[Roleplaying] Peer review articles for live roleplaying

[Markus Montola]

> While the "hobby"-publications are good, there are significant  
> differences in them and scientific journal article and conference  
> contributions. It has to do with how the latter must be shaped to take  
> part in a debate that goes on in the field where it is written.

The KP books are hardly even in quality.

The stuff that I've written with Jaakko, Annika Waern, Staffan Jonsson 
and others to KP books is roughly on par in quality and in style with 
the things I've written to peer-review conferences. In my own opinion. 
The difference is that with KP crowd we can go into extreme details, 
such as the pervasive larp interaction model we presented in 2007.

Sometimes the KP format is even better, since you can skip trivialities 
such as describing larping and stuff. Personally I think the paper I 
wrote with Staffan to KP06 on Prosopopeia is far better than the one we 
wrote with Staffan, Annika and Martin Ericsson to ACE conference.

I don't agree with all the papers in the academic section of PW. But all 
of them were given the best treatments that me, Jaakko and the experts 
we consulted could give. Wherever I review, I tend to notice that some 
papers that I was queasy with get through, maybe for the best -- just 
that reviewer doesn't need to accept 100% to pass a paper.

Pros come in many forms to KP crowd. Not only researchers, but there are 
also larp-using educators (Malik Hyltoft), professional journalists and 
critics (Johanna Koljonen), larp professionals (Claus Raasted), and so 
forth.

The thing with that material is that you have to a) know who's writing 
in order to understand their perspective, and b) be critical yourself.

Before going on, I'd like to know what you need peer review for, for 
yourself or for your supervisors?

Some inconvenient truths:

  - Utter bullshit sometimes passes peer review.
  - Many reviews are done by clueless people, who tend to accept papers 
not based on their content but on their form.
  - Brilliant thinking is published outside peer review. You shouldn't 
refer to the peer-reviewed publication but to the thinking.
  - Blind review is rarely really blind. In prototype studies, almost never.
  - Review is less about choosing valid and correct papers, and much 
more about choosing the best papers from the submissions at hand -- 
especially in conferences.

I mean -- it's a flawed system anyway. Perhaps the best there is, but 
flawed nevertheless. When deciding whether to cite or not, you are the 
judge, whether it was DBPR or not.


  - Markus