Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 16, No. 652.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
[1] From: JoDI Announcements <jodi@ecs.soton.ac.uk> (37)
Subject: JoDI: new issue (V4i1, April 2003)
[2] From: Gerry Mckiernan <gerrymck@IASTATE.EDU> (42)
Subject: REPORT: Little Evidence for Effectiveness of
Scientific Reer Review
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 01 May 2003 06:46:17 +0100
From: JoDI Announcements <jodi@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Subject: JoDI: new issue (V4i1, April 2003)
A NEW ISSUE OF THE JOURNAL OF DIGITAL INFORMATION
(Volume 4, issue 1, April 2003)
Taking a break from the recent run of JoDI special topic issues, we are
pleased to present a varied collection of papers from leading authors,
highlighting the quality and diversity of JoDI themes. Also, the issue
includes an editorial reflecting on the impact of JoDI papers.
M. Doerr, J. Hunter, C. Lagoze
Towards a Core Ontology for Information Integration
http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v04/i01/Doerr/
S. Jones, G. Paynter
An Evaluation of Document Keyphrase Sets
http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v04/i01/Jones/
J. Kalbach, T. Bosenick
Web Page Layout: A Comparison Between Left- and Right-justified Site
Navigation Menus
http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v04/i01/Kalbach/
J. Levitt
Macro Approaches to Digital Searching and Secondary Research
http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v04/i01/Levitt/
R. Losee
Adaptive User-Centered Organization of Tabular Data for Display
http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v04/i01/Losee/
G. Marchionini, B. Brunk
Towards a General Relation Browser: A GUI for Information Architects
http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v04/i01/Marchionini/
From the editorial:
"One of the indicators of papers, themes and issues that appeal to users
are the journal's Web logs - an intriguing feature is how quickly the logs
reflect the most popular papers in an issue. Higher initial downloads are
typically sustained over longer periods. Good examples of this are the
papers that were downloaded most in the year from February 2002 to January
2003 ..."
http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/sec.php3?content=editors
The next issue of JoDI (V4i2) will focus on
Economic Factors of Managing Digital Content and Establishing Digital
Libraries
----[2]------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Thu, 01 May 2003 06:48:26 +0100 From: Gerry Mckiernan <gerrymck@IASTATE.EDU> Subject: REPORT: Little Evidence for Effectiveness of Scientific Reer Review
Little Evidence for Effectiveness of Scientific Peer Review by Caroline White / BMJ 2003;326:241 ( 1 February ) [http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7383/241/a ]
DateLine: London
Despite its widespread use and costs, little hard evidence exists that peer review improves the quality of published biomedical research, concludes a systematic review from the international Cochrane Collaboration.
[ http://bmj.com/cgi/reprint/326/7383/241/a.pdf ]
Yet the system, which has been used for at least 200 years, has only recently come under scrutiny, with its assumptions about fairness and objectivity rarely tested, say the review authors. With few exceptions, journal editors-and clinicians-around the world continue to see it as the hallmark of serious scientific endeavour. Published last week, the review is the third in a series from the Cochrane Collaboration Methods Group. ...
Only the latter escapes a drubbing, with the reviewers concluding that technical editing does improve the readability, accuracy, and overall quality of published research.The Cochrane reviewers based their findings on 21 studies of the peer review process from an original trawl of only 135.
[snip]
On the basis of the current evidence, "the practice of peer review is based on faith in its effects, rather than on facts," state the authors, who call forlarge, government funded research programmes to test the effectiveness of the system and investigate possible alternatives. "As the information revolution gathers pace, an empirically proven method of quality assurance is of paramount importance," they contend. Professor Tom Jefferson, who led the Cochrane review, suggested that further research might prove that peer review, or an evolved form of it, worked. At the very least, it needed to be more open and accountable. But he said that there had never even been any consensus on its aims and that it would be more appropriate to refer to it as "competitive review."
[snip]
REPORT FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE
Editorial peer-review for improving the quality of reports of biomedical studies
[ http://www.update-software.com/Cochrane/MR000016.pdf ]
Jefferson TO, Alderson P, Davidoff F, Wager E
This is a reprint of a Cochrane methodology review, prepared and maintained by the Cochrane Collaboration and published in The Cochrane Library 2003, Issue 1
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