The new pool of cheap labor: everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D. – Jeff Howe, "The Rise of Crowdsourcing"

Harnessing the Power of Crowdsourcing

Even though we are now able to harness crowdsourcing efforts for the Web 2.0, we are still using an antiquated method to review research papers. The peer review process is a cornerstone of scholarship, and it is something I’ve written about as being indispensible part to maintain quality papers. However, we should consider new approaches, aligned with today’s technology and mindset, for peer review of research.

Crowdsourcing is a term coined by Jeff Howe, in a June 2006 Wired magazine article where he noted the different ways meaningful work can be achieved by a large community of people in the form of an open call. We see it today in open-source software like Linux, and in product reviews of many online shopping sites. Howe noted that even research and development can be performed with brilliant minds outside the corporate setting. For peer review of research, we can similarly tap those brilliant minds, both scientific and creative, to offer meaningful reviews of submitted manuscripts.

However, quality reviewers are not "cheap labor". There are articles about how businesses profit from volunteers that provide product reviews and other content as part of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. This is all normal aspects of social networking these days. I would argue that paper reviewers are also an army of volunteers, ready to commit a reasonable amount of time to critique and offer suggestions to improve research. By all means, we should not cheapen the idea that this pool of talent is "cheap labor", but we certainly can adopt the idea of crowdsourcing for paper reviews.

(Continues on the next post)