On Oct 18, 4:11 pm, Jim Thill - Hiawatha Cyclery <[email protected]> wrote: > I somewhat doubt that BQ is peer-reviewed in the same way that science > journal articles are peer-reviewed.
When I was working in science, I reviewed a number of papers, and had mine reviewed. The process is the same as the one we use at BQ. The copy editor (not Jan!) gets a submission and decides whether it warrants another look or not. If the paper makes assertions about history or technical issues, it goes out to review. The reviewers are outsiders who are not directly involved with BQ: Jim Papadopoulos, Frank Berto, Andreas Oehler and a few others. They are very qualified and certainly not loath to criticize what they read. If they raise objections, we don't publish the article unless the objections are addressed by the authors. Like scientific journals, we also publish all corrections and rebuttals concerning articles in BQ. (Does any blog do that?) I think the fact that we had to retract only a handful of statements in the last 9.5 years shows that the process works. You may have different preferences in bikes – we all do, even among the BQ crew – but when you read in Bicycle Quarterly that Bike A has more wheel flop than Bike B, you can be confident that this is true. Whether you prefer bikes with a lot of wheel flop is a different matter, but the basic facts have stood the test of time. We try to expand the horizon of the magazine without diluting from what makes it special. After all, if you want a test of the latest Trek, from a rider who just loves getting on a shiny new bike, you can get that elsewhere. Technical articles in BQ must break new ground and be well-documented (which is perhaps why we get few outside submissions - it takes a huge amount of work to do that type of research). Historical articles must be documented as well. (I have a lovely article on Speedwell titanium bikes that needs more documentation before we can publish it.) Ride stories must be both well-written and on a topic that is "off the beaten path" in some way or other. Basically, it has to meet high standards to be worthy of inclusion in Bicycle Quarterly. Each issue of BQ takes about 3-4 months of full-time work to put together. Fortunately, that work is spread among a number of people, so I have some time to work on product design for Compass Bicycles and even ride my bike. A blog, like our "Off the Beaten Path," is relatively simple and takes a few hours for each post. Jan Heine Editor Bicycle Quarterly http://www.bikequarterly.com Follow our blog at http://janheine.wordpress.com/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
