Re: The religion of peer review

["Peter Banks" <pbanks@diabetes.org>]

Oh, come on... The publishing zealots are mainly in the OA camp. 
There is no religion of peer review. Its leading practitioners 
critically examine it on a regular basis, as in the most recent 
Peer Review Congress (see 
http://www.ama-assn.org/public/peer/peerhome.htm). As a 
publisher, I would love to see peer review replaced with 
something cheaper, faster, and more able to identify the stellar 
paper from the depressingly mediocre submission.

So far, however, we don't have a better system--or even a 
reasonable alternative in clinical medical fields. The state of 
peer review today recalls Churchill's famous dictum on democracy: 
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those 
other forms that have been tried from time to time."

Peter Banks
Publisher
American Diabetes Association
Email: pbanks@diabetes.org

>>> heatherm@eln.bc.ca 02/21/06 7:13 PM >>>

Those who opposed open access have been known to say that there 
is no scientific proof that an open access business model will 
work.  I agree!

However - is there scientific proof that current methods will 
work?

Pricing and terms of service is, at best, determined by a 
collegial approach to negotiations by librarians and vendors - 
exactly the kind of work that many a liblicenser is engaged in. 
This is a very fine thing; but it is a business model relying on 
scientific evidence.

The current approach has also led to the serials crisis.  If this 
was developed through scientific methodology - someone must have 
forgotten a variable or two.  Such as the fact that raising 
prices every year higher than library budgets could conceivably 
rise would lead to a crisis, for example.

I also hear much about the sanctity of peer review.  Here is an 
interesting view on the matter:

"THE RELIGION OF PEER REVIEW

Despite a lack of evidence that peer review works, most
scientists (by nature a skeptical lot) appear to believe in peer
review. It's something that's held "absolutely sacred" in a field
where people rarely accept anything with "blind faith," says
Richard Smith, former editor of the BMJ and now CEO of
UnitedHealth Europe and board member of PLoS. "It's very
unscientific, really." This from a very interesting article -
worth reading through:

Alison McCook.  Is Peer Review Broken?  The Scientist:  Magazine of
the Life Sciences 20:2, page 26.  at:

http://www.the-scientist.com/2006/2/1/26/1/

thoughts?

Heather Morrison
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com