Openness and the Ethics of Peer Engagement

Openness and the Ethics of Peer Engagement

Rebecca Kennison, Digital Content Editor, Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library, Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Scholarly communication values the open exchange of ideas, apart from traditional peer review. Peer engagement happens throughout the research process, both before and after publication, through interactions among colleagues, lab members, and the scholarly community. I advocate for a more open and transparent review process, one that enables not only open dialog between author(s) and reviewer(s) but that also ensures that thoughtful and substantive reviews are properly recognized and rewarded. The traditional role of peer review, designed to limit the number of pieces published, should evolve into that of peer engagement, viewing peer review as collaboration rather than gatekeeping. Reviews that improve the quality of a work and thus help to advance the field should be considered as contributions to existing scholarship, rather than merely service to the community.

Rebecca Kennison is the Digital Content Editor at the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University Medical Center (CUIMC), responsible for delivering consistent and comprehensive digital content to the CUIMC community by leveraging the Health Sciences Library's expertise and technology. Past roles include that of executive director of the not-for-profit K|N Consultants and founding director of the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship, a division of the Columbia University Libraries, where she was responsible for developing programs to facilitate scholarly research and the communication of that research through technology solutions. Rebecca has worked primarily in the academic publishing industry, including production leadership roles at Cell Press, Blackwell Publishing (now Wiley), and the open-access publisher Public Library of Science (PLOS).