Public Philosophy

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.

Could the peer review of the future resemble collaborative blogging

"democratic production of knowledge."

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.

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

Acceptance was the norm, not the exception

accepted by journals hosted by industry titans Sage and Elsevier

by journals published by prestigious academic institutions such as Kobe University in Japan.

a short list of some of the many OA models

Freely available journal paid for by author publication charges

Free available journal with no APCs, paid for by institution or funding agency grant.