[Air-L] open-access - a practical question

[Nicole Ellison]

I have a question that ties together two recent issues on this  
thread: peer review and open access.  My personal stance: I'd like to  
see academic research become more freely available online while  
maintaining peer review. Assuming some of you share these goals, how  
do we reconcile the common act of putting early-stage work online,  
either as blog posts/talk cribs (like danah) or as full papers, while  
maintaining blind peer review? A personal anecdote: Recently I  
reviewed a paper for a top-tier academic journal and Googled one of  
the citations to find out more about it. To my surprise I found a  
copy of the paper I was reviewing, with full authorship information  
and citation info that claimed it was "In press" at the journal! This  
is an extreme case, but it seems to me that as more work comes online  
(e.g. through blog posts or full papers) before the peer-review  
process is completed, the chance that this work will be reviewed  
blindly are lessoned.

Any thoughts on what practices (for authors, editors, and reviewers)  
make most sense for balancing the benefits of circulating ideas and  
work early vs. the goal of maintaining blind review (or what's left  
of it)?

Thanks,
Nicole


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Nicole Ellison, PhD
nellison at msu.edu