Functions of Periodicals and Peer Review. Towards Modern Role Responsibilities in Academic Publishing from the 17th Century Onwards
Ina Gawel (doctoral project)
This dissertation deals with scientific journals, peer review, and their roles in academic knowledge production. It aims to clarify their epistemic ends, derive role responsibilities for people involved in the publication process, and propose concrete action directives based on this normative basis.
To this end, it starts from the current discussion about peer review, characterized by criticism of peer review as an aspect of scientific publishing, a lack of knowledge about its history, and ignorance of the fact that “peer review” is somehow a research field on its own. It then contrasts the results of an investigation into the history of science with today’s postulated values in publication ethics. This generates an understanding of the development of scientific journals on the one hand, and of the peer review functions of peer review on the other, from the 17th century to the present. Afterward, the project relates the functions of both components to the historical context. This way, it characterizes obsolete functions and names new ones more suitable to today’s publishing landscape.