Wikiversity talk:Review board/En

From Wikiversity

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Original Research is a venture being considered for Wikiversity. This would allow members to post unverified data they had collected themselves in the form of a formal research project.

As outlined at User:Xenon/Research, the main issues with publishing original research are ethical considerations and inaccurate or falsified data. One solution to this is to have a group of community-approved users tasked to manually verify each research project and deal with them individually.

There is not necessarily a need to "approve" original research projects before they are considered "published" on Wikiversity - all members would be able to post the research, and the review board would help the community make sure that research projects are conducted according to Wikiversity research guidelines.

The Review Board would be made up of "Referees" - Wikiversity members nominated then accepted by the community in a similar manner to how Custodians are selected.

Referees would be responsible for:

• Making sure all original research is marked with the appropriate template
• Making sure all original research follows the Research Guidelines
• Making sure all original research that is ethically questionable has official IRB approval
• Making sure data in original research is not manipulated after posting

Referees are not Custodians - they do not have the privileges to deal with breaches in the guidelines, beyond editing the research article. Referees would request that Custodians take action where necessary. However, Referees may become Custodians, and vice versa.

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I do not like the term "referee"; I do not think it reflects the function of a review board. Additionally, I am concerned that members of review boards may not be equipped to review research not within their speciality. What is appropriate for Psychology, English, History, or Math is entirely different, and specialists within each field would be the only ones effectively capable of reviewing research conducted in such fields. Jade Knight 02:58, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree that "referee" is not optimum, but I'm not sure what would be better, just "review board member"? The term "referee" was selected with an eye to the future when it might be possible to have a formal peer review system (see Wikiversity:Research guidelines/En#Towards Wiki publishing) within Wikiversity. I agree that expert knowledge is usually most effective in a narrow subject area. The ultimate goal is to have multiple experts in each of many subject areas, but we have to start where we are, which is a relatively small community doing its best. --JWSchmidt 05:20, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

At the moment, this seems to be an issue of semantics. However, I imagine that for example our "referee" must have good communication skills. Maybe we should draw up a list of what qualities a referee should be like? --HappyCamper 19:46, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea! BTW, I'd call referees "experts", "Peers", "moderators", "tutors" or even "Facilitators" over "referees". I particularly like the term "advisor", especially if it is used in conjunction with their area(s) of expertise. Jade Knight 09:13, 3 September 2008 (UTC)