Peer Review
Peer review is a central concept for most academic publishing; other scholars in a field must find a work sufficiently high in quality for it to merit publication. The process also guards against plagiarism.
Failures in peer review are sometimes scandalous. The Bogdanov Affair in theoretical physics is one example. The Sokal Affair is another, though this controversy also involved many other issues.
Rena Steinzor wrote:
Perhaps the most widely recognized failing of peer review is its inability to ensure the identification of high-quality work. The list of important scientific papers that were initially rejected by peer-reviewed journals goes back at least as far as the editor of Philosophical Transaction's 1796 rejection of Edward Jenner's report of the first vaccination against smallpox.Read more about this topic: Academic Publishing
Famous quotes containing the words peer and/or review:
“Research shows clearly that parents who have modeled nurturant, reassuring responses to infants’ fears and distress by soothing words and stroking gentleness have toddlers who already can stroke a crying child’s hair. Toddlers whose special adults model kindliness will even pick up a cookie dropped from a peer’s high chair and return it to the crying peer rather than eat it themselves!”
—Alice Sterling Honig (20th century)
“As I review my life, I feel I must have missed the point, either then or now.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)