Summary Validating new knowledge

VALIDATING NEW KNOWLEDGE
THE ROLE OF PEER REVIEW
 PEER REVIEW (AKA refereeing) = the assessment of scientific work
by others who are experts in the same field (peers).
 The intention of peer reviewing is to ensure that any research
conducted + published is of high quality.
 Peer reviewers are usually unpaid.
 There are usually a number of reviewers for each article.
 Their task is to report on the quality of the research + then their
views are considered by a peer review panel.
 The Parliamentary Office of Science + Technology suggests that
peer review serves 3 main purposes:

1) ALLOCATION OF RESEARCH FUNDING –
 Research is paid for by various government + charitable
organisations.
 They have a duty to spend their money responsibly so require
reviews to enable them to decide which research is likely to be
worthwhile.

2) PUBLICATION OF RESEARCH IN SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS +
BOOKS –
 Scientific or scholarly journals provide scientists with the
opportunity to share the results of their research.
 The peer review process prevents incorrect/faulty data entering the
public domain.

3) ASSESSING THE RESEARCH RATING OF UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENTS –
 All university science departments are expected to conduct research
+ this is assessed in terms of quality.
 Future funding for the department depends on receiving good
ratings from peer review.


PEER REVIEW + THE INTERNET

 The volume of information available on the internet means new
solutions are needed in order to maintain the quality of information.
 Scientific information is available in numerous online blogs, online
journals + Wikipedia.
 To a large extent these sources of information are policed by the
‘wisdom of crowds’ approach – readers decide whether or not it is
valid + post comments/edit entries accordingly.