The New York Times ran a front-page story yesterday about open peer review, featuring an experiment conducted by MediaCommons for The Shakespeare Quarterly using CommentPress. The article is here and the experiment itself is here. Both MediaCommons and CommentPress were born at the institute; it’s exciting to see our efforts get such prominent notice.
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So it hit the front page of the NYT after years of conversation here (light years in terms of digital time.) I remember your interest in the way Wikipedia was being constructed, and in the validity and importance of collective thought. I am happy about the recognition of MediaCommons, but happier to see it as the forum for an “alternative to peer review.”
I’m also interested in why this is getting mainstream coverage. There was also an article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (http://chronicle.com/article/Leading-Humanities-Journal-/123696/, behind a paywall)
One (rather obvious?) guess: this experiment was conducted *not* by a monograph author who works in media studies, gaming or other digital-friendly topics (Ken Wark, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, et al.) but by a traditional Shakespeare journal. The media coverage may indicate that it’s considered news-worthy when the old school uses such new tools. It may seem like light years in digital time, but it’s relatively quick in the humanities timescale (where a 10-year-old work can have real currency).