Trust Issues

Science in the Open by Cameron Neylon

Considering the continuous mini-discussions we've been having on promoting openess in information sharing and pondering on ways we can improve the peer review process, I found that this particular blog hit the spot in presenting a possible method that resolves some of the nagging issues that dog the peer review process.

In scholarly publishing, peer review has long been a way for scholars to "discuss" the findings of an article and present their own viewpoint concerning the subject at hand. It is also a way to build academic credit within the scholarly world. Neylon, the author of the blog, points out that in a world that is pushing for increasing transparency and trustworthiness of information, the traditional model of peer review flies in the face of modernity. The traditional peer review method is 1) expensive 2) any value delivered through peer review is lost because the reviews are presented at the end of the publication process and the user is not privy to any of the factors that the reviewers used to come to their conclusions. In short, the closed-off environment of the peer review process does not lend itself to trustworthiness because there is no way for the users to assess the quality of the peer review. So, something needs to be done to address this problem...

Even though people have experimented with open peer review, post publication commentary, and voting mechanisms, there is yet a solution that truly fulfills all academic standards and requirements to garner credit.

Neylon proposes that we look to Wikipedia for our solution (I knew it! Wikipedia is the answer to everything!). Even though Wikipedia is a open encyclopedia that allows just about anyone to author entries in whichever way they feel fit and might be questionable in terms of trustworthiness, it still is an easily and widely known source of information that people go to when looking things up. Many people counter that Wikipedia is not trustworthy and there's really no way assess the quality of the articles written. However, a group called "Mashable" is working on developing a way to mark up and color the text of Wikipedia to measure a contributor's trustworthiness. If an article remains static and unedited, thus indicating that people find no argument about said information presented thereby and is largely correct. The contributor then garners "points" or credit to his/her trustworthiness. Neylon considers this a positive move because it provides extra value and information for the users and editors in an easy manner and makes the peer review process more transparent and open.

I thought that this was a great way to show how some movers and shakers are trying to upend the scholarly publishing tradition in a new way and to me, this method is an innovitave way to address openess and transparency and issues of trust.