On several occasions this semester, I've referred to the concept of "peer review." For instance, in the Week 8 reading, I noted that one significant difference between the resources found on the web and those indexed in a research article database is that research articles are typically more reliable, having gone through the process of "peer review." I also mentioned that peer review doesn't ensure the correctness of a piece, only its "authenticity" or "legitimacy" as a research piece in the applicable field.
Some of you have probably encountered the concept of peer review in other courses in which you conducted secondary research; others may not have heard the term before. If your only involvement in the research process is as a reader, then the peer review process will probably not have crossed your radar. However, it is an important element of the research process, because it is one of the most important ways in which research journals (and thus research disciplines) "regulate" themselves.
While flipping through a recent issue of Technical Communication, I found an intriguing piece in which TC editor George Hayhoe describes how and why the journal developed its current peer review process. The article describes the process itself, but it also, quite usefully I think, focuses on how this process serves the interests of the discipline.
The peer review process often appears to be antagonistic to research writers—-a hurdle to cross, even a gauntlet to run, before one's work is validated by publication. Hayhoe does a good job calling our attention to how this process can, and should, serve the interests of the writer by providing a formal occasion for review and comment—an occasion that is designed not merely to disqualify the weakest research but to strengthen the strongest.
I'm posting a copy of this article to our course website so that you all can read this interesting piece. Hopefully it'll offer a new perspective on some of the themes that I've attempted to highlight in this course: not only the practical matters of where to look for resources and how to evaluate these resources, but the somewhat "hazier" issues of how the research process contributes to the development of a discipline and how researchers interact with each other within the "social and intellectual space" of a discipline.
Please click on the citation below to access a copy of George Hayhoe's August 2001 TC editorial:
The article is provided here with permission from the copyright holder, Society for Technical Communication. Copyright 2001. Do not copy or distribute.
NOTE: current members of the Society for Technical Communication already have access to this, and all, issues of Technical Communication from the STC website: http://www.stc.org.
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