The Church and Peer Review: Was ‘Peer’ Review Fairer, More Honest Then Than Now?

Abstract

Since the 16 th Century, seeking approval for one's work has required everything from capturing classic patronage to attaining academic standards. The process of a work's review has ranged widely from having an "insider's track," to seeing one's work rejected for anything but obvious or defensible reasons. What is sought by the academy has always been a method to identify the works that exhibit validity and reliability, perhaps best described as "sound" in design and execution. At its best, peer review is not bound to the status quo, but rather by progress, exhibited either as reaffirmation of an existing thesis, or introduction of a new idea grounded in solid methods and reasoning. However, what drives the individual academic to create may not match the responsibilities of the academic gatekeepers, whose duties revolve around assuring that what is created is based on best practices. The scientist/scholar wishes to push the boundaries, discover the possible causes for X. The reviewers wish to protect the academic community from bad ideas, unreliable methods, and unsound theories. One group, therefore, is inherently liberal in its thinking, while the latter is routinely more conservative. The argument for the past twenty to thirty years is that the goals of peer reviewsound, reliable, reproducible research-are noble, but the method of application of academic oversight is corrupt, erroneous, and often no better than chance in its outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to draw a comparison to a time of peer review rarely examined, that being the method applied prior to the 17th Century, to the current system The Church and Peer Review: Was "Peer" Review Fairer, More Honest Then Than Now? 2 Journal of Scholarly Publishing, December 2012 in place today and, in doing so, offering that the similarities may provide some counsel to the development of a new form of peer review.

Investigating journal peer review as scientific object of study: unabridged version – Part I

“…The main goal of this paper is to construct journal peer review as a scientific object of study based on historical research into its shaping, going back to the twelfth century at the start of universities. The paper draws from, and contributes to, historical scholarship on peer review (Gould, 2012(Gould, , 2013Rip 1985;Spier, 2002) and journal peer review scholarship more generally (Hirschauer, 2010;Zuckerman and Merton, 1973;Biagioli, 2002). The main argument is that historical social conditions, dynamics, processes, and contexts that (re)structured the ensembles of practices, meanings, and relations that led to journal peer review are mostly neglected in existing scholarship.…”

“…In contrast, historical research gives a glimpse into early journals that from their start held to account to sacred texts, the Church, and the State and maintained a legal obligation to perform censorship on scientific texts (Biagioli, 2002;Gould, 2012Gould, , 2013Johns, 1998). Gould brought attention to potential roots of peer review in the early twelfth century at the start of inquisition and into censorship at the beginning of the printing press where scholarly inquisitors and censors performed 'peer' review (Gould, 2013).…”

All that glitters is not gold: The shaping of contemporary journal peer review at scientific and medical journals

“…The paper also complements work on the historical shaping of journal peer review (Gaudet, 2014b;Gould, 2012Gould, , 2013 by focusing on contemporary shaping starting roughly at the end of the twentieth century through to the early teens of the twenty-first century.…”

“…In espousing such a rational theory for journal peer review, researchers implicitly take the object as selfevident and as having started at the first journals in 1665 without tending to its shaping (i.e., Bornmann et al, 2010;Campanario, 2009;Godlee, 2002;see history in Johns 1998see history in Johns , 2000. This assumes journal peer review as disembodied from the social conditions, the dynamics, the processes, and the contexts that contributed to its historical shaping (Gaudet, 2014b;Gould, 2013) and that contribute to its contemporary shaping.…”

An end to ‘God-like’ scientific knowledge? How non-anonymous referees and open review alter meanings for scientific knowledge

“…The paper is also not an analysis of how these practices and relations came to be, or were and continue to be shaped in historical and contemporary contexts. I will draw from, but not dwell on, historical (Gould, 2012(Gould, , 2013Gaudet, 2014b;2014c;2014d) and contemporary (Guédon, 2001;Gaudet, 2014e) shaping for journal peer review. Rather, the paper focuses on practices and relations for referee anonymity and openness of access to review documents and how these help shape meaning for scientific knowledge.…”