections. No matter what they thought of the original version, they all agree that the final, accepted ms is superior and that the peer-reviewers were very helpful to the process, even the particularly nasty ones. 

This exercise also has the effect of reducing the fear of submission that some graduate students have. It makes them feel like 'Gee, if Dan can get published, anybody can. Even me.' And that of course is exactly what I am trying to get across in the class about publishing and the usefulness of peer review.

Dan


On Mar 30, 2010, at 7:59 AM, A. Katz wrote:

> Yuri,
> 
> I didn't see the original discussion on peer review, but you bring up an interesting topic.
> 
> In theory, peer review is invaluable as a way to check ourselves and listen to constructive criticism. The problem is when peer review isn't open to everyone, and manuscripts that don't come from official channels don't get reviewed at all. Or the reviewer just says: there are a lot of errors and sweeping generalizations here, but fails to list any of the errors or the generalizations so that they can be examined and corrected.
> 
> Peer review is ultimately only as good as our peers are. If our peers are the Inquisition, as Galileo's were, there we're in deep trouble. But I think Einstein ultimately had some pretty good peers who recognized that his discoveries were genuine, provable -- and better than their work which had been funded, while his was not!
> 
> Here's to having good peers!
> 
> Best,
> 
>   --Aya
> 
> http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz
> 
> 
> On Tue, 30 Mar 2010, Yuri Tambovtsev wrote:
> 
>> Johanna Nichols wrote:
>> Self-publishing bypasses peer review, and peer review is a much more
>> important function of journal publication than boosting careers is.  Peer
>> review is so essential to distinguishing science from pseudoscience that I
>> don't think it should be bypassed, at least not very often.
>> Johanna Nichols =
>> Is Peer reviewing so essential? Would Bruno's, Galileo's, Copernicus', Einstein's theories have been published, if they had been peer reviewed? Peer reviewing is good for trivial or average books and articles without new scientific information. Don't you think so? How many articles of young linguists which are not trivial are rejected by journals? All? I wouldn't be surprised. Be well, Yuri Tambovtsev, Novosibirsk
>> 
>>