Hi John,

I will second your proposal.

For a correct review of a paper, it is also very important to consider the
paradigmatic affiliations of the reviewers. It is not possible for a
positivist reviewer to understand a hermeneutic paper. It simply would not
make sense to him/her. Once I heard the editor of a respected peer-reviewed
journal saying that he never publishes research with a sample less than 15.
The intellectual idioms in the humanities and in the social sciences are so
different that research communication in
interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary fields like design resembles the story
of the tower of Babylon.

My solution is simple -- I talk to myself. But, on a serious note, John's
suggestion is very good -- we need encyclopedic people with broad views and
ability to understand different intellectual tradition rather than only one.

There is another solution as well. After the reviewer realizes that the
paper might be written from the position of a paradigm that he/she is not
very comfortable with, he/she should return that paper to the editor.
However, not with a "reject" note, but with a suggestion about the
paradigmatic area and other possible reviewers. In addition, the editor
should sent such a paper to a  special reviewer who can better identify the
tradition and suggest final reviewers (if he/she declines to review). The
editor should consider the recommendations only of a reviewer who
understands both the subject area and the intellectual tradition as well.

I  understand that all of you who are editors will ask me the simple
question: Do you know how much time and resources this will take? And how
the editors can know who is who and who understands something?

Regards,

Lubomir


At 07:33 AM 2/5/2004 +1100, John Broadbent wrote:
>Kari-Hans has an important point.  It may put the spotlight on the kinds
>of reviewers selected rather than the process per se.  I can imagine
>that for conferences with a narrow, specified purview it is OK to use
>specialist reviewers.  However, for conferences like FutureGround, for
>example, which are explicitly about futures, generalist reviewers may
>play a more important role.  Such individuals are more likely to have
>cross-disciplinary perspectives which can help in the assessment of 'out
>of the box' initiatives.
>
>Regards,
>John Broadbent
>
>Kari-Hans Kommonen wrote:
>
> > Dear Eduardo (and all)
> >
> > While I agree that blind refereeing and peer reviews are useful for
> > many things, to be effective and fair they depend on certain
> > conditions. I think that they tend to increase homogeneity rather
> > than embrace diversity.
> >
> > Sometimes it may be hard to find peers that can perform a fair
> > review, simply because the topic is not (yet? ever?) understood well,
> > or because there is a conflict between strands of thinking that
> > enters the review process.
> >
> > I was just listening to a lecture where Paul Kahn, a hypermedia
> > pioneer, told how the review process of the international hypertext
> > conference, which he was somehow part of, in early nineties rejected
> > Tim Berners-Lee's paper about the technologies that now form the
> > foundation of the WWW, the world's eventual hypertext system, because
> > the proposed solution was too simple and did not seem interesting to
> > the hypertext specialists.
> >
> > The 'establishment' in any field of life has in general a hard time
> > recognizing *important* different points of view, especially when,
> > and probably because, they can't be presented within the established
> > framework, using the usual language, or evaluated with sound and
> > reliable assessment method. The big problem is that since there are
> > also lots of *less important* different points of view, the
> > difference itself is not a useful indicator of significance.
> >
> > So if we want to achieve excellence also in recognizing important
> > concerns, ideas, and ways of thinking that fall outside of our radar
> > patterns, I think we need also alternate ways to find and define
> > excellence.
> >
> > best, kh
> >
> >
> > At 18:06 +0000 2.2.2004, Eduardo Corte-Real wrote:
> >
> >> For us, the scientific requirements of the international scientific
> >> community are just another culture in which we will blend in. I
> >> sympathise
> >> with your arguments mainly because is not difficult to understand the
> >> rules
> >> and play the game, especially if quality of teaching and research is at
> >> stake. And, as for conferences, I strongly suggest double blind
> >> refereeing.
> >> The international scientific community has this clear and
> >> straightforward
> >> condition: peer review for excellence, and even that we can dream of
> >> unethical behaviour is this system we can just enforce the ways to
> >> make it
> >> more fair and clear.
> >
>
>
>
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