NYTimes > Scholars Test Web Alternative to Peer Review

[snip] Now some humanities scholars have begun to challenge the monopoly that peer review has on admission to career-making journals and, as a consequence, to the charmed circle of tenured academe. They argue that in an era of digital media there is a better way to assess the quality of work. Instead of relying on a few experts selected by leading publications, they advocate using the Internet to expose scholarly thinking to the swift collective judgment of a much broader interested audience.

[snip]

That transformation was behind the recent decision by the prestigious 60-year-old Shakespeare Quarterly to embark on an uncharacteristic experiment in the forthcoming fall issue — one that will make it, Ms. Rowe says, the first traditional humanities journal to open its reviewing to the World Wide Web.

Mixing traditional and new methods, the journal posted online four essays not yet accepted for publication, and a core group of experts — what Ms. Rowe called “our crowd sourcing” — were invited to post their signed comments on the Web site MediaCommons, a scholarly digital network. Others could add their thoughts as well, after registering with their own names. In the end 41 people made more than 350 comments, many of which elicited responses from the authors. The revised essays were then reviewed by the quarterly’s editors, who made the final decision to include them in the printed journal, due out Sept. 17.

The Shakespeare Quarterly trial, along with a handful of other trailblazing digital experiments, goes to the very nature of the scholarly enterprise. [snip]

[snip].

Each type of review has benefits and drawbacks.

[snip]

Clubby exclusiveness, sloppy editing and fraud have all marred peer review on occasion. Anonymity can help prevent personal bias, but it can also make reviewers less accountable; exclusiveness can help ensure quality control but can also narrow the range of feedback and participants. Open review more closely resembles Wikipedia behind the scenes, where anyone with an interest can post a comment. This open-door policy has made Wikipedia, on balance, a crucial reference resource.

Ms. Rowe said the goal is not necessarily to replace peer review but to use other, more open methods as well.

[snip]

The most daunting obstacle to opening up the process is that peer-review publishing is the path to a job and tenure, and no would-be professor wants to be the academic canary in the coal mine.

The first question that Alan Galey, a junior faculty member at the University of Toronto, asked when deciding to participate in The Shakespeare Quarterly’s experiment was whether his essay would ultimately count toward tenure. “I went straight to the dean with it,” Mr. Galey said. (It would.)

Although initially cautious, Mr. Galey said he is now “entirely won over by the open peer review model.” The comments were more extensive and more insightful, he said, than he otherwise would have received on his essay, which discusses Shakespeare in the context of information theory.

Advocates of more open reviewing, like Mr. Cohen at George Mason argue that other important scholarly values besides quality control — for example, generating discussion, improving works in progress and sharing information rapidly — are given short shrift under the current system.

“There is an ethical imperative to share information,” said Mr. Cohen, who regularly posts his work online, where he said thousands read it. Engaging people in different disciplines and from outside academia has made his scholarship better, he said.

To Mr. Cohen, the most pressing intellectual issue in the next decade is this tension between the insular, specialized world of expert scholarship and the open and free-wheeling exchange of information on the Web. “And academia,” he said, “is caught in the middle.”

A version of this article appeared in print on August 24, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/arts/24peer.html/]

Letters To The Editor > 08-30-10

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/opinion/l30review.html]

See Also CHE > Leading Humanities Journal Debuts 'Open' Peer Review, and Likes It

[http://chronicle.com/article/Leading-Humanities-Journal/123696/]

BTW: I Profiled Several Innovative Alternative Initiatives Several Years Ago > For Example

"Alternative Peer Review:

Quality Management for 21st Century Scholarship"

[http://www.public.iastate.edu/~gerrymck/APR-1.ppt]

> >> It's A Large PPT (200+ Slides) >>>

>>> But IMHO ... Well Worth The Experience [:-)] <<<

See Also (My) Other Works Listed / Linked At

The Scientist > August 2010 > Peer Review Rejected

[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2010/08/scientist-august-2010-peer-review.html]

NPR > An Un-'Common' Take On Copyright Law

It's safe to say that most Americans don't spend much time thinking about intellectual property law. But in Common As Air, Lewis Hyde explains why these laws profoundly affect our culture -- and how they are based on assumptions that are artificial, illogical and outdated.

[snip]

.... [I]ntellectual property laws affect our culture profoundly, in ways that go beyond college students being taken to court for downloading songs. Some people believe that not only are current copyright laws too stringent, but that the assumptions the current laws are based on are artificial, illogical and outdated.

Among them is Lewis Hyde, a professor of art and politics who has studied these issues for years. In his new book Common As Air, Hyde says he's suspicious of the concept of "intellectual property" to begin with, calling it "historically strange." Hyde backs it up with an impressive amount of research; he spends a significant amount of time reflecting on the Founding Fathers, who came up with America's initial copyright laws.

Hyde is a contrarian, but he's not a scorched-earth opponent of all copyright laws. He does believe the national paradigm for intellectual property issues should be changed, though, at one point offering several examples of the absurd situations the current laws have created. [snip]Hyde advocates for a return to a "cultural commons" and quotes, approvingly, Thomas Jefferson, who believed that "ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man."

[more]

Source / Excerpt Available At

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129299939]

 

>>> Slide Show >>>

[http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/08/23/common_as_air_lewis_hyde/slideshow.html]

Teacher Magazine / AP > Net-Age Students Have Different View of Plagiarism

Published: August 16, 2010 > EASTON, Pa. (AP) — Last year, students in an Easton Area High School entrepreneurship class were assigned to write business plans. While reviewing them, teachers quickly realized one student had copied entire portions of his from a plan posted on the Internet.

[snip]

"There is a blurred vision by many in this digital age because there's just so much information they have access to," Koch said. "It's very difficult for them to filter what is mine and what is yours. It's all out there for you to utilize."

Although local educators said they haven't seen any rise in plagiarism cases lately, many found students from a generation raised on the Internet have a different perspective on what constitutes plagiarism.

[snip]

"Some students seem to think that whatever is out there is free to take," said Ed Lotto, director of first-year writing at Lehigh University. "They seem to think it's common knowledge and they can cite common knowledge without citation."

Plagiarism is a cultural, nationwide phenomenon. The problem is not limited to the Lehigh Valley.

[snip]

Lotto said the problem may manifest, in part, from the way the Internet has changed young people's perspective about digital media.

[snip]

"It's the culture they grew up in," Lotto said. "And that would affect their perception of ownership of things in the world."

[snip]

Part of the problem, he said, is students learn at a young age to use the Internet as a research tool, but are not necessarily instructed early on what requires a citation and how to cite it.

"I think it's a problem in the curriculum for younger grades," Ziegler said. "There has to be a way to better transition those kids from middle school reports to high school reports."

Other local educators don't necessarily see a connection between students raised in the digital age and plagiarism.

Hannah Stewart-Gambino, dean of Lafayette College, said students are instructed as thoroughly as ever about what constitutes plagiarism and most know the difference between what is right and wrong.

"Even as humans were scratching rudimentary writing into tree bark, the inclination to claim work that is not one's own has been human nature," Stewart-Gambino said. "I'm not convinced technology or the Internet has altered human nature or that temptation substantially, frankly."

Editorial Comment > Are You Serious ???

But she does believe students have difficulty differentiating between legitimate sources on the Internet and nonacademic sources.

[snip]

Just as music companies and film studios have had to change their online sales models in response to illegal downloading, Lotto said some educators have suggested schools will have to change their views of what constitutes plagiarism due to the rise of the Internet.

"I've heard it argued a change in perspective of plagiarism is coming, that we shouldn't be too hard-nosed about it," he said. "I'm an older guy, so I don't really buy it so much, but I do hear it sometimes from younger teachers and graduate students."

Lotto added, "It's going to change. I don't know how or in what way, but you can see it."

Information from: The Express-Times [http://www.lehighvalleylive.com]

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Source  > Available To Subscribers / Registered Guests At

[http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2010/08/16/netstudentsplagiarism_ap.html]

The P-Word II > The Ontology of Plagiarism: Part Two > Get A Clue

Colleagues/

In response to comments on his recent NY Times Opinionator Piece > Plagiarism Is Not A Big Moral Deal

[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2010/08/p-word-stanley-fish-and-i-agree.html] ,

Stanley Fish has authored "The Ontology of Plagiarism: Part Two "

[http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/the-ontology-of-plagiarism-part-two/].

IMHO > Most Still Do Not (Really) Recognize/Understand The Issue(s) > Please (Do) View / Read My Perspective On The Issue >>>

A few years ago I gave a keynote at the 3rd International Plagiarism Conference / 23 - 25 June 2008 / City Campus East, Northumbria University / Newcastle-upon-tyne, UK /

"Disruptive Scholarship: An Idea Whose Time Has Come: (Re)Use / (Re)Mix / (Re)New"

Abstract

Hadrian's Wall is a stone and turf fortification built by the Roman Empire across the width of modern-day England. ... [It was] 117 kilometres long,

... [I]ts width and height [were] dependent on the construction materials [that] ... were available nearby.

... [T]he wall in the east follow[ed] the outcrop of a hard, resistant igneous diabase rock escarpment ... Local limestone was used in the construction, except for ... section[s] in the west ... where turf was used instead ... .

The Broad Wall was initially built with a clay-bonded rubble core and mortared dressed rubble facing stones, but this seems to have made it vulnerable to collapse, and repair with a mortared core was sometimes necessary.... [I]n time ... [Hadrian's] Wall was abandoned and fell into ruin. Over the centuries and even into the twentieth century a large proportion of the stone was reused in other local buildings.

Throughout history, humans have (re)used local resources to create not only buildings and fortifications, but monuments, roads, and a wide variety of other structures. For countless generations, artists, composers, and writers have freely incorporated elements from local and distant cultures to create new visual, musical, and textual forms.

In The Web 2.0 World, the open (re)combination of multiple media has become commonplace in many venues, practices that Lawrence Lessig [snip], founder of Creative Commons [snip]and others, would characterize as emblematic of a 'Remix ' or 'Read/Write' culture. Indeed, from his point of view, “the health, progress, and wealth creation of a culture is fundamentally tied to this participatory remix process” [snip]

In the recently-released Horizon Report 2008 - a joint publication of the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), six emerging information technologies and practices that are expected to significantly impact educational organizations are profiled: Grassroots Video, Collaborative Webs, Mobile Broadband, Data Mashups, Collaborative Intelligence, and Social Operating Systems.

In this presentation, we will review the Read/Write Traditions of the Arts, Humanities, and Sciences; analyze key Past / Present / Future Participatory Technologies; and explore the potential of Web 2.0 for creating/fostering Disruptive Learning / Scholarship / Teaching in the 21st century.

The Director's Cut of the (150+ Slides) PPT is available from my _Scholarship 2.0_ blog at

[ http://bit.ly/9riXmc ]

I hope The Title and Abstract indicate That I Have A Different View Of The P-Word [:-)]

/Gerry

Sharing of Data Leads to Progress on Alzheimer’s > "The Future of Research and Scholarship - Open, Social, Semantic, Mobile"

Colleagues/

On Augst 12 2010, The NYTimes piblished an article titled "Sharing of Data Leads to Progress on Alzheimer’s" >>>

In 2003, a group of scientists and executives from the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the drug and medical-imaging industries, universities and nonprofit groups joined in a project that experts say had no precedent: a collaborative effort to find the biological markers that show the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in the human brain.

[more]

Source

[http://nyti.ms/9mgrCc]

As Expected > Observed > Predicted  >>>

BTW: Not Only Did The Irish Save Civilization

[http://amzn.to/17Kp7] [http://nyti.ms/9DhC1T]

We Also ForeSaw / Foresee The Future [:-)]

>>> They Are A-Changin' > The Future Of Research And Scholarship: Open / Semantic / Social / Mobile <<<

There are four major themes that are and will become the context and framework of research and scholarship in the 21st Century: Open / Semantic / Social / Mobile

> Open > Open Access / Open Data / Open Peer Review / Open Research

>> Semantic > Audio / Interactivity / Supplemental Content / Video

>>> Social  > Science Blogging / Social Bookmarking / Social Networking / Social Software

>>>> Mobile > Mobile Access / Mobile Content / Mobile Data / Mobile Research

In scheduled presentation(s), we will briefly profile select developments related to these major themes and speculate on their potential evolution and impact on research and scholarship in the coming decade(s).

[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2009/05/paradigms-they-are-changin-open.html]

BTW For A summary of my presentation at the National Univerity of Ireland, Galway SEE John Brelsin's blog entry at

[http://bit.ly/9xmGe5]

Thanks, John !!!

BTW: John is the co-author of The Social Semantic Web. Springer, 2010

[http://bit.ly/12TJTX]

JOY !

/Gerry

The P-Word > Stanley Fish And I Agree? > Plagiarism Is Not A Big Moral Deal

Colleagues/

New York Times columnist, Stanley Fish,  " ... a professor of humanities and law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago," recently published his most recent NY Times Opininator column titled >

Plagiarism Is Not a Big Moral Deal

[snip]

Whenever it comes up plagiarism is a hot button topic and essays about it tend to be philosophically and morally inflated. But there are really only two points to make. (1) Plagiarism is a learned sin. (2) Plagiarism is not a philosophical issue.

[snip]

Plagiarism is like that; it’s an insider’s obsession. If you’re a professional journalist, or an academic historian, or a philosopher, or a social scientist or a scientist, the game you play for a living is underwritten by the assumed value of originality and failure properly to credit the work of others is a big and obvious no-no. But if you’re a musician or a novelist, the boundary lines are less clear (although there certainly are some)  ... .

[snip]

And if you’re a student, plagiarism will seem to be an annoying guild imposition without a persuasive rationale (who cares?); for students, learning the rules of plagiarism is worse than learning the irregular conjugations of a foreign language. It takes years, and while a knowledge of irregular verbs might conceivably come in handy if you travel, knowledge of what is and is not plagiarism in this or that professional practice is not something that will be of very much use to you unless you end up becoming a member of the profession yourself.

It follows that students who never quite get the concept right are by and large not committing a crime; they are just failing to become acclimated to the conventions of the little insular world they have, often through no choice of their own, wandered into. It’s no big moral deal; which doesn’t mean, I hasten to add, that plagiarism shouldn’t be punished — if you’re in our house, you’ve got to play by our rules — just that what you’re punishing is a breach of disciplinary decorum, not a breach of the moral universe.
[more]

[http://nyti.ms/cAa1WF]

See Also >The P-Word II > The Ontology of Plagiarism: Part Two > Get A Clue

[http://bit.ly/aI2mmE]
As Some May Know I Have A Different View On The P-Word >

NYTimes > Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age

[http://bit.ly/bEYvK7]

/Gerry

_NatureNews_ > Special > Science Metrics

Assessing Assessment > Transparency, education and communication are key to ensuring that appropriate metrics are used to measure individual scientific achievement / 16 June 2010

Do Metrics Matter? > Many researchers believe that quantitative metrics determine who gets hired and who gets promoted at their institutions. With an exclusive poll and interviews, Nature probes to what extent metrics are really used that way  / 16 June 2010

A Profusion Of Measures > Scientific performance indicators are proliferating — leading researchers to ask afresh what they are measuring and why. Richard Van Noorden surveys the rapidly evolving ecosystem / 16 June 2010

Science Economics: What Science Is Really Worth > Spending on science is one of the best ways to generate jobs and economic growth, say research advocates. But as Colin Macilwain reports, the evidence behind such claims is patchy / 9 June 2010

How To Improve The Use Of Metrics >Since the invention of the science citation index in the 1960s, quantitative measuring of the performance of researchers has become ever more prevalent, controversial and influential. Six commentators tell Nature what changes might ensure that individuals are assessed more fairly / 16 June 2010

Let's Make Science Metrics More Scientific > To capture the essence of good science, stakeholders must combine forces to create an open, sound and consistent system for measuring all the activities that make up academic productivity, says Julia Lane / 24 March 2010

[more]

Source And All Links Available From

[http://bit.ly/a91Gjn]

Related > UnRelated > Related

WP > Why We Get Things So Wrong > Books by Kathryn Schulz and David H. Freedman

[http://bit.ly/d6H1fM]