[BOAI] CSHE/Mellon Peer Review Study Now Available

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from Berkeley's Center for Studies in Higher Education, via the
CNI-Announce list.  Many of the recommendations are OA-related.  See esp.
pp. 7-11.  --Peter Suber.]



*We are delighted to announce the publication of:*
*
**Peer Review in Academic Promotion and Publishing: Its Meaning, Locus, and
Future* <http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1xv148c8#>
*A Project Report and Associated Recommendations, Proceedings from a
Meeting, and Background Papers*
 <http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1xv148c8#>*
**Authors: Diane Harley and Sophia Krzys Acord*

*The publication can be viewed online and downloaded at:* *
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1xv148c8#*
*
*
Since 2005, and with generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation<http://www.mellon.org/>,
the Center for Studies in Higher Education
(CSHE)<http://cshe.berkeley.edu/>has been conducting research to
explore how academic values - including
those related to peer review, publishing, sharing, and collaboration
-influence scholarly communication practices and engagement with new
technological affordances, open access publishing, and the public good.

This report includes (1) an overview of the state of peer review in the
Academy at large, (2) a set of recommendations for moving forward, (3) a
proposed research agenda to examine in depth the effects of academic
status-seeking on the entire academic enterprise, (4) proceedings from the
workshop on the four topics noted above, and (5) four substantial and
broadly conceived background papers on the workshop topics, with associated
literature reviews.

The document explores, in particular, the tightly intertwined phenomena of
peer review in publication and academic promotion, the values and associated
costs to the Academy of the current system, experimental forms of peer
review in various disciplinary areas, the effects of scholarly practices on
the publishing system, and the possibilities and real costs of creating
alternative loci for peer review and publishing that link scholarly
societies, libraries, institutional repositories, and university presses. We
also explore the motivations and ingredients of successful open access
resolutions that are directed at peer-reviewed article-length material. In
doing so, this report suggests that creating a wider array of
institutionally acceptable and cost-effective alternatives to peer reviewing
and publishing scholarly work could maintain the quality of academic peer
review, support greater research productivity, reduce the explosive growth
of low-quality publications, increase the purchasing power of cash-strapped
libraries, better support the free flow and preservation of ideas, and
relieve the burden on overtaxed faculty of conducting too much peer review.

This latest report on the state and future of peer review is a natural
extension of our findings in *Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly
Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven
Disciplines (2010)* <http://escholarship.org/uc/cshe_fsc>, which stressed
the need for a more nuanced academic reward system that is less dependent on
citation metrics, the slavish adherence to marquee journals and university
presses, and the growing tendency of institutions to outsource assessment of
scholarship to such proxies as default promotion criteria.

Links to the complete results of our ongoing work can be found at
<http://cshe.berkeley.edu/research/scholarlycommunication/index.htm>
*The Future of Scholarly Communication Project
website*<http://cshe.berkeley.edu/research/scholarlycommunication/index.htm>
.

========================================
Diane Harley, Ph.D.,
Principal Investigator and Director, Higher Education in the Digital Age
Project,
Center for Studies in Higher Education
771 Evans Hall, # 4650
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/people/dharley.htm
email: dianeh /at/ berkeley /dot/ edu
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