Crowd-authoring versus peer-reviewing: An epistemic clash in the field of educational technology

摘要

A mediator invited 101 academics from around the world to work together by email, over three rounds, to author a manuscript, in an attempt to establish the first 'crowd-authored' paper. Once the paper was finalized, it was submitted for publication to fifty-one accredited journals. However, the journals rejected the paper. The current article offers a critique of this negative experience, in reference to previous research and in consultation with the 101 authors. This critique highlights possible factors that may encourage journals to decline manuscripts authored by a large number of people. An awareness of such possible factors would be beneficial for other academics undertaking crowd-authoring projects. A main contribution of the present article is that it provides a debate about the cultural and political ramifications of crowd-authoring, a phenomenon that is expected to soon enter the academic discourse.