The Community Collaborative Review tool is in development as a part of the Public Philosophy Journal’s (PPJ) ongoing sustainability strategy. The tool provides an opportunity for the PPJ to conduct values-enacted, community-driven peer review cycles that recognize scholarship both by the author and by the reviewers. Because of the focus on values in the Formative Peer Review process that the PPJ team has developed, users of the CCR tool will be able to identify parameters of review including naming and categorizing values that they wish reviewers to engage with.
Since the PPJ is the focus of the tool, ongoing development has focused on their use case. However, the tool is being designed to be usable by other organizations and with other tools in the long-term. Below I’ve outlined a few use cases I can imagine may work with CCR as the product matures.
Case 1: Review for Humanities Commons CORE Deposits
Authors of a document intended for upload to Humanities Commons CORE could use CCR to engage in peer review from members of their own communities or a broader community of reviewers willing to participate. Authors would be able to determine their own set of review parameters and values based on the particular composition being reviewed, or by a set of personal values they have identified as part of their scholarly work.
After peer review, the document would be published along with evidence of peer review in CORE. Creating the ability to conduct a more visible peer review process prior to a CORE deposit would serve to provide more weight to contributions to CORE should an author desire, and could allow for deposits to carry an indicator that they have undergone a values-enacted review cycle in accordance with the work being conducted with the HumetricsHSS project.
Case 2: Facilitating Review in Communities of Practice
Communities of practice to conduct peer review within their community on a variety of compositions. Because these products may be published in a variety of spaces and theoretically the evidence of peer review could be attached or connected in some way to the publication it could provide an opportunity to strengthen this work in ways not currently facilitated.
Using CCR could facilitate a more meaningful review process in communities where peer feedback is the norm. Many currently available peer review tools are aimed at course-based or student project/assignment peer review and do not facilitate ongoing community review in that way that professional communities of practice may require. “Editors” of these works could use the system to provide review processes guided by review criteria that are in line with organizational or group goals and values.
Because a more values-based/enacted approach to peer review requires some thought on the front side of the process, it would best work for groups who have identified a set of values by which they work, publish, etc. In a case like this, a process to guide groups in developing values and parameters for review such as the HumetricsHSS Values Sorter could be helpful.
Case 3: Review for Proceedings, Grey Literature, Collections, or Formative Stage Publications
Many who work in higher education or other academic institutions are regularly producing scholarly work that has limited opportunity for peer review. Grey Literature publications, for example, are works typically produced and distributed outside of traditional channels. The CCR platform could provide opportunities for peer review of this type of publication, including the ability to attach evidence of the review to the publication.
Conferences and other gatherings could make use of the system for crowd-sourced peer review. For example, if we used CCR to review a set of papers for a panel or presentation and left it open in the system it could allow for audience members to give feedback/review during or after the conference.
Case 4: Peer Review for Journals Across Various Publishing Platforms
The CCR tool is designed to facilitate a particular type of peer review that is rooted in identifying values and enacting them as a core part of the review. The tool could provide the framework, and facilitate peer review for any number of monographs, journals, or other collections of writing that have need for peer review but are published on another platform such as Manifold or Fulcrum.