Peer Review


Part of peer review has to do with getting valuable feedback from colleagues in the field as a way to help with the writing. Good peer review can make the piece better. Of course, peer review also serves as a way to help assure readers that what they receive in the journal has been vetted somewhat and is more likely to be worth their time. Finally, peer review helps the editor who is constrained by the economy of print--a journal can only hold so much because it can only afford to charge so much to subscribers. We aren't under the same economic constraints, but we do have a responsibility to scholarship.

We'd like to place the emphasis in peer review on valuable feedback. To that end, we will ask everyone who is submitting an essay to visit other essays which have been submitted and to take the time to offer the authors some valuable feedback. For those working in hyper formats this feedback can and probably should include tips on coding and arrangement of links, as well as on the argument being made, especially since in hyper-essays the 'shape' of the argument--its hyper architecture--plays a more pronounced role in the 'shape' and meaning of the argument. We will also find outside readers. Since space is not a consideration, we will not view this process as one where we must eliminate essays because we can only print so many. There is no competition for space. We believe then that we can make the peer review process more collegial and less censorious, that writers as well as editors and readers can review one another's work.

It's quite possible that such review might lead to collaboration, or the building in of cross referencing links, or adding a link and node to one's own essay which comments upon the work of another contributor.

Return to Rhetnet CFP.

KAIROS

Kairos 1.1 (Spring 1996): News