How peer-review constrains cognition: On the frontline in the knowledge sector

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    Abstract

    Peer-review is neither reliable, fair, nor a valid basis for predicting ‘impact’: as quality control, peer-review is not fit for purpose. Endorsing the consensus, I offer a reframing: while a normative social process, peer-review also shapes the writing of a scientific paper. In so far as ‘cognition’ describes enabling conditions for flexible behavior, the practices of peer-review thus constrain knowledge-making. To pursue cognitive functions of peer-review, however, manuscripts must be seen as ‘symbolizations’, replicable patterns that use technologically enabled activity. On this bio-cognitive view, peer-review constrains knowledge-making by writers, editors, reviewers. Authors are prompted to recursively re-aggregate symbolizations to present what are deemed acceptable knowledge claims. How, then, can recursive re-embodiment be explored? In illustration, I sketch how the paper’s own content came to be re-aggregated: agonistic review drove reformatting of argument structure, changes in rhetorical ploys and careful choice of wordings. For this reason, the paper’s knowledge-claims can be traced to human activity that occurs in distributed cognitive systems. Peer-review is on the frontline in the knowledge sector in that it delimits what can count as knowing. Its systemic nature is therefore crucial to not only discipline-centered ‘real’ science but also its ‘post-academic’ counterparts.
    Original languageEnglish
    Article number1706
    JournalFrontiers in Psychology
    Volume6
    Number of pages15
    ISSN1664-1078
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2015

    Keywords

    • Peer Review, Research
    • Epistemology
    • distributed language
    • distributed cognition
    • radical embodied cognitive science
    • ecological psychology,
    • interactivity
    • languaging

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