Scarecrow Press Do We Still Need Peer Review?: An Argument for Change

The current peer review process is broken and unless changes are made it will soon die. In Do We Still Need Peer Review?, author Thomas H.P. Gould examines the evolution of peer review from the earliest attempts by the Church to evaluate scholarly works to the creation of academic peer review and finally to the current status of the process. Gould argues that without an immediate effort by scholars to institute reform, the future of peer review may cease to exist. As new technology provides authors with a direct, unsupervised route to publication, the peer review situation is nearing a tipping point, beyond which the nature of academic research will be profoundly altered. This book proposes that rather than tossing out peer review altogether, the process can be saved and made stronger, offering suggestions on how to do just that. Review Do We Still Need Peer Review? is a compact book with more historical information than one would expect. The historical discussion not only adds perspective to the problem at hand, but is one of the most interesting aspects of the work. True to his word, Gould, rather than advocating for the abolishment of peer review, offers steps that can be taken to improve this important part of academia.--Library Resources & Technical Services (LRTS) Peer review is one of the academic traditions that divide academia. While some believe it to be indispensable for separating bad research from good, others slam it as elitist, biased and, overall, ineffective. Starting from the 1970s, peer review has found itself under scrutiny that has resulted in a substantial body of research. Do We Still Need Peer Review? written by a mass communication scholar, Thomas Gould, contributes to this tradition by offering a truly Foucauldian analysis of peer review's origins and foundations. . . .[T]he monograph is well written, well argued and employs a wide range of (peer-reviewed) sources. Sure it will find supporters as well as sceptics among academic librarians, but, most importantly, it will start a much-needed conversation about the future of academic publishing, the role of academic librarians in research process and the place of peer review in the age of the Internet.--Australian Academic & Research Libraries About the Author Thomas H.P. Gould is associate professor of Mass Communications at Kansas State University.