Pre-publication quality assessment by South African book
External reviewers suggested by book authorsare sometimes used, but only under specific circumstances:
We do this very seldom, but have on occasion done so if a book is highly specialised and there are very few specialists in that particular field. But then usually also employ a second reviewer (from a com- mercial press with university imprint).
If we are struggling to find reviewers in a very specialised field, we may use reviewers suggested to us, but this is not the norm (from a university press).
If the subject content is specialised and there are only a few recog- nised experts in the field, we will consider using an external reviewer suggested by the author(s) (from a university press).
International reviewersare sometimes used, but this seems to depend on the circumstances of a specific manuscript:
For most manuscripts, we try to get a local AND an international re- viewer (from a university press).
We focus on securing the most appropriate reviewer, regardless of location (from a science council press).
We do this when selling rights or doing a co-edition with a publisher abroad; or if the specialist on the subject is well-known and based abroad (from a commercial press with university imprint).
Established publishers thus have structures in place to help them to find suitably qualified external reviewers, often involving a systemiceditorial board or publications committee, but only occasionally an ad hoc panel of editorsfor a particular collected work:
Our Publications Committee consists of experts from a range of fields, each with a wide network. We have also developed a database over the years, and add authors who have previously published with us to the list (from a university press).
We work with an independent Editorial Board, with past readers and with existing authors. We keep track of who is working on what, within disciplines (from a science council press).
Sometimes a mechanism is suggested by the co-publisher abroad, or we get hold of a renowned international specialist (from a com- mercial press with university imprint).
We depend on word-of-mouth and on contacts in the academic field (from a multinational press in South Africa)
Our press has been operating for many years. Being part of the uni- versity structure means that we have access to a range of suitably qualified academic reviewers. A number of valuable contacts have been established over the years as well. From the reviewers that we know and use, additional names are passed on to us who we can consider using (from a university press).
In the special case of directly edited works,the decision to employ ex- ternal reviewers is determined by various factors:
If proof can be provided that the chapters have been previously re- viewed, then we will not always send the edited volume out for fur- ther review (from a university press).
We use external reviewers/editors if the authors are unknown to us, and have not published with us before, and/or if we are concerned about the quality of certain chapters and the coherence of the whole, etc, and/or if we want to sell rights internationally but the title is to be published under the university imprint (from a commercial press with university imprint).
Publishers seem to be sensitive to the possibility that an edited work can be a mere compilation and re-publication of existing work, and guard against this practice:
We don’t recycle academic work. A contribution to scholarship must be apparent to merit publication (from a science council press).
The compilation must be relevant/original in this form. It must have a binding and authoritative introduction to hold the collection to- gether (from a university press).
Some comments made by publishers on the editorial process reiterate the value accorded to peer review but also acknowledge that other considerations may be taken into account when considering publishing a book manuscript:
The peer-review process is relatively stringent in terms of scholarly merit, but it is not good at assessing potential markets. We add an extra screening internally to look at marketability when considering scholarly books (from a university press).
We have a formal, independent Editorial Board, comprising scholars of standing in the academic community. They have oversight of the review process, and deliberate on the merits of each publication and on our publishing policy. This is kept entirely separate from the fi- nancial and operational issues. Only once a recommendation to publish is reached by the Board will the Press be in a position to ac- cept a publication; the right to refuse to publish is afforded to the Press, however (from a science council press).
Reviewers know that that their reviews are confidential and that we expect frank comment ... unless of course they agree to their identity being revealed. If the review is ‘favourable’ and the reviewer agrees, we sometimes use snippets from their review to market the book (from a commercial press with university imprint).
The responses by South African publishers suggest that a variety of peer review-based practices are followed when manuscripts for monographs and edited volumes/collected works are submitted for possible publi- cation. Understandably, considerations besides scholarly quality (costs, marketability) are also taken into consideration, and it seems to be rare that these operational issues interfere with the separate, prior applica- tion of the quality criterion (i.e. that authors are required to ‘lower their scholarly quality’ in order to achieve publication).
The main issue is whether peer review of individual chaptersin the case of edited volumes/collected works is in fact comparable in rigour to that used by journals. The use by book publishers of generic editorial boards (i.e. boards overseeing a large variety of disciplinary fields) to exercise the kinds of editorial discretion used by discipline-focused journal editors and editorial boards generically represents a dilution of scholarly aut- hority in quality assurance. The deployment of panels of authoritative editors(often doubling as peer reviewers) for specific volumes strength- ens the mechanism, and generally addresses the important issues of scholarly synthesis discussed in Chapter 1 of this Report, but it does not necessarily generate equivalence to independent peer review of indi- vidual chapters,and it conflates the necessarily separate functions of editing and peer review.
As it is extremely desirable that edited/collected works should be part of the scholarly literature, the conclusion appears to be inescapable that a general optimisation of quality assurance practice should be pro- moted in the publication of scholarly books, especially in the case of ed- ited/collected works.This could realistically be achieved by separating the functions of publishers from those of book-specific ‘Editorial Panels’
set up for each collection of manuscripts, to oversee the achievement of the kinds of scholarly objectives described in Chapter 1 of this Report.
In addition, when the members of editorial panels do not have the ex- pertise to perform independent peer review of each intended chapter, genuine peers should be invited to do so, using criteria similar to those of scholarly journals, including the special features of originality and
‘uniqueness’ (i.e. no re-publication of already published work).
Many journals publish authoritative reviewsof certain topics within their focus areas, as value-adding features that sometimes attain the special quality of ‘new syntheses’ of existing conceptual frameworks. Such re- views are also very commonly commissioned in the design of new ed- ited/collected works. The kind of peer review applied in journals to such manuscripts is a variant of the standard quality-emphasising model, but which at minimum applies the criterion of originality more in the sense of ‘uniqueness’ than of true first-in-field publication. This approach is ob- viously also suitable for book chapters, and thus adds to the case for in- tegrating them into ‘literature’ through the use of best-practice modes of peer review and editorial discretion.