Peer reviewing – a responsibility and a power of the university?
or
a private affair between the individual researcher and the publishing houses?
By
Bård Smedsrød
Vascular Biology Research Group
Dep Medical Biology
University of Tromsø
Journal coordinated peer reviewing, a hall mark of scholarly publishing, is also a pivotal part of other central academic processes, such as evaluation of research grant applications, and ranking of applicants for faculty/research positions. Hence, journal coordinated peer reviewing mother of academic peer reviewing. On this background it is astonishing that universities and other public R&D institutions take virtually no interest in the management and policy shaping of this corner stone of scholarly publishing.
The universities ought to become more aware of the pivotal role of the peer reviewing task carried out by their professors and researchers. Peer reviewing should be viewed as a partial, in kind payment from the institutions involved to the journal publishers. The advantages of this are manifold: i) negotiating power that may lead to easier and quicker implementation of open access publishing and/or ii) reducing costs, in particular the unjustifiably high subscription and licensing rates set by the big commercial publishing houses; iii) better control of how scientific staff use their time for the good of the university; iv) managing a unified policy shaping of peer reviewing, reducing fraud and flaws. This will in turn increase quality of the research produced by the universities.
By taking control of and organizing peer reviewing universities would obtain a means to regain the academic freedom that was lost when commercial enterprises took over the society driven journals, introducing heavy paywalls. And it may facilitate a development towards an open science regime.
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