RE: How many (peer reveiwed) journals are there?

["Pikas, Christina K." <Christina.Pikas@jhuapl.edu>]

I doubt that there can or should be some objective or outside 
standard for peer-review.  It is up to the interested parties for 
each journal to work the boundary and demarcation problems as 
well as to manage space, time, and money.  Transparency in the 
process is certainly good, but some sort of outside standard 
won't address the most common complaints about peer review 
(conservative bias, gender issues, bad behavior of interested 
reviewers, too little information, too slow, too expensive).

Weller's book on peer review is good, too, [1] and there's a 
Cochrane report [2].  Of course tons on this subject in the 
biomed journals including meta-analyses and reviews.

BTW - monographic series also have ISSNs so an ISSN isn't 
sufficient for a definition.

Christina

[1] Weller, A. C. (2001). Editorial peer review : Its strengths 
and weaknesses. Medford, N.J.: Information Today

[2] Jefferson, T., Rudin, M., Brodney Folse, S., & Davidoff, F. 
(2007). Editorial peer review for improving the quality of 
reports of biomedical studies. Cochrane database of systematic 
reviews. Chichester, UK: Wiley. DOI: 
10.1002/14651858.MR000016.pub3


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu [mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Sally Morris (Morris Associates)
Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2008 9:10 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: How many (peer reveiwed) journals are there?

I agree with Robert Richards:  the trouble with Ulrich's is that
it's publisher-completed

Some (especially in non-English speaking countries) don't know of
its existence

Some don't update their entries

And it's entirely dependent on the judgement of the person
completing the entry as to how they categorise the journal;
there is no definition of 'peer-reviewed', and there are no
checks.  Many journals (including the one I edit - and major
'hybrid' journals such as BMJ, for that matter) have peer review
for some content (e.g. research articles) but not for other less
scholarly items.

But as Robert says, there is no 'standard' for peer review
anyway;  Irene Hames' book on the subject is probably the
closest;  perhaps this is something on which the publishing
industry and the scholarly and library communities could usefully
work together?

Sally Morris
Consultant, Morris Associates (Publishing Consultancy)
Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
Email:  sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk