Talk:Peer review/Archive1

Halp
Any halp would be appreciated; I think this should be a very big deal page for us, and I need some real scientists to continue and build on the barebones I've set up.- 18:25, 14 January 2008 (EST)
 * Wow, I think I wrote a stub (since I know whst it is), and I'm proud my sentence survived the move to it being a "real" article! Thanks for leaving it... human  19:09, 14 January 2008 (EST)

Cover story
Could this be made into a cover nom eventually?- 12:02, 16 February 2008 (EST)


 * Looks good to me. Yes . Not quite yet - there are some empty headers down under creationism stuff - maybe they should just be removed?  I'm going to add the template, and delete that silly "construction" template. human  12:15, 16 February 2008 (EST)

I'll nuke the other sections.- 13:54, 25 February 2008 (EST)
 * Done. Thoughts?  Could I get a peer to review?- 14:29, 25 February 2008 (EST)
 * I iz in ur artikl revuwing ur editz! human  15:37, 25 February 2008 (EST)
 * I pee revued it, it seems pretty good. I added a bit in the intro.  Let's get another of our "peers" to "reveiw" it before we "publish" it? human  16:08, 25 February 2008 (EST)

Reviewers plz!- 15:28, 26 February 2008 (EST)

Yes. DogP  21:18, 2 April 2008 (EDT)

C'mon, this is an important article - let's Cover Story it! DogP  12:30, 7 May 2008 (EDT)
 * Dunnit! (after a spell check "reveiwer" indeed!) 12:36, 7 May 2008 (EDT)
 * But that's my favorite wiki-typo! (Because "preview" is spelled correctly under every edit box for reference...) PS, I concur on the coverstorying. human  14:15, 7 May 2008 (EDT)

Double blind?
Current version says: 'As much effort is made as is possible to ensure that the process is "double blind", or anonymous — the original author does not know who is reviewing their work, and the reviewers are not told who the author is.'

Now I do not know about other areas of research, but I am a botanist who has reviewed a fair number of manuscripts for a variety of scientific journals, and there has not been one case where I did not know who the authors were. Their names are always indicated clearly below the manuscript title. Reviewers, on the other hand, can usually choose anonymity if they want, which makes it easier to write negative reviews.&mdash; Unsigned, by: 130.60.200.75 / talk / contribs
 * I have cut the passage to this talk page below:


 * As much effort is made as is possible to ensure that the process is "double blind", or anonymous — the original author does not know who is reviewing their work, and the reviewers are not told who the author is. However, in some fields, there are so few qualified experts that they all probably know each other, and each other's work, quite well.
 * Does anybody else have any comments?--Bobbing up 13:35, 5 February 2009 (EST)
 * I'm late coming to this party, but my understanding is that the social sciences all insist on double-blind, whereas the natural sciences do not. The social sciences are afraid of subtle discriminatory practices; honestly, it shocked the hell out of me to find out that the natural science people don't do double blind.  There has been a case made that one of the causes of discrimination in the physical sciences is due to the lack of double blind reviewing.  (Subtle pressures to better praise a male author than a female, that kind of thing.) Researcher 21:36, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Makes sense to me (sort of). My knowledge is limited to what an historian I know has told me - they do "double blind", but in many precise areas of study there are so few experts that they all know, pretty much, what's going on anyway.  But, yeah, she had clearly implied that they do it double blind - which is probably why it might have been me who added that section.  22:04, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
 * In my experience, at least some academic publishers in the hard sciences use double-blind reviewing. 22:53, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
 * In the more esoteric fields it'd probably be difficult (as in the pulled quote above). When there's only (say) ten qualified people in the world, who probably communicate with each other regularly, how could it be achieved? The reviewer would be able to guess with fair accuracy who the author was and the author would know the few qualified reviewers. 22:59, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
 * In the more esoteric fields the situation is even worse; there are not actually enough qualified reviewers, so they have unqualified ones do it, ranking their "confidence level" based on how well they know the material. 23:03, 26 April 2009 (UTC)