[Air-l] Trouble with journals

[Alex Halavais]

On 4/25/07, James Whyte <whyte.james at yahoo.com> wrote:
>   What you suggest is a possibility. Consider this, articles would perculate up based on a combined rating. Less scholarly articles would move downward.

This was largely the model that Plastic and Kuro5hin were built on.
There are certainly possibilities there. Clearly, two years to
publication and distribution limited to campuses that can afford the
licenses is a problem.

However, sometimes friction is good. An established editor who can
locate experts provides a much more informed and limited set of
feedback than self-appointed arbiters. Having written for Wikipedia
and in other peer-editing contexts, I know that it does not always
improve clarity. I would far prefer to have the feedback of three
experts than of thirty non-experts.

That said, I would most prefer to have both. I think there are some
interesting examples of pre-acceptance review, and post-acceptance
revisions. Blogging allows for the publication of early drafts, as do
other formalized venues for manuscript review. I think Douglas
Rushkoff's novel, which allowed for footnoting by interested readers
before publication, was a good stab in this direction. On the post-pub
side, Lessig's Code 2.0 provides a neat example, as does (for those of
you who have not already seen it) Kathleen Fitzpatrick's paper on
Scholarly Publishing in the Age of the Internet, which aside from
being a good read also provides the opportunity for post-publication
comment:

http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/scholarlypublishing/

(Similar approaches have shown up in lots of other web publications of
scholarly work.)

So, the current publication structures need to be improved, and open
access publishing and pre- and post- archiving solutions should be
sought out. There is nothing magical about the peer review system, and
it's certainly worth finding out how other approaches work.
Encouraging folks to engage in such experiments may, however, be
almost as difficult as getting them to participate in medical
trials--unless you are dying, there is a strong encouragement to stay
with what works (if only imperfectly).

- Alex



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