Blog-Based Peer Review (2008)
with Ben Vershbow, Jeremy Douglass, and Doug Sery
An experiment in open peer review
About Blog-Based Peer Review
At the same time that the manuscript for Expressive Processing went through anonymous, press-solicited peer review, it also became the first book to go through a new, experimental type of peer review. This "blog-based" peer review placed a section of text online at a popular academic blog each weekday, with software enabling paragraph-level review and discussion. I engaged in discussion of reader comments nearly every day from late January to late March 2008. The results identified the same major issues as found in the press-solicited reviews, engaged a much broader group in peer review (and academic publishing), and identified many more necessary revisions for the book (flowing from wide, interdisciplinary expertise and sustained discussion).
The experiment was covered in the press (e.g., Ars Technica, Computerworld, The Chronicle of Higher Education) and discussed in academic journals (e.g., Cinema Journal, Computers and Composition, portal: Libraries and the Academy).
