Peer-review survey

Interesting report from the Publishing Research Consortium about researchers' opinions on the current peer review system. Not sure how much of this is talked about outside the sciences, but within them, there's a vocal movement towards making everything open review and open access. This report takes the wind out of that for the moment. From the Scope KnowledgeSpeak daily news:

Most researchers prefer existing peer review systems, says PRC study - 30 Jan 2008 The Publishing Research Consortium (PRC) has published a new study titled 'Peer Review in Scholarly Journals - perspective of the scholarly community'. According to the study, most researchers are not in favour of changing the current system of peer review for journal articles, as it is believed to help improve scientific communications and increase the overall quality of published papers. Alternatives such as 'open peer review' (where papers are available for public comment prior to publication) were not popular in the new study, which covered over 3,000 senior authors, reviewers and editors from around the world. However, some were interested in post-publication review, where a published paper is opened up for public comment, as a useful supplement to, but not a replacement for, traditional peer review.

Researchers did, however, prefer double-blind review (where both reviewers and authors are unaware of each other's identity) to the currently prevalent single-blind system (where only the reviewer is anonymous). Double-blind review is seen as a way to improve both objectivity and fairness. A majority of reviewers and editors also said it would be desirable to be able to review authors' data as part of peer review.

While the majority of respondents saw peer review as an effective filter for research, some did not think it was effective at detecting plagiarism, fraud or misconduct. The report, by Mark Ware Consulting, also underscored that the most productive reviewers are currently overworked - an area that may need further monitoring and analysis.

The Publishing Research Consortium is a group of associations and publishers, which supports global research into scholarly communication in order to enable evidence-based discussion. The Consortium seeks to promote an understanding of the role of publishing and its impact on
research and teaching.

Link to full report.

The Narrow By Call Number Paradox

Based on some focus group data and anecdotal reference desk experience, it seems that one of the common ways that people use the library catalog is as a tool for finding a section of the library where they can browse for clusters of relevant books on their topic. The Endeca catalog has a feature that should, in theory, help people with this exact goal. You can do a keyword search, and then look at the call number breakdown above your search results to see which call numbers have the largest cluster(s) of hits.

The strange thing is that focus group data and anecdotal experiences also seem to indicate that users don’t understand what’s going on with the call number refinement as it currently exists. They do click on it. But they often can’t seem to articulate what it does or correctly differentiate it from the ‘Subject: Topic’ refinement on the left side of the screen.

So we (the Endeca Product Team) thought it couldn’t hurt to try tinkering with the label in hopes of clarifying this feature. We’d like to let users know that it can help them determine which floor (or floors) to go to in order to browse shelves for materials on their topic.

The old label was:
Narrow By Call Number Range

The new label we are trying is:
Browse By Call Number Location

We are not sure how to determine if this label change is helpful. If you have any thoughts about this label change, ideas for assessing its effectiveness, or suggestions for a better label, please let me know.

- Cindy