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