2010 Interviews

The Promise of Peer Review

Siegel, Vivian; Witte, Susan S.; Natriello, Gary J.; Renfro, Patricia E.

In today's networked digital environment, is the peer review system the best way to recognize quality research and scholarship? Scholars have come to rely on peer review to ensure that the research they publish is valid--that the conclusions are justified by the data and that the ideas presented are new and important. However, peer review requires unbiased experts--people in the same field as the author who can support the publication of research that meets these criteria. Is there really such a thing as an unbiased expert? Does peer review need fixing? And if so, how should changes to the system be evaluated? The featured speaker is Dr. Vivian Siegel, Research Professor of Medicine and Cell and Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Siegel directs the Center for Science Communication at Vanderbilt University. She has been the editor of the scholarly journals Cell and Developmental Cell, was the Founding Executive Director of the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and was one of the launch editors of PLoS Biology. Responding are Susan Witte, Associate Professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work, and Gary Natriello, Professor of Educational Research and Professor of Sociology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.