Saturday, August 23, 2014

Rigor, relevance, value

In a lecture on peer reviewing, I was taught that, as a reviewer, I should comment on the scientific rigor, relevance, and value of the manuscript (I'm talking about studies in management science, not natural science). Very well, I thought, the 'relevance' of course refers to whether the study addresses an interesting topic from a practical point of view. But, no no, the 'relevance' was meant to be purely scientific: does it address a gap in the literature? Then it must be 'value' that refers to the study's interest to the real world, right? Wrong again. Value means the kind of contribution made to the literature. Wow, so none of the reviewing criteria is concerned with actual real-world relevance! Isn't that a guarantee for academia disconnecting itself from the real world? Or would such a criterion be a harmful constraint on scientific inquiry, and is the disconnect prevented through other mechanisms that may be temporally separated (through research budget allocations for instance)?

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