Peer reviewing

Thu Apr 1 17:01:02 UTC 2010

A tricky problem, indeed! I think that the R&R problem is only part of a 
major problem that is linked to peer reviewing as such. From an 
economical/commercial point of view, peer reviewing is absolutely 
necessary to secure the role a journal plays on the market and to 
maintain its economic 'value' (surplus). This value guarantees that the 
journal is constantly sold to those who expect a certain profile 
represented by the individual articles. Here, the reviewers have to keep 
the balance between contents that are both in line with the general 
expectations of the journal's readership /and/ include modestly 
formulated innovations. Basically, this is the same 'function' that 
subeditors of any commercial journal or newspaper have to observe. The 
problem is that these commercial aspects are mixed with scientific 
evaluation. Nowadays, the paradigm of humanities is much more oriented 
towards maintaining a certain mainstream than say 100 to 150 years ago. 
Authors who submit papers not in line with this paradigm / mainstream 
will hardly ever have the chance to get their papers published, not 
because they tell stupid things (that may happen, too), but because 
their arguments, analyses, or theoremes do not fall into what is 
currently mainstream. I guess that much of what we currently 'think' in 
linguistics is grounded in papers and books the manuscripts of which 
would never have had the chance to get published if they were written 
(two/tree)hundred years later (that is today) [just recall the New 
Grammarian controversy, Herders' text on the origins of language, 
Rousseau's reference towards 'primitive' societies and their way of 
communicating, just to name a few]. The difference naturally also is 
that today, linguistics s a (payed) profession, controlled by those who 
offer employment and who set up certain rules which have to be obeyed 
and to be internalized by those who want to get such a job. Freedom of 
public (!) thinking becomes more and more replaced by self-constraints 
and the internalization of public 'rules', a process that is reinforced 
by the way 'publicity' is expected to be achieved by the researcher. The 
many regulations that are currently practiced (citation index, number of 
publications in peer reviewed journals etc.) essentially contribute to 
the 'linearization' (or: harmonization) of linguistic thinking. This is 
what Jean-Louis Calvet refers to when saying : "./.. la façon dont on 
analyse l'ensemble des langues et les rapports qu'elles entretiennent 
est profondément déterminée par l'organisation sociale du sein de 
laquelle on écrit et par les conflits qui opposent la communauté de 
l'écrivain à d'autres communautés/" Calvet, Louis-Jean 1979 [1974] 
/Linguistique et colonialisme, petit traité de glottophagie./ 2e 
édition. Paris: Petite Bibliothèque Payot, p.21). 'Public Linguistics' 
is thus strongly governed by commercial and social features that again 
are embodied in the overall 'philosophic paradigm' we have to live with. 
Calvet continues: "/'Chaque siècle a la grammaire de sa philosophie', 
écrivait Antoine Meillet. Cette proposition, on l'aura compris, nous 
paraît très incomplète et, par souci de simplification, c'est par la 
suivante que nous la remplacerons pour conclure : chaque société a la 
linguistique de ses rapports de productio/n" (p.39). Peer reviewing thus 
is an important tool to safeguard the type of linguistics we're used to 
nowadays - we cannot escape from it. It's another question whether it 
really promotes the development of linguistics or whether it pulls it 
back to what is currently 'correct'. Sure, this also is a problem of 
ethics - and all of us should rely on the fact that the peer reviewers 
meet these the ethical standards that include the readiness to consider 
hypotheses, arguments, and theoremes they are not used to 
(unfortunately, I sometimes made the experience that this is not always 
the case: I once had an article rejected with the simple note of one the 
reviewers saying: "Don't publish! I don't understand the paper!"). And 
many reviewers really help to improve the quality of a paper by simply 
taking the perspective of the potential readership. Likewise, reviewing 
is essential for eliminating flaws, faults, wrong data etc. But often 
enough, papers seem to be rejected just because they do not meet the 
interest of the reviewer, their self-profiling attitude, or global 
perspective  (OK, then you would say: Try another journal. But imagine 
that you deal in your paper with data from a language for which there 
are only few experts. The chance to meet the same reviewer again is 
rather high). Linguistics, just as any other type of sciences that is 
strongly grounded in the dimension of 'interpretation' and 'modeling' 
always wavers between four tendencies: Conversation (and confirmation) 
of a given paradigm, evolution (or modification), reactionary draw-back, 
and revolution. Presently, much seems to be allowed as long as it tries 
to find its way between conservation and modest evolution (and sometimes 
to comfort reviewers). In this sense, public 'linguistic revolutions' 
won't have any chance any more..... Let's wait and see what linguists 
will say about all this when writing a history of linguistics in say 500 
years....
Best wishes,
Wolfgang

-- 

-- 

*Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze *

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