Emperor's New Clothes: The Reinvention of Peer Review as Myth

摘要

Publication in top journals has become an indicator of academic performance that has huge influence on academic careers, on research funding, and on institutional rankings. Pressure to publish in these journals is immense. Pre-publication peer review, never without its critics, cannot cope. Yet, more depends on this peer review than ever before. The activities of academic publishers, governments, research councils, and universities are all ultimately supported by a system that is heavily gamed and cannot withstand scrutiny. The article compares the practice of peer review with its replacement, the peer review of myth. Myth, like religion, is dependent on faith, not logic. The article looks closely at the transition, focusing particularly on management studies. It explores how the practice of peer review, with all its deficiencies, has been superseded by the peer review of myth, with no deficiencies at all. Vested interests profit, but academic research suffers.