A Web of Your Peers

We've been meaning to post this article from the New York Times for awhile to see what you all think. To the long list of mixed emotions produced by the internet, we can now add changes to the peer review process of scholarly journal publishing. According to some humanities scholars, having a small cadre of experts deciding the merit of a submission no longer holds up in our digital age. Instead, they argue, submissions should be aired openly to a wider internet audience. Some traditional journals have already decided to try it.

The change seems radical to some. To others, the way knowledge is viewed and valued is completely different from their older counterparts. The definitions and perceptions of originality and intellectual rigor have changed and continue to weave together with the traditional.

An open-forum-type submission process versus the behind-closed-doors process falls in line with other binaries the internet has produced: newspapers v. news feeds, youtube/hulu/etc v. TV, and the list goes on and on. Of course, these things aren't mutually exclusive, and, like most other evolutions in society, people will marry the new and the old, for better or for worse.