[GOAL] Re: Peer review, OA, etc.

[Michael Smith]

Jan-

I just don't think the ArXiv model would work for archaeology. Part of
the reason may be the heterogeneous nature of the field, which runs from
hard science to interpretive humanities, and part may be the overall
lower level of agreed-upon disciplinary standards (related to, but not
isomorphic with, the first point). If archaeology were to jettison peer
review, I would stop publishing in those journals and declare myself a
historian or a sociologist.

Mike

Michael E. Smith, Professor
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Arizona State University
www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9
-----Original Message-----
From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On
Behalf Of Jan Velterop
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2012 10:32 AM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [GOAL] Re: Peer review, OA, etc.

Mike, 

I totally accept that your discipline suffers from practitioners of
"psychoceramics", a field of study involving "cracked pots"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_S._Carberry - tomorrow, as every
Friday the 13th, it's "Josiah Stinkney Carberry day"). It's probably
true of many disciplines, and it's certainly a well-known phenomenon in
physics, where highly fantastic theories about the universe and
everything abound. Yet ArXiv seems to be able to keep those crackpots
out with a fairly simple - and cheap - endorsement system:
http://arxiv.org/help/endorsement. Would this really be impossible in
archaeology? It may well not be completely fail-safe, but then, what in
life is? To all intents and purposes, we know that ArXiv works. 

Jan Velterop

On 12 Jan 2012, at 16:46, Michael Smith wrote:

> I would not presume to talk about the value of peer review for all of
science, but for some fields it is absolutely essential. I am a
archaeologist, and we desperately need peer review to weed out papers by
two groups of authors (many of whom can write scholarly-sounding and
scholarly-looking papers). First we lunatics who would like to think
they are part of the scholarly discipline. They are into Maya prophesies
for 2012, boatloads of Egyptians who (supposedly) showed the Incas how
to mummify the dead, phony pyramids in the Balkans,  and the like. Some
of these people write books and articles that appear to be scholarly,
but are not. The second group is more insidious. These are scholars with
valid degrees who have a very non-scientific epistemology, producing
stories of the past with little plausibility. Taking a more
humanities-oriented approach, they are willing to propose
interpretations that the more scientifically-minded of us consider
baseless speculation.
>  
> High-energy physics presumably has fewer lunatics and hangers-on than
archaeology, and they are probably easier to spot. We desperately need
peer review to keep some sort of sanity in our field.
>  
> Mike
>  
> Michael E. Smith, Professor
> School of Human Evolution & Social Change
> Arizona State University
> www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9
> _______________________________________________
> GOAL mailing list
> GOAL at eprints.org
> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal


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