Priority Disputes and Peer Review: Academic Self-Regulation

The Review o f Higher Education Fall 1993, Volume 17, No. 1, pp. 95-104 Copyright © 1993 Association for the Study of Higher Education All Rights Reserved (ISSN 0162-5748) Review Essay Priority Disputes and Peer Review: Academic Self-Regulation John M. Braxton Daryl E. Chubin and Edward J. Hackett, Peerless Science: Peer Review and U.S. Science Policy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 267 pp. Susan E. Cozzens, Social Control and Multiple Discovery in Science: The Opiate Receptor Case (Albany: State University of New York, 1989), 236 pp. Society expects professions to be self-regulating and, in exchange, gives them autonomy over the conduct of their professional roles (Goode 1969). For the academic profession, research is one of its core activities (Parsons and Platt 1973). Because the goal of research is the advancement of knowledge, the fundamental aims of regulating research role perfor­ mance are to assure not only that the research makes a contribution to knowledge but also that it is conducted according to the technical stan­ dards, ethical principles, and scientific norms of an academic discipline. Assuring that research is conducted in accordance with cognitive and normative standards is presumed to be essential to the advancement of knowledge (Merton 1973). Responsibility for self-regulation resides on several levels. Melissa Anderson and Karen Seashore Louis (1991) have delineated three such levels: the individual academic professional, the academic department, and the academic discipline. Individual academic professionals are reJohn M. Braxton is Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. 96 T h e R e v i e w o f H i g h e r E d u c a t i o n F a l l 1993 sponsible for the competent and ethical pursuit of their programs of research. At the department level, these same academic professionals evaluate the scholarship of their colleagues as the basis for decisions about promotion, tenure, and salary increases. At the level of the aca­ demic discipline, academics are responsible for the full spectrum of scholarship including the peer review of grant proposals and manu­ scripts submitted to academic journals, the allocation of recognition for contributions, and the enforcement of standards for research and codes of conduct. An opportunity to acquire a fine-grained knowledge and understand­ ing of self-regulation at the level of the academic discipline is provided by two recent books written by sociologists of science. These books are Daryl E. Chubin and Edward J. Hackett’s Peerless Science: Peer Review and the U.S. Science Policy and Susan E. Cozzens’s Social Control and Mul­ tiple Discovery in Science: The Opiate Receptor Case. Both of these volumes are part of the Science, Technology, and Society series of the State Uni­ versity of New York Press. Although both volumes address self-regulation in the scientific re­ search community, each examines a different facet of this process. As the titles of the books imply, peer review is Chubin and Hackett’s con­ cern, while Cozzens focuses on the role of third parties in disputes over recognition for scientific discoveries. An analysis of peer review provides us with a window on profes­ sional self-regulation, since peer review is predicated on the assumption that both the significance and quality of research are best appraised by scientists in the same field or subspecialty (Anderson and Louis 1991). In other words, expert knowledge and skill are the bases for peer review. If peer review is improperly discharged, then the advancement of knowl­ edge suffers. In turn, the public trust in the scientific community declines. We gain another window on professional self-regulation through Cozzens’s interest in how third parties exercise social control in disputes among scientists over recognition for discoveries made at about the same time. The ways in which third parties react to the credit-seeking behavior of disputants determine how self-regulation is executed. How the aca­ demic community allocates recognition for research contributions is im­ portant in understanding self-regulation, for recognition is the “coin of the realm” of scholarship. Collegial recognition certifies an individual’s role in the advancement of knowledge in an academic discipline (Storer 1973...