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).
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Our research in the Semantic Web area looks at the potentials of fusing together advances in a range of disciplines, and applying them in a systemic way to simplify the development of intelligent, knowledge-based web services and to facilitate human access and use of knowledge available on the web. For instance, we are exploring ways in which tnatural language interfaces can be used to facilitate access to data distributed over different repositories. We are also developing infrastructures to support rapid development and deployment of semantic web services, which can be used to create web applications on-the-fly. We are also investigating ways in which semantic technology can support learning on the web, through a combination of knowledge representation support, pedagogical theories and intelligent content aggregation mechanisms. Finally, we are also investigating the Semantic Web itself as a domain of analysis and performing large scale empirical studies to uncover data about the concrete epistemologies which can be found on the Semantic Web. This exciting new area of research gives us concrete insights on the different conceptualizations that are present on the Semantic Web by giving us the possibility to discover which are the most common viewpoints, which viewpoints are mutually inconsistent, to what extent different models agree or disagree, etc...
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