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Abstract
Rhetorical scholars are faced with an ever increasing demand to publish, a demand unlikely to lessen as more people join the academy, and universities demand more output for tenure. Set amidst a clamor about the importance of the humanities, scholars must continually investigate scholarly practices. The unfortunate problem for these scholars hoping not only to publish often, but often times to publish quickly, is that rhetorical studies and related journals are guided by a system of peer review that may take if not months then years to see an article through to publication. While an article languishes in the peer review process, the article may lose its timeliness, and as some articles become bogged down in review other articles may be pushed to the side as workloads on reviewers worsen. Scholars have used these concerns to begin discussing a legitimate controversy about scholarship in rhetorical studies’ production and evaluation, and the utility of a peer review-only system. I argue the discipline should consider offering journals guided by the law review model’s student review system, not to replace peer review, but to augment it. My argument is based on two criticisms of peer review: its lack of timeliness and its maintenance of academic orthodoxy. The law review model does not suffer, to the same extent, from these significant short fallings, and is likely to benefit rhetorical scholars by providing increased avenues to publish cutting-edge research, graduate students’ improved enculturation, and by improving rhetorical scholarship’s timeliness and relevance.
Notes
1. Emily Ford, “Defining and Characterizing Open Peer Review: A Review of the Literature,” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 44 (2013): 312.
2. Brett Lunceford, “Must We All Be Rhetorical Historians? On Relevance and Timeliness in Rhetorical Scholarship,” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 1 (2011): 1.
3. See, for example, Rhetoric Review in 1995.
4. Barnett Baskerville, “Must We All Be Rhetorical Critics?, ”Quarterly Journal of Speech 63 (1977): 107–16.
5. James Darsey, “Must We All Be Rhetorical Theorists? An Anti-Democratic Inquiry,” Western Journal of Communication 58 (1994): 164–81.
6. Jim A. Kuypers, “Must We All Be Political Activists?,” American Communication Journal 4 (2000), http://www.acjournal.org/holdings/vol4/iss1/special/kuypers.htm (accessed April 12, 2014).
7. Lunceford, “Must We All Be Rhetorical Historians?”
8. See, for example, the forums in Rhetoric Review in 1995 and Communication Studies in 2003.
9. Carole Blair, Julie R. Brown, and Leslie A. Baxter, “Disciplining the Feminine,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 80 (1994): 383–409; James W. Chesebro, “How to Get Published,” Communication Quarterly 41 (1993): 373–82; Tullen E. Bach, Carole Blair, William L. Nothstine, and Anne L. Pym, “How to Read ‘How to Get Published’,” Communication Quarterly 44 (1996): 399–422; Roy Schwartzman, “Peer Review as the Enforcement of Disciplinary Orthodoxy,” Southern Communication Journal 63 (1997): 69–75.
10. Blair, Brown, and Baxter, “Disciplining the Feminine,” 389–95.
11. A “mainline” journal refers to the flagship journal of a law school including the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, UCLA Law Review, etc.
12. Nancy E. Dowd, “Asking the Man Question: Masculinities Analysis and Feminist Theory,” Harvard Journal of Law & Gender 33 (2010): 415–30; Nancy E. Dowd, “Masculinities and Feminist Legal Theory,” Wisconsin Journal of Law, Gender & Society 23 (2008): 202–48; Maria Drakopoulou, “The Ethic of Care, Female Subjectivity and Feminist Legal Scholarship,” Feminist Legal Studies 8 (2000): 199–226; Martha L. Fineman, “Feminist Theory and Law,” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 18 (1994): 349–68; Martha L. Fineman, “Challenging Law, Establishing Differences: The Future of Feminist Legal Scholarship,” Florida Law Review 42 (1990): 25–43.
13. Tullen E. Bach, Carole Blair, William L. Nothstine, and Anne L. Pym, “How to Read ‘How to Get Published’,” Communication Quarterly 44 (1996): 399–422.
14. Tullen E. Bach, Carole Blair, William L. Nothstine, and Anne L. Pym, “How to Read ‘How to Get Published’,” Communication Quarterly 44 (1996), 415.
15. Schwartzman, “Peer Review as the Enforcement of Disciplinary Orthodoxy,” 74.
16. Seth J. Schwartz and Byron L. Zamboanga, “The Peer-Review and Editorial System: Ways to Fix Something that Might Be Broken,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 4 (2009): 54–61; Joseph A. Raelin, “Refereeing the Game of Peer Review,” Academy of Management Learning and Education 7 (2008): 124–9; Kevin K. Kumashiro, “Thinking Collaboratively about the Peer-Review Process for Journal-Article Publication,” Harvard Educational Review 75 (2005): 257–66.
17. Daniel V. Dimitrova and Michael Bugeja, “Exploring the Use of Online Citations in an Online-only Journal: A Case Study of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication,” Electronic Review of Communication 19 (2009), http://www.cios.org/ejcpublic/019/1/019126.HTML; María José Luzón, “The Added Value Features of Online Scholarly Journals,” Journal of Technical Writing and Communication 37 (2007): 59–73; David J. Solomon, “Digital Distribution of Academic Journals and its Impact on Scholarly Communication: Looking Back After 20 Years,” Journal of Academic Librarianship 39 (2013): 23–28.
18. Julie Swenson, “Online Peer-Reviewed Journals Pose Risks, Problems to Society,” Daily Egyptian (Carbondale, IL), March 8, 2011, 3.
19. Thomas J. Roberts and Jennifer Shambrook, “Academic Excellence: A Commentary and Reflections on the Inherent Value of Peer Review,” Journal of Research Administration 43 (2012): 33–38.
20. Ellen Yi-Luen Do,“Why Peer Review Journals?,” International Journal of Architectural Computing 1 (2003): 253–65.
21. Thomson Reuters, Increasing the Quality and Timeliness of Scholarly Review: A Report for Scholarly Publishers (London, UK: Thomson Reuters, 2010); Do, “Why Peer Review Journals?”; Stevan R. Harnad, Peer Commentary on Peer Review: A Case Study in Scientific Quality Control (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
22. David Shatz, Peer Review: A Critical Inquiry (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).
23. Mark Ware, “Online Submission and Peer-Review Systems,” Learned Publishing18 (2005): 245–50.
24. See, for example, Kimberley A. Nicholas, “A Quick Guide to Writing a Solid Peer Review,” Eos 92 (2011): 233–40.
25. See, for example, Carole E. Lee, Cassidy R. Sugimoto, Guo Zhang, and Blaise Cronin, “Bias in Peer Review,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 64 (2013): 2–17.
26. See, for example, Carol Berkenkotter, “The Power and Perils of Peer Review,” Rhetoric Review 13 (1995): 245–8.
27. The Sokal Affair highlights important concerns about journal publishing’s nature. Social Text, while seemingly peer reviewed, is in fact run by an editorial collective that does not follow traditional peer review procedures. The journal was largely silent on its editorial practices until the Sokal Affair, which caused the editorial collective to describe in detail their procedures. The Sokal Affair is relevant to rhetoricians because this incident speaks to questions of the gatekeeping function of journals. For some time, scholars saw academic journals as keeping bad scholarship out and promoting good scholarship. If what can get in, in a related field like cultural studies, is in question, then scholars might rightly wonder about what scholarship is published and how to publish their own work as well as whether or not the material in journals is worth their time. Likewise, if editorial practices are obscured, rhetoricians may have trouble assessing the importance of articles or the significance of a journal. Sokal’s submission also functions as a critique of academicians’ incomprehensible prose. Rhetoricians should be particularly concerned with this critique of language because language is part and parcel of what rhetoricians study. If rhetoricians or other humanities scholars cannot write clearly, and peer reviewers are seduced by turns of phrase rather than logic of argument, then scholarly publishing becomes more like fiction publishing, diminishing the assumed importance of academic study. Sokal would go on to write a book that criticized humanistic inquiry into the sciences where he found humanities scholars misusing scientific terms and methods. If Sokal is correct about the dangers of humanities scholars utilizing the languages of the sciences, then rhetoricians of science, post-modern and post-structural rhetoricians, and ideological critics may be at risk of falling into Sokal’s critique. Rhetoricians, then, must be mindful of Sokal’s lesson that peer review may not promote, in all instances, good scholarship, and that academic language may hurt rather than help rhetoricians’ ability to communicate their ideas. Alan Sokal, Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998); Alan Sokal, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” Social Text 46/47 (1996): 217–52.
28. Alan Sokal, “A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies,” Lingua Franca 4 (1996): 62–64 http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/lingua_franca_v4/lingua_franca_v4.html (accessed April 12, 2015).
29. John Bohannon, “Who’s Afraid of Peer Review?,” Science 342 (October 4, 2013): 60–65.
30. Do,“Why Peer Review Journals?,” 255.
31. Do,“Why Peer Review Journals?,” 255.
32. Michel Foucault,“Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76, trans. David Macey (New York, NY: Picador, 2003); Clare O’Farrell, Michel Foucault (London, UK; Sage, 2005); Rudi Visker, Michel Foucault: Genealogy as Critique (London, UK: Verso, 1995).
33. Carole Blair and Martha Cooper, “The Humanistic Turn in Foucault’s Rhetoric of Inquiry,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 73 (1987): 151–71.
34. Raymie McKerrow, “Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis,” Communication Monographs 56 (1989): 91–111.
35. Barbara Biesecker, “Michel Foucault and the Question of Rhetoric,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 25 (1992): 351–64.
36. Kendall R. Phillips,“Spaces of Invention: Dissention, Freedom, and Thought in Foucault,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 35 (2002): 329.
37. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1970), 365.
38. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1970), 355.
39. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1970), 347.
40. Robert J. Spitzer, Saving the Constitution from Lawyers: How Legal Training and Law Reviews Distort Constitutional Meaning (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
41. Do,“Why Peer Review Journals?”
42. Jonathan Gingerich, “A Call for Blind Review: Student Edited Law Reviews and Bias,” Journal of Legal Education 59 (2009): 269–78.
43. Kevin M. Yamamoto,“What’s in a Name? The Letterhead Impact Project,” Journal of Legal Studies Education 22 (2004): 65–98.
44. Do,“Why Peer Review Journals?”
45. Do,“Why Peer Review Journals?”.
46. Allen Clark, Jill Singleton-Jackson, and Ron Newsom, “Journal Editing: Managing the Peer Review Process for Timely Publication of Articles,” Publishing Research Quarterly 16 (2000): 62–71.
47. Allen Clark, Jill Singleton-Jackson, and Ron Newsom, “Journal Editing: Managing the Peer Review Process for Timely Publication of Articles,” Publishing Research Quarterly 16 (2000): 62–71.
48. Arthur P. Bochner, “NCA Journals I: Is the Review Process too Slow?,” Spectra (2008): 3.
49. Academia occasionally produces an interesting dilemma where responses no longer fall in the same issue as the original article, but actually become published before the original citing to the original article as forthcoming.
50. The typical law review editing process involves students reviewing cover letters and submissions to choose articles that meet the bare minimum for publication. They then pass these articles on to higher ranking editors or teams of students serving on a law review that read the article and decide if the article is worth of publication. This process sometimes occurs twice. Then, a final decision is made to offer publication or reject the manuscript, usually made by one or more of the editors below the Editor-in-Chief (Managing Editor, Acquisitions Editor, etc.). After an author accepts an offer, the article will go through several rounds of edits, with the author able to approve or reject changes at every step. These rounds of edits cover substantive material, citations, and grammar. It is not uncommon for 3–5 rounds of edits to occur. After this, the article is typeset and the author may review that copy as well before the article goes to publication. While the process seems lengthy, it practice it can be completed in as few as several months. This process puts multiple eyes on the article and also allows an open and frank dialogue between author and editors about proposed changes to a manuscript.
51. Travis I. Lovejoy, Tracey A. Revernson, and Christopher R. France, “Reviewing Manuscripts for Peer-Review Journals: A Primer for Novice and Seasoned Reviewers,” Annals of Behavioral Medicine 42 (2011): 1–13.
52. Schwartzman, “Peer Review as the Enforcement of Disciplinary Orthodoxy.”
53. W. Charles Redding, “Extrinsic and Intrinsic Criticism,” Western Speech 21 (1957): 96–103.
54. Harry T. Edwards, “The Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education and the Legal Profession,” Michigan Law Review 91 (1992): 34–70.
55. Sherrilyn Ifill, “Sherrilyn Ifill on What the Chief Justice Should Read on Summer Vacation,” Concurring Opinions (blog), http://concurringopinions.com/archives/2011/07/sherrilyn-ifill-on-what-the-chief-justice-should-read-on-summer-vacation.html (accessed May 28, 2015).
56. Edward Schiappa, “Second Thoughts on the Critiques of Big Rhetoric,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 34 (2001): 260–274.
57. Jeanette M. Wing, “Why Peer Review Matters,” Communications of the ACM 54 (2010): 10–11. I will use “the public” as shorthand to denote the interactions of multiple public s and counterpublics, communities, groups, and individuals. I do this because crafting definitional phrases separated by commas for every use of the public may be cumbersome, and because such a stylistic choice makes this section infinitely more readable. I do not assume a monolithic public or consensus in any group.
58. Jeanette M. Wing, “Why Peer Review Matters,” Communications of the ACM 54 (2010): 10–11.
59. Jeanette M. Wing, “Why Peer Review Matters,” Communications of the ACM 54 (2010), 11.
60. Donald H. Gjerdingen, “The Future of Legal Scholarship and the Search for a Modern Theory of Law,” Buffalo Law Review 35 (1986): 384.
61. Nancy McCormack, “Peer Review and Legal Publishing: What Law Librarians Need to Know about Open, Single-Blind, and Double-Blind Reviewing,” Law Library Journal 101 (2009): 59–70.
62. Jane Hunter, “Post-Publication Peer Review: Opening Up Scientific Conversation,” Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience 6 (2012): 1–2.
63 Spitzer, Saving the Constitution from Lawyers.