Peer Review and Radiohead

I know what the hell do peer review, or scholarship in general, have to do with Radiohead? But come on, isn’t “you give us what you think it is worth” the ultimate form of review?

Carlson @ TechHerding asks a good question about what would happen to technical training if it were to happen via the Radiohead model. I also think he provides some interesting ideas about what might happen. Faster availability and easier demonstration of value being two biggies that impact teaching, learning, and scholarship.

My question is, what if we did this to scholarship? I think one of the signs of scholarship in the 21st century is the move to “open” scholarship that freely shares itself and invites collaboration. Obviously the technologies are there to support this model; but, as in the music industry, it is the economic infrastructure (tenure) that heavily resists change. Not ironically, the changes that Carlson forecasts for teaching and learning are the same for scholarship:

1. Dramatically Lower Costs. No more paper journals, printed monographs, or in the red university presses.
2. Dramatically Faster Availability. Finish your content, put a PDF up on the web. Done. (not a thing changes from Carlson’s point)
3. Dramatically Easier Demonstration of Value. You could show administrators and tenure committees that some content was valued highly, and that some was not. And come on, doesn’t the hyper-specialization of cable television demonstrate that although this would not be controlled peer review, who else is going to subscribe to the output of your RSS publication feed except others in your field? And tracking of citations becomes uber-easy!
4. Dramatically Happier Colleagues. Nobody will have an issue with something they pay for only if they like it. (again, Carlson said it all)
5. Dramatically Different You. In this new world, you’ll get immediate feedback on what you’re providing, and have immediate demonstration of the value (or lack thereof) that you add. If that scares you, it probably should. (yup…Carlson got this right!)

So, does the possibility of publishing scholarship in this world scare you? If so, it probably should. If not, get cracking! Start your own blog like Henry Jenkins, request that the journals in your field have online components that publish in blog with comment features and RSS output (like Flow) or wiki format that invites reader feedback, and ideally revision (like Kairos Praxis). We can’t make this a reality until we have a critical mass doing it! But I imagine I’m preaching to the choir, so how do we spread the word of Radiohead?

January 02 2008 | Posted in 21st Century Scholarship