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Science Communication on the Internet: Old genres meet new genres
Edited by María José Luzón and Carmen Pérez-Llantada
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 308] 2019
► pp. 107–130

Chapter 6
Continuity and change

Negotiating relationships in traditional and online peer review genres

The move to new open access formats in scientific peer review is thought to have influenced the way referees and authors interact. This chapter considers the genre of author responses to referees in terms of relational work, and compares published responses in an anonymized online open access review system with a similar corpus of confidential responses to referees submitted by traditional means. In general, the online open access responses are longer, more syntactically complex and show more evidence of relational work than the confidential responses. However, when analyzed qualitatively, the proportions of different compliant and non-compliant moves are found to be similar in the two corpora. This chapter thus illustrates continuity and change in one genre’s transition from traditional to open, online format.
Keywords: peer review, open access, author response, online genres, scientific writing
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Ongoing developments in peer review
    • 2.1Professional perspectives on open and confidential peer review
    • 2.2Genre perspectives on open and confidential peer review
  • 3.Theoretical framework
  • 4.Corpus and methodology
  • 5.Results and discussion: Qualitative move analysis
  • 6.Results and discussion: Quantitative analysis of salient features
    • 6.1Interpersonal features
    • 6.2Textual features: Length, organization and complexity
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 4 December 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.308.06bre
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