[Roleplaying] Peer review articles for live roleplaying

[Geir-Tore Brenne]

I support the idea of a meeting at KP. I would also support the idea
of a more broad roleplay-meeting, but I think that is unrealistic and
more complicated to organise.

> 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.

The knutepunkt books are the best source for written information about
the nordic larp tradition. Some of the articles are excellent. But,
they are written primarily for the people who come to knutepunkt. It
is a fairly small group of people. They are probably very little
quoted outside of the KP-circles.  With peer review articles, comes
distribution. You get into the databases - webspirs, and jstor, if the
paper is really good. Within academia - at least in sociology - it is
common to distinguish between "high-impact" and "low-impact" journals.
Field specific journals are usually low impact, and tend to address
questions  they are read by those who are engaged in that specific
field. For example, "Sociology of sports" or "Leisure studies" would
be typical low impact. On the other hand, there are high impact
journals. These are very often on a higher level of abstraction, and
the best appeal to readers of one subdiscipline, but of of many
broader discplines. For example, European Journal of Cultural Studies
is probably read by sociologists, anthropologists, people from media
studies, ethnologists and folklorists, and so on. I think that both
types of debates are important, but so far, very few has published
anything about live roleplay for a broader audience. I think there is
much to gain here.

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

In Norway - and I believe, many other countries in Europe - peer
review articles are really the only ting that "counts" as scientific
article publications. Book chapters may count, if it is from an
academic press that uses some type of peer review in the selection
process. In order for a journal to "count", it must be acredited by a
national organ. I have looked into getting International journal of
roleplaying accredited, but I am in doubt if they satisfy the
requirements (i think not, but i will try). Publication of scientific
articles is important in any kind of research-related application -
jobs or grants. So I posed the question both because I was concerned
with the literature review of previous research (which you are very
knowledgeable of, thank you) and because I needed tips of suitable
journals for publication.

>
> 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.

Agree on most of your comments. It tend to be conservative and overly
method-oriented. But its about figuring out the codes and rhethoric
that one must use, because it is much to gain by going into the
debates as well.


- Geir



-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Geir-Tore Brenne (Phd student)
Dept. of Sociology and Human Geography
University of Oslo
Moltke Moes vei 31
0851 Oslo

E-mail: g.t.brenne at sosiologi.uio.no
Tlf. mobile Norway: (+47)92446992 or (+47)40346205
Tlf. USA: (+1)2244201131 or  (+1)8473804102

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