By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Privileged Peer Review - Whose Opinion Counts?
George Siemens responds to concerns that his work, including his book on connectivism, has not been peer reviewed. My own response is similar to his: peer review is not the only way of ensuring quality, and it's not even a good way of ensuring quality. It takes too long and the process is conducted in secret. And there's no reason to believe that a small group of experts can assess quality any better - and more fairly - than an open and public assessment by anyone who cares to read the item in question. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ideas to Shake Up Publishing
University publishers look at the challenges of publishing online - but they cannot get past the idea that they have to sell books, nor can they look beyond the infrastructure they have developed. "'You have to develop systems for publishing electronically, the kinds of standards you are going to put materials into, you need document designs, you have to have access control systems to let people in [to search and read], and you have to have authoring tools that tag the stuff in certain ways so they can talk to each other,' she said. So each chapter of a book might need a summary, subject tags and so forth - all in ways that are accepted as an industry standard." Who says? Why didn't the authors of the Ithaka study look at the Gutenberg Project? All you need to publish a book online is a plain-text ASCII file. Everything else is upselling. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Author and the Austen Plot That Exposed Publishers' Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austin novels, barely altered, were submitted to publishers. Not only were the novels rejected, the publishers didn't recognize the novels. Now I will admit, I'm not a fan of Jane Austin either. More...