The Rhetorical Ecology of Peer Review: Changes in the Digital Age

Use the link to access the full text article published in the open access, peer reviewed journal Engaging Cultures and Voices: The Journal of English Learning through Media. The article opens as follows: “Not long after Harvard announced its support of an open access (OA), web-based repository for academic publications, a number of newspapers around the U.S. ran alarmist headlines bemoaning the death of peer review, as if open access publication would undermine the celebrated process of reviewing academic work by others in the same field. It is peer review that sets the gold standard for academic publication for most researchers, including writing scholars, and it has been celebrated as a vetting process, as a part of academic initiation and professionalization, and as a feedback mechanism that generally leads to improved writing. Although peer review of scholarly publications is not dying and some of the fear-mongering may be driven by profit-conscious publishers, peer review practices are indeed changing in the digital age, and the changes have implications for us as teachers of writing. We need to take note of the ways in which the revolution in digital publishing has altered the landscape of peer review, the tools for communal witnessing, and our notions of audience, text, and possibly of science and other bodies of knowledge.”