Public Philosophy

Editors complain about frequent refusals from potential referees, low quality and brevity of reviews, lack of engagement with the papers' arguments and evidence, and the ever-increasing time it takes referees to produce their reports.

Graduate students must be trained and socialized to become good reviewers. Reviewers must learn and accept the role of general reader.

Could the peer review of the future resemble collaborative blogging

"democratic production of knowledge."

Its ethics and values hold central:

Relationship-building, reciprocity, and mutual benefit Participation, transparency, and reflection Innovation, integration, and dialogue Cultural diversity and social equality In coming to these forms of “applied” scholarship, humanities scholars have emphasized the way that culture in its many forms mediates interactions, development, and knowledge.

Publicly-engaged scholarship yields diverse artifacts, informing knowledge in multiple domains Policy and planning recommendations Museum exhibitions and public performances New curricula for courses or workshops Books and journal articles As consequence, public scholarship also yields new connections among disciplines, communities, and sectors. 

The Center for Public Scholarship seeks to promote free inquiry and public discussion, bringing the best scholarship in and outside the academy to bear on the critical and contested issues of our times.

While there is variation in current terminology (public scholarship, scholarship of engagement, community-engaged scholarship), engaged scholarship is defined by the collaboration between academics and individuals outside the academy - knowledge professionals and the lay public (local, regional/state, national, global) - for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity.                                                                                                                                            (NERCHE, n.d.)

The Journal of Public Scholarship in Higher Education aims to advance the status and prospects for publicly engaged teaching and research in the academy by showcasing the new disciplinary and/or pedagogical knowledge generated by engagement with the community.

June 9, 2006

That is the basic purpose of a new national effort spearheaded by Im

By Public Scholarship we mean bringing the best thinking and research to bear on the most critical issues facing society today.  Public Scholarship also entails a commitment to publishing letters, op-eds, and articles in newspapers, magazines, websites, blogs, and other forms of social media to raise awareness about these issues, to stimulate broad discussion, and to explore the role timely scholarship can play in addressing our most challenging problems. Public scholars strive to communicate simply and clearly to a wide audience, and therefore adopt a journalistic style in which sentences are crisp, paragraphs are brief, and jargon is employed sparingly. While public scholars embrace theory and sophisticated research approaches, they particularly seek to translate theory into practice and to use research findings to shed compelling light on the causes and the effects of pressing social issues. Public scholars also recognize that social issues which affect the broadest range of people matter most. Consequently, issues of poverty, hunger, access to education and healthcare, concerns about the rights of immigrants and other marginalized groups, as well as efforts to ensure public safety and promote social well-being are social priorities that deserve unusually extensive coverage. Public Scholarship is a means by which teachers and scholars can promote the public good, and we encourage faculty, staff, and students to find engaging and innovative ways to communicate with a broader public. We, in the Center for Leadership and Engagement, are pleased to support these efforts and to provide outlets on our website for sharing a variety of perspectives.

Doing academia in public view is both a powerful tool and a potentially powerful weapon.

There is no buffer in public writing.

And for many readers the allure of attacking the writer instead of the work is too seductive to deny. That can be a shock when you are accustomed to the civil discourse, no matter how thin or banal, that governs academic critique.

The author’s manuscript after eligibility check (step 1) made by the journal’s editors enters the traditional double blind peer review (step 2). Articles accepted for publication are then available for an open comment peer review (step 3) for a given period (at least 30 days) during which the journal’s editors solicit scholars in the field to post comments.  All registered users to the journals are therefore able to comment on and to discuss the accepted articles published in pre-print format. This part of the peer review process is moderated by the journals editors. Authors are able to revise their articles for final publication in the light of both forms of review (double blind and open).

One of the forms of open access . . . consists in the creation and use of repositories for research writing: databases, typically run by university libraries, into which ‘pre-prints’ (basically, manuscripts) of journal articles may be uploaded for free download by anyone with access to the internet. This has recently become known as ‘green’ open access

gold’ open access, which keeps journals open by moving the burden of payment from the reader to the writer