The Peer-Review Fetish
| Peter Klein |
I respect peer review as much as the next person and have done my share of publishing in peer-reviewed outlets. But I question the belief, expressed often in academic, media, and policy circles, that “not peer reviewed” means “worthless” and “peer reviewed” means “should be accepted without question.” (A corollary belief is that “funded by a private foundation or company” means “biased” while “funded by a government grant” means “neutral.”) In practice, the distinctions are not nearly so clean.
My thoughts on this were triggered by a revealing statement from Ronald Coase, quoted by Josh Gans and George Shepherd in their study of famous economics papers that were initially rejected, about his limited experience with peer review: “I have never found any difficulty in getting my articles published. I have either published in house journals (e.g. Economica) or the article was written as a result of a request (e.g. for a conference) and publication was assured.” Certainly no one would discount the importance Coase’s 1937 and 1960 papers because they weren’t rigorously peer reviewed. (Can you imagine the inane referee remarks that “The Problem of Social Cost” would have generated?) More generally, consider the Journal of Law and Economics during Coase’s editorship in the 1960s and 1970s — the high-water mark of the JLE‘s influence. Or, for that matter, Public Choice under Gordon Tullock, the JPE under George Stigler, or the Journal of Libertarian Studies under Murray Rothbard. These were edited somewhat unevenly, led by charismatic and strong-willed editors with idiosyncratic tastes, yet have been vastly influential in their respective fields.
Peer review serves a useful function and probably improves the quality of published output, on average. But let’s not make a fetish of it.