To Be of Use: The Work of Reviewing (original) (raw)
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On being reviewed: from ghosts that haunt in isolation toward connection and unexpected agency
Higher Education Research & Development, 2020
Our group of early-and mid-career women faculty members in a mid-sized Canadian university examined the peer review process and our experiences of being reviewed. Using post-structural feminist literature, we theorised how subjectivities are shaped by the pressures of neoliberal incursions into university work. The impact of peer review can be severe and feel highly personal. The peer review system contains assumptions that create conditions for misuse: that reviewers have expertise and that notions of quality scholarly work are shared; that they will be supportive and intellectually ethical; and that they will encourage innovation. We engaged with what it feels like to be reviewed through using collaborative autoethnography as a methodology, and narrative and poetic inquiry as data as well as methods of analysis. We found that how a writer received a review depended on the amount of respect and collegiality in the reviewer's language. Uninformed critical review comments appeared to be particularly damaging. We also found the obscure nature of the process meant that misunderstandings characterised our experiences. Many of us suffered feelings of powerlessness, a homogenisation of writing style, and a decrease in creativity. However, we also found solace and agency in sharing our stories. We shared our experiences within a relational holding space drawing on an ethic of care where well-being flourished, and in which there was an equality of respect, dignity, and mutual concern. We argue this perspective has potential to be applied more broadly to review processes.
Creating the Review: an anthropological gesture
Revue d'anthropologie des connaissances, 2017
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The Art of Listening: Notes on Feminist Book Reviewing
Contemporary Sociology, 2023
If academic book reviewing is on its last legs, then we might come to value it more if we see how reviewing uncovers something fundamental to all intellectual exchanges—and therefore, the work we do as sociologists. And that is listening. While the academy valorizes talking above listening, the practice of hearing another speak is feminist in spirit. Drawing on the author's experience as the book review editor for two journals, this essay reflects on various types of translation at the heart of listening, and urges sociologists everywhere to invest more in feminist book reviewing.
LangLit: An International Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal, 2024
This essay examines how the review has changed throughout time within the field of literature studies and how it now shapes literary discourse as a dynamic and significant force. Reviews, which were once thought of as a secondary activity, have come to be seen as an essential forum for critical engagement that serves as a means of scholarly inquiry as well as a means of communication between texts and readers. This study explores how reviews affect literary interpretation and their multiple character using an interdisciplinary lens that draws from literary theory, sociology, and communication studies. The first section of the study traces the evolution of reviews historically, emphasising how they moved from being simple assessments to complex analyses. It looks at how reviews have changed throughout time, from being straightforward summaries to complex analyses that represent larger changes in literary criticism and societal perceptions of literature. The study shows how reviews have changed to reflect shifting social and technical environments by looking at significant turning points in the history of the genre, such as the birth of literary magazines and the spread of internet platforms. The idea of the reader-investigator-researcher is a theoretical construct that clarifies the several roles that people take on when reading reviews. The study looks at how reviews function as hubs for cultural creation, affecting literary trends and public opinion. The study sheds light on how critics create narratives around literature by examining the rhetorical devices used in reviews and placing them within larger ideological and sociopolitical frameworks. Through a critical examination of the socio-cultural environments in which reviews are created and read, the study aims to advance a more fair and inclusive conversation about literature. Through a critical examination of the socio-cultural contexts in which reviews are created and read, the study aims to advance a more fair and inclusive conversation regarding literature
The Feminist Keyword Project: Literature Reviews as Feminist Praxis
Feminist Pedagogy, 2023
The Feminist Keyword Project is a scaffolded series of assignments that culminates in a literature review of the student’s chosen keyword. It is designed for intermediate undergraduate students who acquired a foundational feminist vocabulary in their introductory classes. Building upon this baseline fluency, the project shifts students’ understanding of course concepts from a glossary of terms to politicized feminist gatherings. The project is informed by the tradition of the keyword entry genre to move students beyond merely defining their chosen term to narrating it as a site of feminist discourse in and outside of academia. In doing so, the Feminist Keyword Project engages students in the feminist praxis of research, writing, and citation.
Writing and reading peer reviews
Qualitative Social Work, 2013
This editorial essay was inspired by the content bracketing this issue of Qualitative Social Work (QSW). At the front end is invited commentary written by Stanley Witkin. At the back end is our annual thanks to reviewers (or as they are known in much of the world, referees). Taken together, these bookends got me thinking about the job of peer reviewing in a world where the politics of science, changes in technologies, and increasing market pressures are influencing scholarly institutions and their practices. This issue begins with Witkin's commentary on the two articles that immediately follow it. These articles are written by QSW founding editors, Ian Shaw and Roy Ruckdeschel along with a colleague Ann Ramatowski and are the product of analysis and reflection on their time as co-editors of this journal. Witkin's provocative essay pushes the discussion forward. We will see further dialogue among these scholars in a future issue of QSW but for the moment, I will let that conversation speak for itself. However, there are several threads in Witkin's piece that point to the challenges of current journal editing and, by extension, implicate journal reviewers who serve as gatekeepers, consultants, and cheerleaders. It is to these folks that I turn my attention. As is our tradition, we close the final issue of the year by publishing the names and affiliations of the individuals who have served as reviewers for us over the past year. You will find a list of 143 distinguished scholars from around the globe. If it takes three hours to review a single manuscript, as some have suggested, that would mean that these reviewers have logged in 429 hours of gratuitous intellectual labor for QSW (Hernandez, 2009; Sharts-Hopko, 2001). However, that figure greatly underestimates the time given. It does not account for the time it takes to review resubmissions, or the fact that most reviewers agree to take on more than one manuscript a year, nor does it account for the additional labor involved in reading, and writing, in a foreign language. Needless to say QSW could not function without the dedication and commitment of this group of individuals. Publishing their names is not nearly thanks enough for the time and energy they devote to the job. So it seems like a good time to reflect on the work they do and the important role that they play. Peer review is familiar to all of us. Whether we seek research funds, are looking to publish our books or articles, or are seeking promotion, we are likely to have our work evaluated by others. Yet the actual task of reviewing is often under-valued and underappreciated. Griffiths and Baveye (2011) take note of the paradox that, 'academic peer Qualitative Social Work 12(6) 715-721 ! The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
THINKING WITH KLOSTERMAN'S RAZOR: DIFFRACTING "REVIEWER 2" AND RESEARCH WRONGNESS
Four authors from art education, early childhood literacy education, and social studies education explore what counts as social science research with help from the blinded peer review process. The authors invite readers to think with wrongness when vetting data from a composite character named Reviewer 2, using artful methods of expression. The purpose of this article is not to complain about the experiences with Reviewer 2, but rather to explore the interface between academic publishing and knowledge production, specifically how our knowing and being as scholars is intimately entangled with academic publishing. We interact with author and essayist Chuck Klosterman's question " But What If We're Wrong? " in relation to dominant research assumptions and practices. Klosterman's book calls readers to ponder issues of ontology and epistemology not only in the present time, but also in an unknown future. Each author will share data from personal Reviewer 2 experiences and then diffract that data with/in Klosterman's Razor, or the idea that the most convincing assumptions also have the potential for wrongness. Data include paraphrased excerpts from qualitative inquiry studies published as a book, manuscript, and conference proposal reviews. The article " closes " by addressing the new and unexpected " openings " resulting from the entanglement of collaboration and with Klosterman's book and Reviewer 2's reviews.
Reviewing Reviews: RER, Research, and the Politics of Educational Knowledge
Review of Educational Research, 1999
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