phoebe ayers wrote:
Of course, what's interesting and troubling for us
is that this is a
respected publisher who apparently did all the normal things in
setting up an academic journal that is typical of the sort of thing
Wikipedia is supposed to use as a "reliable source." But (naturally, I
suppose) the academic publishing process is as open to failure as any
other publishing or reporting process.* And I can't help but think
that in a more open process -- an open access journal, say, or even
Wikipedia -- this would not have gone on for so long or played out in
the same way.
True, though I think the biggest (and long-standing) problem has
actually been books, which in many fields (especially in the humanities)
are both the canonical "reliable source", and hugely problematic as
sources. Academic presses have a peer-review process, but it isn't
intended to make sure the book is representative of consensus in the
field, unbiased, or otherwise a good source for writing an encyclopedia
article. It's more of a minimal level of reviewing to ensure that the
author is making a legitimate contribution to the academic debate, not
plagiarizing anyone, etc.---even if the result is a highly polemical
book contrary to consensus and accepted by nearly nobody, it may be
worth publishing as a contribution to the overall discussion, especially
if the author is already well known.
This is all fine if books are read with full knowledge of their status
in the field---that they represent the possibly idiosyncratic view of
one particular writer. But if their claims are then entered into
Wikipedia articles, with a citation to the book to justify them, that's
more of a problem. This isn't as rare as people might think either; I'd
say the *majority* of academic-press books make at least one significant
claim that is controversial in its field, often without even admitting
that the claim is controversial.
-Mark