<editorial board> first issue

[geert lovink]

Dear all,

this all sounds really interesting.

I am involved in some debates around peer review but do not find it  
all that exciting to write a full article about this matter. It is  
much more according to the topic to do this as a dialogue with a few,  
or write a manifesto with many. I am not sure how many of you followed  
the debate on the matter on my Facebook page. I hear remarks  
everywhere that peer review is dead but the machine is still running.  
People would love it to disappear because it has been such a downer,  
such an important contributor to the lowering of quality. Peer  
reviewing has led to the exact opposite it claims and made academic  
journals uninteresting, boring and unreadable. On top of that it has  
fostered corruption type politics and created an atmosphere of revenge  
(in the case of anonymous peer review).

Below a weird email that Soenke received. It shows that the science  
community really struggles but in the refuses to do anything about the  
underlying logic of cynical power and control.

Best, Geert

--

From: ISPR 2010 <ispr at mail.sysconfer.org>
Date: 2010/4/25
Subject: CFP - Symposium on Peer Reviewing
To: SOENKE.ZEHLE at web.de

Dear Soenke Zehle:

As you know, only 8% members of the Scientific Research Society agreed
that 'peer review works well as it is.' (Chubin and Hackett, 1990;
p.192)

"A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision and an analysis of the peer
review system substantiate complaints about this fundamental aspect of
scientific research." (Horrobin, 2001)

Horrobin concludes that peer review "is a non-validated charade whose
processes generate results little better than does chance." (Horrobin,
2001) This has been statistically proven and reported by an increasing
number of journal editors.

But, "Peer Review is one of the sacred pillars of the scientific
edifice" (Goodstein, 2000), it is a necessary condition in quality
assurance for Scientific/Engineering publications, and "Peer Review is
central to the organization of modern science…why not apply scientific
[and engineering] methods to the peer review process" (Horrobin,
2001).

This is the purpose of The 2nd International Symposium on Peer
Reviewing: ISPR 2010 (http://www.sysconfer.org/ispr) being organized
in the context of The SUMMER 4th International Conference on Knowledge
Generation, Communication and Management: KGCM 2010
(http://www.sysconfer.org/kgcm), which will be held on June 29th -
July 2nd, in Orlando, Florida, USA.

=======================================================
Deadlines for ISPR 2010
May 4th, 2010, for papers/abstracts submissions and Invited Sessions  
Proposals
May 18th, 2010: Authors Notification
June 1st, 2010: Camera ready, final version.
=======================================================

ISPR 2010 Organizing Committee is planning to include in the symposium
program 1) sessions with formal presentations, and/or 2) informal
conversational sessions, and/or 3) hybrid sessions, which will have
formal presentations first and informal conversations later.

Submissions for Face-to-Face or for Virtual Participation are both
accepted. Both kinds of submissions will have the same reviewing
process and the accepted papers will be included in the same
proceedings.

Pre-Conference and Post-conference Virtual sessions (via electronic
forums) will be held for each session included in the conference
program, so that sessions papers can be read before the conference,
and authors presenting at the same session can interact during one
week before and after the conference. Authors can also participate in
peer-to-peer reviewing in virtual sessions.

All Submitted papers/abstracts will go through three reviewing
processes: (1) double-blind (at least three reviewers), (2) non-blind,
and (3) participative peer reviews. These three kinds of review will
support the selection process of those papers/abstracts that will be
accepted for their presentation at the conference, as well as those to
be selected for their publication in JSCI Journal.

Authors of accepted papers who registered in the conference can have
access to the evaluations and possible feedback provided by the
reviewers who recommended the acceptance of their papers/abstracts, so
they can accordingly improve the final version of their papers.
Non-registered authors will not have access to the reviews of their
respective submissions.

Authors of the best 10%-20% of the papers presented at the conference
(included those virtually presented) will be invited to adapt their
papers for their publication in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics
and Informatics.

Best regards,

ISPR 2010 Organizing Committee

If you wish to be removed from this mailing list, please send an email
to remove at mail.sysconfer.org with REMOVE MLCONFERENCES in the subject
line. Address: Torre Profesional La California, Av. Francisco de
Miranda, Caracas, Venezuela.

References

Chubin, D. R. and Hackett E. J., 1990, Peerless Science, Peer Review
and U.S. Science Policy; New York, State University of New York Press.

Horrobin, D., 2001, "Something Rotten at the Core of Science?" Trends
in Pharmacological Sciences, Vol. 22, No. 2, February 2001. Also at
http://www.whale.to/vaccine/sci.html and
http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/peerrev4.htm (both Web pages were
accessed on February 1, 2010)

Goodstein, D., 2000, "How Science Works", U.S. Federal Judiciary
Reference Manual on Evidence, pp. 66-72 (referenced in Hoorobin, 2000)