With apologies for the delay in posting, here is an interesting post, 'Nature's Open Peer Review Experiment Closed', from RSS4Lib on the failure of a web-based peer-review mechanism to take hold among Nature magazine's academic readership. It seems that while scholars were willing to post their articles online, their peers were reluctant to use the web forum to post comments. And while a majority of those authors who participated expressed satisfaction with the system, the experiment nevertheless failed to generate enough participation.
RSS4Lib's Ken Varnum wonders in his post,
I'm likewise curious to see if an experiment like this aimed more directly at rising scholars -- those in the midst of, or having recently completed, their doctorates -- might have different results. Or is the tradition of anonymous peer review is so deeply embedded in academia that it trumps these newfangled "web 2.0" tools?
I can see where new academics initially might be reluctant to rock the boat when it comes to promoting alternatives to traditional publishing. And it might be some time before these new academics have sufficient tenure and clout to make changes in the established tenure norms. Would this be a chicken-and-egg question or who flinches first?
Comments