No Bias, No Merit: The Case against Blind Submission

. It follows then that the machinery of the institution does not grow up to accommodate needs that are independently perceived but that, rather, the institutional machinery comes first and the needs then follow, as do the ways of meeting them. In short, the work to be done is not what the institution responds to but what it create

t "[ilf Northrop Frye should write an essay attacking archetypal criticism, the article would by definition be of much greater significance than an article by another scholar attack- ing the same approach" (Schaefer 5). The reason, of course, is that the approach is not something in- dependent of what Northrop Frye has previously said about it; indeed, in large part archetypal criticism is what Northrop Frye has said about it, and therefore anything he now says about it is not so much to be measured against an independent truth as it is to be regarded, at least potentially, as a new pronouncement of what the truth will hereafter be said to be

. Predict- ably, Schaefer's statement provoked a lively exchange in which the lines of battle were firmly, and, as I will argue, narrowly, drawn. On the one hand those who agreed with Schaefer feared that a policy of anonymous review would involve a surrender "to the spurious notions about objectivity and absolute value that . . . scientists and social scientists banter about"; on the other hand those whose primary concern was with the fairness of the procedure believed that "[jiustice should be blind" ("Correspon- dence" 4). Each side concedes the force of the opposing argument-the proponents of anonymous re- view admit that impersonality brings its dangers, and the defenders of the status quo acknowledge that it is important to prevent "extraneous considerations" from interfering with the identification of true merit (5)

A study of Galileo's works could alter our knowledge ofthe history, but not the science, of mechanics; whereas, a re-examination of the books of Freud or Marx can transform ourunderstanding of psychoanalysis or Marxism

In keeping with this distinction, we can understand why it isinevitable that practitioners of such discourses must 'return to theorigin*.

ficially,then, the initiation of discursive practices appears similar to thefounding of any scientific endeavour, but I believe there is a funda-/ mental difference

We can conclude that, unlike a proper name, which moves fromthe interior of a discourse to the real person outside who producedit, the name of the author remains at the contours of texts -separating one from the other, defining their form, and character-izing their mode of existence. It points to the existence of certaingroups of discourse and refers to the status of this discourse withina society and culture. The author's name is not a function of aman's civil status, nor is it fictional; it is situated in the breach,among the discontinuities, which gives rise to new groups of dis-course and their singular mode of existence. C

he case for more collaborative work can be made. Indeed, most of us do it already, to some degree. We tend to discuss our ideas with colleagues and seek trusted opinions. We present talks at conferences and seminars, and use the feedback to develop ideas before publication. We solicit comments on drafts. Colleagues share a research environment that, if it is effective, contributes to the quality of all output. Yet when the work appears, the standard model is still sole ownership. A colleague could have given a lot of input, discussing ideas or providing comments on early drafts, yet their accepted reward is only to appear in the list of acknowledgements. This seems a paltry return on what can be a considerable amount of effort, an effort that is obviously a degree of collaboration. Perhaps one tries to mitigate the paltry reward by extracting a reciprocal amount of uncredited assistance in return.

Combination acts

However, a diverse body of work on thesocially situated nature of scientific communication alreadyexists which points the way. This ranges from Crane’s(1969) pioneering analyses of invisible colleges throughLatour and Woolgar’s (1979) classic study of laboratory lifeat the Salk Institute to Traweek’s (1992) richly texturedethnography of the HEP community. In addition, the workof Schatz and colleagues on the Worm Community Systemproject, which was designed to capture the full range ofknowledge, formal and informal, of the community of mo-lecular biologists who study the nematode worm C. elegans(see: http://www.canis.uiuc.edu/projects/wcs/index.html)can provide useful insights; so, too, research into the mate-rial practices and social interactions of scientists working incollaboratories, such as the Upper Atmospheric ResearchCollaboratory (see: http://intel.si.umich.edu/crew/Research/resrch08.htm) or the Space, Physics & Aeronomy ResearchCollaboratory (see: http://intel.si.umich.edu/sparc/) at theUniversity of Michigan

is wiseto avoid generalizations and to concentrate instead on show-ing how interactions between coworkers, specifically theorchestration of information exchange and coauthorship, aregrounded in local culture.

iomedical collaborations are moreheterogeneous and socially diffuse in character and do notappear to have the same degree of multilayered, internalreview as HEP research collaborations. T

TheHEP research community is thus characterized by highlevels of internal scrutiny, mutual trust—witness, for in-stance, the institutionalized practice of relying upon, andciting, preprints—and peer tracking, such that it is notsusceptible to systematic fraud. Contrary

The answer probably has to do with the relative intensityof socialization and oral communication (Traweek, 1992,pp. 120 –123), along with the character of the organizationalstructures and value systems, which define collaborations inlarge-scale, high-energy physics and biomedical research.

s Rennie and Flanagin(1994) remind us, there is no standard method for determin-ing order, nor any universalistic criteria for conferring au-thorship status:

But while the traditional model of authorship persists, mostnoticeably in the humanities, it is no longer the sole ordominant model in certain scientific specialties.

lphabetization through weightedlisting to reverse seniority (e.g., Spiegel & Keith-Spiegel,1970; Riesenberg & Lundberg, 1990).