From the Editor

In the world of academic publishing there has been much discussion of late about the virtues and shortcomings of peer review. This is especially true of what, for lack of more graceful phrasing, I am calling the double-anonymous system, sometimes called “double-blind,” in which neither the readers nor the authors know each others’ identities. The benefits of such a system, which generally has been acknowledged as a gold standard for journals’ editorial procedures, are fairly clear: readers can assess work frankly, without worries about recrimination from authors, and authors can submit their work knowing that it will receive a fair hearing regardless of their rank or reputation in the field.

Of course, any literary scholar worth her salt can meet this idealist vision—of work judged entirely on its own terms, in a sort of detachment from authorial context—with a skepticism supported by the rich array of literary theories and hermeneutic approaches in which we are trained. Claims of objectivity, of work judged in a vacuum of context, are at some level necessary fictions; no realm of purely neutral assessment exists. There also are worries that the veil of anonymity can be taken by some readers as license for irresponsible or abusive commentary or that a small pool of “expert” readers can acquire too much power within a scholarly community as gatekeepers to publication. Additional complications, too numerous to mention here, can arise, such as the question of whether to disclose an author’s identity if a reader makes an accusation of plagiarism. Nevertheless, the double-anonymous process has stood for quite a while as the best option for a journal committed to undertaking a fair and rigorous evaluation of the scholarship submitted for publication.

Recently, however, the status of this system has slipped, not least because of the opportunities and hazards presented in an online world of ever vaster, more dynamic, and more intimate connectedness. Some journals have begun experimenting with open forms of review with exciting results. Shakespeare Quarterly, for example, has undertaken a hybrid form of evaluation, inviting the public as well as a panel of experts to comment on four essays not yet accepted for publication. Readers must log onto the scholarly network MediaCommons, and they are required to disclose their identities just as the authors have disclosed theirs.¹ Such a process makes clear the virtues of a more open system. Authors can receive a multiplicity of feedback from knowledgeable sources who might otherwise not occur to journal editors as potential reviewers. The feedback itself, especially when filtered through a process of logging on, may be more likely, by virtue of its place in the spotlight, to be presented in civil terms. Readers and authors alike can learn a great deal from the exchange, and thus some of the primary purposes of scholarship—advancing knowledge, provoking thought—are achieved more readily. Open sourcing also can expedite the review process, bypassing the many months most authors must wait to hear a verdict on their work. Clearly this development, which has been used for a longer time in the sciences, has much to offer for intellectual exchange and rigorous review in the humanities. It suggests, in a sense, how the more positive side of open review arenas like Wikipedia can be extended to more specialized scholarly venues.

The web also introduces separate complications to the arena of traditional, double-anonymous peer review. Most conference programs are by default published online these days; even lectures and talks with small, local audiences tend to be announced through the web to a potentially global one. Drafts of scholarly articles are widely available, either through their voluntary placement on personal or social networking websites or through databases such as Proquest Dissertations and Theses. (The increased frequency of de facto and voluntary publication of drafts online is an issue that poses complications for copyright, which I may address in a future preface.) The many upsides of these practices are obvious, but they also threaten to render the process of double-anonymous review (at least, a system in which readers are unaware of an author’s identity) obsolete. Just as university...