Some Thoughts on Peer Review and Altmetrics | Partially Attended
An interesting take on my abstract for the upcoming altmetrics12 workshop from Ian Mulvaney – Head of Technology for a neat new publishing endeavor in the UK called eLifeSciences.
…after reading the abstract my take home message from it would be something along the lines of “don’t replace peer review with altmetrics because you will just replace one bias with another, and at least with peer review the bias is contained within the academic community”
I personally don’t see any conflict between altmetrics and peer review. If anything, in a nutshell, I believe that altmetrics can help to create an augmented peer review, placing better information into the hands of those in the community who are making judgements on impact, on likelihood of future productivity, on who should get money.
To the latter part: agreed! Peer review and altmetrics strike me as potentially complementary. Balance, I think, is the key, because there is a significant potential for either one to induce undesirable steering effects within the research community and upon the research efforts of scholars. The nascence of altmetrics strikes me as an opportunity to engage the deeper questions that these tools raise when compared/contrasted with peer review; questions such as who counts as a peer? Who has the authority to decide this question, and who ought to participate in such a decision? What do we mean by ‘impact,’ and what kind of impact are we looking for?
I’ve posted a more detailed response in the comments to Mulvaney’s post, and commenting is also available here for each of the abstracts accepted for the workshop – the goal being to converse with a wider audience that just those able to attend the workshop. I welcome your input!