[Cz-editcouncil] peer-review and relevance to Citizendium

Fri Apr 27 09:46:54 CDT 2007

Dear all,

Just a quick note of extreme disagreement on peer review. My own experience, 
coupled with that of many colleagues, is that the process is now massively 
flawed -- at least in the case of social sciences. When I was Editor of a 
significant journal, I was also under great pressure to accept articles 
without proper refereeing, although the publisher would vehemently deny this 
in public. I suppose that very popular journals can afford to reject >90%, 
but even these have problems with finding competent referees for this 
process to work properly.

I mention this only because it would be silly for Citizendium to try to live 
up to a standard which is professed but not adhered to by academic journals.

Martin Baldwin-Edwards

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John R Moffett" <drjohn at factinista.org>
To: "'The Citizendium Editorial Council'" 
<cz-editcouncil at voltaire.citizendium.org>
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 2:03 PM
Subject: Re: [Cz-editcouncil] Article deletion question

> Hello All,
>
> The general rule for peer-reviewed science journals is that a minimum of 
> 2,
> and preferably 3 editors from the field review the article, and make 1 of 
> 3
> recommendations: accept, accept with modifications, or reject. Reject 
> means
> that the article is hopelessly flawed. Accept with modifications means 
> that
> there are significant problems or areas that need attention and these 
> issues
> need to be pointed out by the editors who review the article. The author 
> is
> then given time to make appropriate changes before resubmission. The 
> article
> is then re-reviewed by the editors who then give a recommendation to 
> accept
> or reject.
>
> Rejected articles are not archived or kept anywhere. But keep in mind that
> many very good articles (which were eventually published elsewhere) have
> been rejected by this process, which is only as good as the reviewers.
>
> John M.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cz-editcouncil-bounces at voltaire.citizendium.org
> [mailto:cz-editcouncil-bounces at voltaire.citizendium.org] On Behalf Of 
> David
> Goodman
> Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 3:54 AM
> To: The Citizendium Editorial Council
> Subject: Re: [Cz-editcouncil] Article deletion question
>
> As a layman, relying of the format  of the article and the use and nature 
> of
> the references as much as the arguments, it seems obvious that the article
> is advocacy, rather than encyclopedic--and even by Wikipedia standards 
> would
> probably be nominated for deletion as an essay.
>
> Holding it for future work by those qualified seems an obvious temporary
> solution. At Wikipedia, any one of a number of people would undoubtedly
> start editing to improve it, but in a non-systematic way.
> We should wait for people prepared to do it properly.
>
> But it is possible that the author might be prepared to revise the article
> in the light of the unanimous criticism that it is receiving, and in all
> fairness, that should be tried first. Even if it needs substantial 
> rewriting
> after that, there will be a better starting point. And we might get better
> future work from the author involved.
>
> DavidGoodman
>
>
> On 4/27/07, Nguyen Anh (DAM) <Anh.Nguyen at dexia-am.com> wrote:
>> Dear All,
>>
>> As we all know, the difference between Citizendium and Wikipedia is to
>> have a reliable encyclopedia, with an "expert oversight". In this
>> precise case, it seems obvious that the "Binary economics" has its
>> place on Wikipedia, but not here as there is much controversy on that
> subject.
>>
>> I perfectly agreed that as, up to now, there is no large acceptance of
>> that theory in the Economics field, measured by the number of articles
>> published in peer-reviewed journals.  Futhermore, Citizendium should
>> not be the place where everyone is coming with his own theory, but the
>> place where al accepted theory is presented.
>>
>> So, I do agree that this article should be kept in archives and not be
>> seen by all users. Someone belonging to the Econ Group (I am from...
>> But more from the finance side.. sorry) should try to write a short
>> and neutral article on it.
>>
>> Anh
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: cz-editcouncil-bounces at mail.citizendium.org
>> [mailto:cz-editcouncil-bounces at mail.citizendium.org] On Behalf Of
>> Larry Sanger
>> Sent: 27 April 2007 00:33
>> To: 'The Citizendium Editorial Council'
>> Subject: [Cz-editcouncil] Article deletion question
>>
>> Dear Editorial Council members,
>>
>> I'm going to try to have something like a kick-off mail in your box
>> this evening, but I wanted to get your input on something in the 
>> meantime.
>>
>> We have a shortage of active Economics editors.  I asked several who
>> are involved to comment on this article, which struck me as being
>> quite
>> biased:
>>
>> http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Binary_economics
>>
>> And we got a comment back, here:
>>
>> http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Talk:Binary_economics#Editorial_Opinion
>>
>> The opinion seems to me to entail that we should delete the article.
>> In particular, two items:
>>
>> (1) This comment is most important: "I do not think the current entry
>> can be revised to make a suitable entry for Citizendium."
>>
>> (2) The article "reads as promotional literature."
>>
>> Our rules at present state (see
>> http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Article_Deletion_Policy) that the
>> first two comments in particular are grounds for an *editor* to make a
>> decision to delete an article outright.
>>
>> So I would like to ask your opinion about a question of *process* here:
>> should we, in the absence of any other active economics editor
>> weighing in on the matter, rely on the opinion of a single editor to
>> delete an article on the above grounds?
>>
>> --Larry
>>
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>
>
> --
> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
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