Tech Reports

Tech Report kmi-00-12 Abstract

Redesigning the Peer Review Process: A Developmental Theory-in-Action
Techreport ID: kmi-00-12
Date: 2000
Author(s): Tamara Sumner, Simon Buckingham Shum, Michael Wright, Nathalie Bonnardel and Aline Chevalier

We are looking at how new forms of document interface can be used to support new forms of scholarly discourse, and ultimately, new models of scholarly publishing. Towards this end, we have been using specially designed computer-meditated conferencing technology to realize an innovative peer review model within an academic e-journal - The Journal of Interactive Media in Education. In essence, through re-design of social processes and technical products, we have tried to shift reviewing from a closed process centered on evaluating scholarly work to an open process promoting constructive dialogue between participants. Our experiences indicate that ongoing and explicit mediation activities by editors play an important role in helping review participants (authors, reviewers, guest editors) effectively learn about and participate in the new process. We describe our specific mediation activities and the theoretical framework they are derived from: meta-structuring. The utility of the meta-structuring theory is derived from its explicit acknowledgement that (1) technology adaptation and cultural change are gradual processes that occur primarily after deployment and during use and (2) ongoing proactive interventions (mediations) can facilitate these gradual processes and improve technology use and acceptance. We argue that 'meta-structuring' is an instance of a broader class of theories, which we call "developmental theories-in-action", which offer a promising direction for future research agendas.

Publication(s):

Sumner, T., Buckingham Shum, S., Wright, M., Bonnardel, N., & Chevalier, A. (2000). Redesigning the Peer Review Process: A Developmental Theory-in-Action. Proc. COOP'2000: Fourth International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems, (Sophia Antipolis, France: 23-26 May, 2000).

Future Internet

Knowledge
Management Multimedia &
Information Systems Narrative
Hypermedia New Media Systems Semantic Web &
Knowledge Services

Future Internet is...

With over a billion users, today's Internet is arguably the most successful human artifact ever created. The Internet's physical infrastructure, software, and content now play an integral part of the lives of everyone on the planet, whether they interact with it directly or not. Now nearing its fifth decade, the Internet has shown remarkable resilience and flexibility in the face of ever increasing numbers of users, data volume, and changing usage patterns, but faces growing challenges in meetings the needs of our knowledge society. Globally, many major initiatives are underway to address the need for more scientific research, physical infrastructure investment, better education, and better utilisation of the Internet. Within Japan, USA and Europe major new initiatives have begun in the area.

To succeed the Future Internet will need to address a number of cross-cutting challenges including:

Scalability in the face of peer-to-peer traffic, decentralisation, and increased openness

Trust when government, medical, financial, personal data are increasingly trusted to the cloud, and middleware will increasingly use dynamic service selection