[WikiEN-l] So much for books as reliable references!

[Guettarda]

On 2/2/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
> In many fields the peer-review of even scholarly books is not all that
> high.  In the sciences, journal articles hold much more weight than
> books, because there's a perception that anybody can get a book published.
>
> -Mark


In my experience it hasn't been so much that "anyone can get a book
published" (in sciences, unlike humanities, books are required for tenure)
but rather that books are an outlet for older, established people to advance
their pet theories.  Peer review is not only much gentler on books than on
journal articles, it's also harder to find someone willing to give that sort
of a level of review to a book because it's so much longer a work

Ian