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Article published In: The dynamics of academic knowledge production: Text histories and text trajectories
Edited by Theresa Lillis and Mary Jane Curry
[Journal of English for Research Publication Purposes 3:1] 2022
► pp. 29–50

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Opening up the peer review process

Evaluation and alignment in research paper trajectories

 | University of Helsinki, Finland
Published online: 2 June 2022
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jerpp.21025.hyn
Abstract
Many science journals have begun either to provide authors with the opportunity to publish peer review reports alongside their published article or to use a form of interactive open access peer review, which means that the review process is made public from the start. However, because of the traditionally occluded nature of peer reviewing, much applied linguistics research on the topic has focused on corpora of individual reviews rather than the negotiation process between the author(s), reviewers, and editors that peer reviewing essentially entails. In this paper, the focus is on this negotiation process. The data are drawn from an open access journal in geosciences. They consist of review histories of three research papers with clusters of peer review reports, short comments, author replies, and editor decision letters. These clusters have been analysed chronologically in relation to one another, considering their impact and the evaluating authorities evoked in the process. The findings show that the brokers paid attention to both study- and text-related aspects in their evaluations, thus highlighting brokering as an activity related to both knowledge and text. Reviewer authority was recognised by the authors and editors alike, but the authors were also found to negotiate their divergent positions.
Tiivistelmä
Monet tieteelliset lehdet ovat alkaneet tarjota kirjoittajille mahdollisuutta julkaista käsikirjoituksen referee-lausunnot julkaistun artikkelin rinnalla tai ovat ottaneet käyttöön avoimen vuorovaikutteisen vertaisarvioinnin muotoja, mikä tekee koko vertaisarviointiprosessista julkisen. Vertaisarviointi on perinteisesti ollut suljettua toimintaa, mikä on vaikuttanut siihen, että soveltavan kielentutkimuksen tutkimukset aiheesta ovat keskittyneet enemmän erillisistä referee-lausunnoista koostettuihin korpuksiin kuin kirjoittajien, vertaisarvioijien ja lehden toimittajien väliseen neuvotteluun. Tässä artikkelissa keskityn nimenomaan tähän neuvotteluprosessiin, mistä vertaisarvioinnissa varsinaisesti onkin kyse. Aineistoni on kerätty avoimesti saatavilla olevasta geotieteellisestä lehdestä, ja se koostuu kolmen tieteellisen artikkelin vertaisarviointihistorioista eli toisiinsa liittyvistä referee-lausunnoista, lyhyistä kommenteista, kirjoittajien vastauksista ja lehden toimittajien päätöskirjeistä. Analysoin tekstiketjujen tekstejä aikajärjestyksessä suhteessa toisiinsa; miten ne vaikuttavat toisiinsa ja millaisiin normatiivisiin auktoriteetteihin niissä viitataan. Tulokset osoittavat, että arvioijat puuttuivat sekä tutkimuksellisiin että tekstitason ilmiöihin. Vertaisarviointi näyttäytyy siis vahvasti sekä tietoon että tekstiin liittyvänä aktivititeettina. Sekä kirjoittajat että lehden toimittajat tunnustivat arvioijien auktoriteetin, mutta kirjoittajat myös neuvottelivat vaihtoehtoisista näkökulmista.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Text histories of peer reviewing
  • 3.Data and methods
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Reviewer, commenter and editor evaluations: Types, evaluating authorities and justifications
    • 4.2Author alignments and scaling practices in the negotiation processes
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Ervens, Barbara, Ken S. Carslaw, Thomas Koop & Ulrich Pöschl
2025. Review of interactive open-access publishing with community-based open peer review for improved scientific discourse and quality assurance. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 25:20 ► pp. 13903 ff. DOI logo
Lin, Yuting
2024. We agree completely with the reviewer, but … ”: Stance in author rebuttal letters for journal manuscript reviews. English for Specific Purposes 73 ► pp. 159 ff. DOI logo

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