Peerless

I surface from grading yet again to note an epidemic of essays proposing alternatives to peer review.  (Of course, since I just agreed to referee another article yesterday, I may have peer reviewing on the mind.)  This one, I fear, has me scratching my head a bit.  Putting to one side the objection made by the commenters--namely, that most professional societies are journal publishers themselves, and are therefore not likely to want to do peer review for all their competition--it's not clear to me that this redistributes labor in any significant way.   It's not as though there will be a panel of five academics on Mount Olympus who handle all peer reviewing tasks, which would be a full-time job; instead, the "professional societies" handing out their "imprimatur" (this sounds awfully Catholic) would be handing out work to...those academics who already do peer reviewing anyway.  On what other "small pool of academics" will professional societies draw, besides the same group currently reviewing for publishers?  (The author also seems more upbeat about academic community than I am: I don't imagine that running peer review through professional societies will make reviewers feel like they're doing "a genuine service to their colleagues.") Moreover, as someone at a small regional comprehensive that is permanently short of funds, I balked at this proposal: "This might be supported by fees that authors pay for each work they submit for review (perhaps subsidized by each author’s university) or, preferably, by increased dues across the board, with membership in the organization a necessary precondition for using the review system."  First of all, most universities outside the hallowed halls of R1s cannot possibly pony up sufficient $ to make this workable across, say, the humanities faculty, even if they did eliminate all of their Assistant to the Associate Vice Provosts.  Second, many academics off and even on the tenure track would not be able to pay for peer review; graduate students and adjuncts in particular would be badly disadvantaged by a fee system, which would have the unfortunate side effect of reinforcing institutional privilege.  Third, and by the same token, graduate students and adjuncts would be equally disadvantaged by hiking membership dues, just as they would by making membership a prerequisite for review.  This approach would shut a lot of people out of the process, not help them into it.