<font size="2"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif">[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.]</font><br>
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<div><b>We are delighted to announce the publication of:</b><br>
<b><br>
</b><a href="http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1xv148c8#" target="_blank"><b>Peer Review in Academic Promotion and Publishing: Its
Meaning, Locus, and Future</b></a><a href="http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1xv148c8#" target="_blank"><br>
<i><b>A Project Report and Associated Recommendations, Proceedings
from a Meeting, and Background Papers</b></i><br>
</a><b><br>
</b><b>Authors: Diane Harley and Sophia Krzys
Acord</b><br>
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<i><b>The publication can be viewed online and downloaded at:</b></i> <i><b><a href="http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1xv148c8#" target="_blank">http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1xv148c8#</a></b></i><br>
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<div>Since 2005, and with generous funding from the <a href="http://www.mellon.org/" target="_blank">Andrew W. Mellon Foundation</a>, the <a href="http://cshe.berkeley.edu/" target="_blank">Center for Studies in Higher
Education (CSHE)</a> 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.<br>
</div><div><br></div>
<div>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.<br>
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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.<br>
<br>
This latest report on the state and future of peer review is a natural
extension of our findings in <a href="http://escholarship.org/uc/cshe_fsc" target="_blank"><i><b>Assessing the Future
Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values
and Needs in Seven Disciplines (2010)</b></i></a>, 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.<br>
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Links to the complete results of our ongoing work can be found at <a href="http://cshe.berkeley.edu/research/scholarlycommunication/index.htm" target="_blank">
</a><a href="http://cshe.berkeley.edu/research/scholarlycommunication/index.htm" target="_blank"><b>The Future of Scholarly Communication Project website</b></a>.</div>
<div><br>
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Diane Harley, Ph.D.,<br>
Principal Investigator and Director, Higher Education in the Digital
Age Project,</div>
<div>Center for Studies in Higher Education<br>
771 Evans Hall, # 4650<br>
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720<br>
<a href="http://cshe.berkeley.edu/people/dharley.htm" target="_blank">http://cshe.berkeley.edu/people/dharley.htm</a><br>
email: dianeh /at/ berkeley /dot/ edu</div>
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