My experience with peer
review is that it is often a closed, self-congratulatory model from a
closed, self-congratulatory society about work that is destined to go
into the stacks.
We need better.
At one point I led sixty
top writers in a production environment. We had immediate deadlines
and developed a creative review process to improve our
quality.
I learned that junior
reviewers would upend a mess of personal issues and concerns to create
an edit package that couldn’t be implemented. The better reviewers would identify the one change that everyone agreed made all the
difference.
Sometimes it’s
the notes you don’t play.
Excellent review is a
craft that doesn’t come with elevation.
Review is quite different
from creation.
In evaluating management
performance, it’s harder to improve someone who is doing things
right. Although we have observed managers feel a need.
Anyone who has ever
authored a proposal to the government and then taken it through
review has seen how review teams don’t even know the proposal’s
objectives, yet have strident and emotional demands.
Will they improve the
proposal? Why do you ask?
My teachers in the
Pentagon call it, “Changing small dog to puppy.” And they are
masters at accepting review, because in review, too often they’re
not about making something better, they’re about getting through
with minimum damage, in a process that hasn’t been defined for
generations.
Once upon a time paper was
expensive, print runs were short, and people read scholarly
publications. Now, not so much.
Technology has
disintermediated publishing businesses, and getting the message to
more of the people who can use it may be more important than getting
published.
I read a lot of good
technical writing. I also read a fair amount of bad technical
writing, although not by choice.
Much as I enjoy TED,
LifeHacker, or Open
Culture, as places that
get new knowledge out to the masses, my go-to source for learning is
Wikipedia. Even
when I disagree,
they have a massive amount of links to get to usable information.
Peer review? Better to get
World View.
Tips
4 The Big Chair – Perspective 2.0
1 comment:
Somewhere around the house I have an encyclopedia from the 1960's. Even when it was new, it was like a snapshot - no practical way to update.
Now I use multiple sources to research items, but usually start with Wikipedia because of the comprehensive abstracts and linked references.
To explore further, the links get me to other sources which get me to still more sources.
When I'm done, I have a pretty good understanding of the item and plenty of resources to refer to as needed.
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