[WikiEN-l] So much for books as reliable references!

Thu Feb 2 18:02:40 UTC 2006

Stan Shebs wrote:

> Actually, it's sort of interesting that this is news. While it's
> common practice to have peer review for scholarly books, the "peer"
> part of the term should be a hint that it's not the publisher doing
> the checking! My guess is that our reverence for the printed page
> is such that we just assume no one would dare to print without
> being certain of its correctness.

In many fields the peer-review of even scholarly books is not all that 
high.  In the sciences, journal articles hold much more weight than 
books, because there's a perception that anybody can get a book published.

-Mark