On 1/19/13 10:24 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
Not to fan any flames, but I am curious about the stereotypes we all
carry... "Academic" being the current one at issue...
Peer review is the mechanism for determining quality work in academia.
Researchers that can get their work past peer review get jobs, and
others do not. A common way for junior people to get work through peer
review is to have senior researcher (typically their mentor and boss)
guide the process. The senior researchers do this for their own
benefit, becoming senior authors on the papers, and in this way they
accumulate an impressive publication record and prominence and for a
good bang for the buck. At the end of the day, in certain academic
cliques, one will find that peer review means that a few powerful people
see that it is in their interest to get papers published. This is not
to say that the papers are wrong, or haven't been reviewed, but they may
not be particularly innovative. It's an economics based on reputation
and professional networking amongst the Players, and it depends on
having a pipeline of junior people of various investment to do the work.
The idea of taking mailing list discussions and converting it into a
publication has a similar smell.
Instead of having students do the work, there's the brainstorming,
analysis, argumentation of the community as an energy source. It just
needs to be refined.. where the `refinement' is presented as the
crucial contribution of the grown-ups. I could go on, but it gets more
cynical from here on out..
Marcus
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
