creators_name: Bartlett, Steven James
creators_id: sbartlet@willamette.edu
type: other
datestamp: 2017-08-16 13:45:03
lastmod: 2017-08-16 13:45:03
metadata_visibility: show
title: Peer Review — An Insult to the Reader and to Society: Milton's View
ispublished: pub
subjects: peer-review
full_text_status: public
keywords: peer review, pre-publication censorship, John Milton
abstract: Peer review is, with near universality, now insisted upon as required pre-certification before a work can be published — allegedly, and questioningly, serving as a stamp of approval that assures the reader of its quality, validity, and accuracy. Today’s peer review is different in substance, but not in form, from the pre-publication censorship that so enraged Milton and led him to write his _Areopagitica_. The position he took nearly four hundred years ago reminds us that pre-publication restraint is the expres-sion of the interlinked fears of nonconformity, of the vulnerability of professional territorial turf, of disturbance of the status quo, and fear of independence of thought and resulting innovation. We are reminded that the principal target of intellectual suppression is the creative mind.
date: 2017-06-02
date_type: published
refereed: FALSE
referencetext: Bartlett, Steven James (2005). The Pathology of Man: A Study of Human Evil. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.

Bartlett, Steven James (2011). Normality Does Not Equal Mental Health: The Need to Look Elsewhere for Standards of Good Psychological Health. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.

Milton, John (1973/1644). Areopagitica and On Education. K. M. Lea (Ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

citation:   Bartlett, Dr. Steven James  (2017) Peer Review — An Insult to the Reader and to Society: Milton's View.      
document_url: http://cogprints.org/10261/1/Bartlett_Peer%20Review%20as%20an%20Insult%20to%20the%20Reader.pdf