Scholars have come to rely on peer review to ensure that the research they publish is valid—that the conclusions are justified by the data and that the ideas presented are new and important. However, peer review requires unbiased experts—people in the same field as the author who can support the publication of research that meets these criteria. Is there really such a thing as an unbiased expert? Does peer review need fixing? And if so, how should changes to the system be evaluated?
Dr. Siegel directs the Center for Science Communication at Vanderbilt University. She has been the editor of the scholarly journals Cell and Developmental Cell, was the Founding Executive Director of the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and was one of the launch editors of PLoS Biology.
Co-sponsored by the Scholarly Communication Program and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, this event is free and open to the public. It is the first of six events this academic year in a speaker series organized by the Scholarly Communication Program. Join us on October 18 for "Radical Open Access in the Humanities" with Open Humanities Press cofounder Gary Hall and on November 9 for Columbia University Professor of Religion Mark Taylor's discussion of his forthcoming book Crisis on Campus. Follow the series remotely via Twitter at http://twitter.com/ScholarlyComm. Video will be distributed through the Program's website and Columbia University's iTunesU page, as well as on YouTube. For information on the series, Research without Borders: The Changing World of Scholarly Communication, please email Kathryn Pope at kp2002@columbia.edu, or visit http://scholcomm.columbia.edu/events.