Grey Literature, Peer Review, and Web Publishing (from H-NEXA) (fwd)

[Richard Plant]

Here's a subject which may be of interest to various poeple in publishing
and academia.

Richard Plant
Dept of Drama, Queen's University
and
Graduate Centre for Study of Drama, 
University of Toronto

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1998 11:16:18 -0400
From: "Michael J. Carley" <mjcarley at aspp.hssfc.ca>
Reply-To: owner-publiforum at magmacom.com
To: publiforum at magma.ca
Subject: Grey Literature, Peer Review, and Web Publishing (from H-NEXA)

Date: Sun, 02 Aug 1998 15:33:10 -0700
From: "Michael Gregory, NEXA/H-NEXA" <mgregory at concentric.net>

[Published originally on H-NEXA, reposted by permission.  Copyright
remains with the author. /mg/]

Date: Sat, 01 Aug 1998 10:49:46 -0700
From: Jack Stillwell <jstillwe at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU>

        Questions have been raised recently on several electronic forums
about a thickly knotted group of issues with wideranging implications
involving citation content and permissibility, the role and format
currently used to facilitate professional and disciplinary development
(peer reviewed print media journals and employment decisions based upon
the existence of peer-reviewed publications), web-based publishing, and
proposals to somehow modify or reform all of the above.  Concerns have
been expressed in this discussion about the form and use of power inside
scholarly disciplines, the need for maintaining of some form of "quality
control" and disciplinary consensus in the literature, and the critical
need to maintain academic and personal rights to both free speech and
access to publication.  I think that raising this in an interdisciplinary
forum like NEXA is appropriate and might serve to widen the discussion and
sharpen what is or is not critical in this Gordian knot.

        One thread that wriggles through this knot is how and whether to
cite Internet sources in scholarly works.  This was raised in a context of
a demand by a print media, peer-reviewed journal, that there be no
citation of web-published materials in articles submitted to it.  The
particular situation involved the citation of marine fisheries statistics,
and research data, from government reports published at a government
fisheries bureau web site.  The author of the article raised this issue in
a posting called "what's the matter with grey literature";  Aldo Solari
[APS]: OLARIS at cicei.ulpgc.es, University Las Palmas de G.C.  on the e-mail
list fish-ecology at helios.ulpgc.es.  This posting was later also copied to
the HOPOS (history and philosophy of science) list where a lively
discussion ensued.  The journal involved evidently stated that its policy
was based on a concern about the credibility of web-based publications and
the need for claims and assertions in scholarly articles to be based on
peer reviewed sources.

        Another thread has been suggestions [sic] that print media is becoming
outdated and that web-based publication of scholarly articles consequently
need to be expanded.  While this seems a likely assertion, there are
issues involved.  At the moment writing is free but reading, i.e.,
subscriptions, has a cost, and continuing that arrangement in a web-based
environment might be difficult.  Examples of web-based databases of
scholarly work, both with and without a journal imprimatur, exist, but the
costs of accessing them are at present largely limited to equipment and
connect time charges. See for instance the web-based "Ginsparg
prepublication archive" which I believe to be located at

http://xxx.lanl.gov/

        One estimate was that in this database "it seemed that some of
them had already been accepted by standard journals, most were under
submission, and some left no indication that submission had been made
yet (maybe a ratio of 20:60:20, but that is just a lame guess)."

        Furthermore, the question of the peer-review function of
scholarly journals, raises its head here.  The Ginsparg electronic
database avoids these issues by labeling all its articles as "preprints"
but there are larger issues embedded here.  For instance, the "Phelps
proposal" (see the on-line discussion at the Chronicle of Higher
Education website at

http://chronicle.com/colloquy/98/perish/perish.shtml

This proposal seems to be centered on removing the peer review function
from journal editorial boards and assigning it instead to committees
appointed from within each discipline which would review submissions in
order to certify them as "worthy of publication."  Then whether articles
were actually published wouldn't matter to the author or those evaluating
her work to see if her research or writings should be funded or if she
should be employed.  Web-based publishing would be enabled under such a
scheme.  Many, many questions about these "committees" are however
generated by such a proposal, as well as subsidiary questions about how
interdisciplinary work could be found "worthy."  A full copy of Phelp's
proposal an be seen at

http://www.econ.rochester.edu/Faculty/Phelps_paper.html

This proposal would also result in the need to discuss how scholarly
articles would be indexed and accessed.  This in turn, assuming that it
would be Internet based, raises questions about the completeness of
Web-based search engine coverage and details of search protocol
methodology that rapidly leave all but the most arcane expertise far
behind.  This knot of issues has existed for some time, for instance, the
Weinberg/PSAC panel (1963 report on scientific information) dealt with
many of them.  Alvin M. Weinberg's "Reflections on Big Science" (1967).
especially Chapter II (pp 65-122) also deals many of the technology and
distribution issues.  A more current discussion may be found at

http://www.dlib.org

"Options for the Future Symposium on electronic publishing, ICSU/UNESCO,"
which is also in hard copy,  "Electronic publishing in science", D Shaw
and H Moore, eds., ICSU press, 1996.

Questions I see embedded here:

Should print journals be able to exclude all references to non-print
media sources in scholarly articles they publish?

What is wrong with the use of "grey literature" in scholarly argument?

Is the "quality control" function of peer review really necessary? And,
assuming it is (and I do, I think), could it be accomplished if
university-based, geographic-based, or discipline-based committees
reviewed article form and substance instead of continuing the exponential
"let a thousand flowers bloom" increase in the number of peer-reviewed
journals?

How is academic freedom really reconciled with the maintenance of
disciplinary and sub-disciplinary coherence?

What are the nature of the power relationships embedded in the current
system of social relations among scholars of which peer-review is such an
integral part?  What would changing the act of "publishing" do to
those relationships?  How to these social relations effect
intra-disciplinary matters and in the context of submitting this matter
to NEXA what effect do these relationships on interdisciplinary research
and publication?  How would the situation change if peer-review were not
a function appended to publication?

--

Jack Stillwell


The sea is the land's edge also, the granite
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of earlier and other creation;
The starfish, the hermit crab, the whale's backbone;
The pools where it offers to our curiosity
The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.
It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,
The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices.

                        -- The Dry Salvages, T.S. Eliot, 1941


Michael J. Carley
Director - Directeur
Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme - Programme d'aide à l'édition savante
151 Slater, #410
Ottawa, Ontario
K1P 5H3
(613) 234-1269 x353 - FAX 236-4853
mjcarley at aspp.hssfc.ca; mcarley at ccs.carleton.ca
WWW: http://aspp.hssfc.ca