Commentary: Peer Review is Alive and Well in the United States

Science, Technology & Human Values

Volumn 10, Issue 3, 1985, Pages 82-86

  Rip, Arie ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84935413421     PISSN: 01622439     EISSN: 15528251     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/016224398501000310     Document Type: Article

References (13)

1. Stephen Cole, Jonathan R. Cole, Gary A. Simon, “Chance and Consensus in Peer Review,” Science, Volume 214 (20 November 1981) 881-886, find reversals of peer ratings in their replication experiment, and interpret this as randomness of peer review.
2. A remark of Roger Noll, discussant in the Workshop on Federal Funding and Knowledge Growth, National Science Foundation, Washington, DC, 26 May 1983.
3. I quote from Merton and Zuckerman's discussion of the emergence of the role of referees for the Transactions of the Royal Society m the 1660s, that is also used by Jasanoff. Harriet Zuckerman and Robert K. Merton, “Patterns of Evaluation in Science: Institutionalisation, Structure and Functions of the Referee System”, reprinted in Robert K. Merton, The Sociology of Science, Theoretical and Empirical Investigations (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1973) pp. 460-496, at p. 463 and p. 468.
4. Stephen Cole, Leonard Rubm, Jonathan R. Cole, Peer Review m the National Science Foundation. Phase One of a Study (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1978).
5. Studies of Science, Volume 9 (1979) 199-232, at p. 200.
6. Howard J. Sanders, “Peer Review: How Well Is It Working?”, Chemical & Engineering News (15 March 1982): 32-43, at p. 32.
7. Nathan Remgold, informal presentation at the Social Science Research Council Conference on Science Studies, Oxford, England, 27-28 September 1982. The conference brought together sociologists of science and science policy practitioners. One of the latter concluded: The history of science is important as an enrichment of the culture of science policy decision making. The idea that peer review has a history is vastly important to escape the captivity of immediacy and relevance.
8. Mitroff and Chubm, (See note 6, above.), p. 200, 219, 223-224.
9. Harry Collins' felicitous phrase, in H.M. Collins, “Scientific Knowledge and Science Policy: Some Foreseeable Implications,” European Association for the Study of Science and Technology Newsletter, Volume 2, Number 4 (November 1983): p. 7.
10. Stevan Harnad, in Peer Commentary on Peer Review. A Case Study in Scientific Quality Control (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), emphasizes the importance of anonymity and of drawing on a much larger pool of potential reviewers, as can be identified through literature searches. Such impersonalized review is to be complemented with what he calls “externalizing creative disagreement.” See his note 23.
11. Assessment (Leiden, The Netherlands: Leiden Institute of Social Policy Research, October 1984).
12. Report (Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Research on Utilization of Scientific Knowledge, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, September 1982)
13. Susan M. Asch and Charles Upton Lowe, “The Consensus Development Program,” Knowledge, Volume 5 (1984): 369-385; and Gerald E. Markle and Daryl E. Chubin, personal communication. See also the brief discussion in note 12, above.