This article describes fake manuscripts accepted by two journals that claim to use scholarly peer review. The fake manuscripts were supposedly written by characters of the popular American cartoon TV series, the Simpsons.
Is submitting fake manuscripts like this a legitimate way to defend scholarly peer review?
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Marek,
It strikes me that submitting fake manuscripts is itself a no-no. This sounds something like the "sting" operations sometimes used against corrupt politicians by investigating law enforcement agencies. I am aware that similar things have been done, on occasion; but I think that it should be left to regulators, in the states' departments of Education or similar federal agencies. I am doubtful of the "vigilante" character of this idea or kind of project.
What might more legitimately be done is to follow the suggestions of the doubtful journal and see where they lead. It seems proper for the scholar to take some risk in such situations, instead of avoiding all risk by means of deception. Of course, we may want to inform our colleagues of what is afoot.
Have a look at the following review I published, some years back, in 2009, on the suggestion of then new reviews editor at the journal. The review is an honest and fairly thorough look at the book in question:
http://mwbdvjh.muse.jhu.edu/journals/transactions_of_the_charles_s_peirce_society/v045/45.4.callaway.pdf
I was aware that the subject of this festschrift was or perhaps is something of a bugaboo of the German academic left (in part because a critic of Habermas), and I subsequently broke off all my correspondence with the journal in question --though I had published quite a few reviews in the journal, since it is concerned with the history of American pragmatism. My impression is that the request for a review of this particular book functioned to evoke or maintain intensive politicized polemics. In spite of that I think I wrote a good review which reflects the actual contents of the book. Its a reasonable place for a scholar to start, if making a study of the subject of the festscrift.
What sort of thing might we learn from such an encounter? Close readers will be able to detect the policy decisions involved in making this particular suggestion of a book for review. That may be well worth knowing.
H.G. Callaway
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Linguistics
- Philology
- Classical Philology
- Manuscripts