creators_name: Harnad, Stevan
editors_name: Peek, R.
editors_name: Newby, G.
type: bookchapter
datestamp: 2001-07-18
lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:54:45
metadata_visibility: show
title:  Implementing Peer Review on the Net: Scientific Quality Control in Scholarly Electronic Journals.
ispublished: pub
subjects: economics
subjects: peer-review
full_text_status: public
keywords: electronic publishing, peer review,  real costs, scholarly skywriting
abstract: Electronic networks have made it possible for scholarly periodical publishing to shift from a trade model, in which the author sells his words through the mediation of the expensive and inefficient technology of paper, to a collaborative model, in which the much lower real costs and much broader reach of purely electronic publication are subsidized in advance, by universities, libraries, research publication grants, and the scholarly societies in each specialty. To take advantage of this, paper publishing's traditional quality control mechanism, peer review, will have to be implemented on the Net, thereby recreating the hierarchies of journals that allow authors, readers, and promotion committees to calibrate their judgments rationally -- or as rationally as traditional peer review ever allowed them to do it. The Net also offers the possibility of implementing peer review more efficiently and equitably, and of supplementing it with what is the Net's real revolutionary dimension: interactive publication in the form of open peer commentary on published and ongoing work. Most of this "scholarly skywriting" likewise needs to be constrained by peer review, but there is room on the Net for unrefereed discussion too, both in high-level peer discussion forums to which only qualified specialists in a given field have read/write access, and in the general electronic vanity press. 
date: 1996
date_type: published
publication: Scholarly Publication: The Electronic Frontier
publisher: Cambridge MA: MIT Press
pagerange: 103-118
refereed: FALSE
referencetext: Drake, R.A. (1986) Citations to articles and commentaries: A reassessment. American Psychologist 41: 324 - 325. 

Garfield, E. (1991) Electronic journals and skywriting: A complementary medium for scientific communication? Current Contents 45: 9-11, November 11 1991 

Garson, L.R. (in press) Investigations in Electronic Delivery of Chemical Information. To appear in: Proceedings of the International Conference on Refereed Electronic Journals: Toward a Consortium for Networked Publications, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, October 1-2, 1993.

Ginsparg, P. (1994) First Steps Towards Electronic Research Communication. Computers in Physics. (August, American Institute of Physics). 8(4): 390-396. http://xxx.lanl.gov/blurb/ 

Hargens, L.L. (1990) Variation in journal peer review systems: Possible causes and consequences. Journal of the American Medical Association 263: 1348-1352. 

Harnad, S. (1979) Creative disagreement. The Sciences 19: 18 - 20. 

Harnad, S. (ed.) (1982) Peer commentary on peer review: A case study in scientific quality control, New York: Cambridge University Press. 

Harnad, S. (1984a) Commentary on Garfield: Anthropology journals: What they cite and what cites them. Current Anthropology 25: 521 - 522. 

Harnad, S. (1984b) Commentaries, opinions and the growth of scientific knowledge. American Psychologist 39: 1497 - 1498. 

Harnad, S. (1985) Rational disagreement in peer review. Science, Technology and Human Values 10: 55 - 62. 

Harnad, S. (1986) Policing the Paper Chase. (Review of S. Lock, A difficult balance: Peer review in biomedical publication.) Nature 322: 24 - 5. 

Harnad, S. (1990) Scholarly Skywriting and the Prepublication Continuum of Scientific Inquiry. Psychological Science 1: 342 - 343 (reprinted in Current Contents 45: 9-13, November 11 1991). ftp://princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Harnad/harnad90.skywriting

Harnad, S. (1991) Post-Gutenberg Galaxy: The Fourth Revolution in the Means of Production of Knowledge. Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2 (1): 39 - 53 (also reprinted in PACS Annual Review Volume 2 1992; and in R. D. Mason (ed.) Computer Conferencing: The Last Word. Beach Holme Publishers, 1992; and in: M. Strangelove & D. Kovacs: Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters, and Academic Discussion Lists (A. Okerson, ed), 2nd edition. Washington, DC, Association of Research Libraries, Office of Scientific & Academic Publishing, 1992). ftp://princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Harnad/harnad91.postgutenberg

Harnad, S. (1992) Interactive Publication: Extending the American Physical Society's Discipline-Specific Model for Electronic Publishing. Serials Review, Special Issue on Economics Models for Electronic Publishing, pp. 58 - 61. ftp://princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Harnad/harnad92.interactivpub

Harnad, S. (1995a) Electronic Scholarly Publication: Quo Vadis? Serials Review 21(1) 70-72 (Reprinted in Managing Information 2(3) 1995) 

Harnad, S. (1995b) PostGutenberg Galaxy Wars. Times Higher Education Supplement, Multimedia, p. vi, May 12 1995 

Harnad, S. (1995c) Universal FTP Archives for Esoteric Science and Scholarship: A Subversive Proposal. In: Ann Okerson & James O'Donnell (Eds.) Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads; A Subversive Proposal for Electronic Publishing. Washington, DC., Association of Research Libraries, June 1995. 

Harnad, S., Steklis, H. D. & Lancaster, J. B. (eds.) (1976) Origins and Evolution of Language and Speech. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 280. 

Hayes, P., Harnad, S., Perlis, D. & Block, N. (1992) Virtual Symposium on Virtual Mind. Minds and Machines 2: 217-238. ftp://princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Harnad/harnad92.virtualmind

Katz, W. (1991) The ten best magazines of 1990. Library Journal 116: 48 - 51. 

Mahoney, M.J. (1985) Open Exchange and Epistemic Progress. American Psychologist 40: 29 - 39. 

Odlyzko, A.M. (1995) Tragic loss or good riddance? The impending demise of traditional scholarly journals, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (formerly International Journal of Man-Machine Studies), to appear. Condensed version to appear in Notices of the Amercan Mathematical Society, January 1995. http://www.research.att.com/~amo/doc/complete.html
citation:   Harnad, Stevan  (1996)  Implementing Peer Review on the Net: Scientific Quality Control in Scholarly Electronic Journals.  [Book Chapter]     
document_url: http://cogprints.org/1692/1/harnad96.peer.review.html