Re. peer review

Subject: Re. peer review
From: Geoff Hart <geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 1995 16:38:37 LCL

Dick DiMock wrote to note that his group, without a full-time editor,
has tried to have authors review the work of their colleagues, but
with little luck due to time constraints. Speaking in my editorial
role, you really should try to get a good editor into your department.
Some form of quality control is essential in publishing, and if you
don't have time to do it yourself, you'll need a pro.

Now given the real-world context of Dick's question (i.e., limited
money and time), that idealistic suggestion probably won't fly. So
here's what we do in my corner of the real world when I'm stretched
thin or when we need expert advice: we send the text outside for
review. In my situation, scientific publishing, the peer review
involves a group supervisor who says "yeah, that's close enough to
English to send to Geoff" and at least two outside reviewers who say
"yeah, Geoff helped me to understand it, but here's what I disagree
with".

It's the last part that's important in Dick's situation, because this
introduces the concept of "iterative review". Here, the approach is to
write a single chapter and send it to a few of your real-world users
(while you work feverishly on the next chapter). They look it over,
point out what's wrong (there will be _lots_ of corrections), and send
it back to you. You make the corrections, and ensure that you don't
make the same mistakes in the next chapter. Here's the iterative part:
send _that_ chapter out for review too, and you'll get a whole new
batch of suggestions, but fewer than the first time. Repeat this
process until the book is finished. Each subsequent chapter will be
better than its predecessors.

The process is called "iterative" because you keep repeating the
review and improving each subsequent effort. At the same time, you get
ongoing feedback from the audience who will actually use the product.
This does two vital things: it ensures that you're in touch with the
audience, and it flatters the audience by telling them that their
opinion is important. This process isn't trivial nor is it easy: for
example, how many reviewers do you need, what do you do if the product
isn't available to the reviewers, and how do you handle the volume of
replies? But each of these (and other problems) can be solved, and it
gives you many of the benefits of having an editor. And you _will_
produce a better final product as a result.

You'll still need some form of edit for last-minute typos,
consistency, corporate style, etc., but the most important part of the
editing will be done by the audience who will benefit from it.

--Geoff Hart #8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

Disclaimer: If I didn't commit it in print in one of
our reports, it don't represent FERIC's opinion.


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