Dr. Grandon Gill holds an AB (cum laude) from Harvard College and an MBA (high distinction) and DBA from Harvard Business School. He teaches introductory and intermediate courses in programming for undergraduates and also teaches case method capstone courses in the MIS undergraduate, MS-MIS and Executive MBA programs. He has also taught a variety of IT courses during his tenure at USF, from computer systems concepts to doctoral case methods. He received USF’s Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2007 and 2013.
Dr. Gill has published or edited more than 40 case studies, most recently for the Journal of IT Education: Discussion Cases. His recent book, Informing with the Case Method, has been the basis of workshops in the U.S. and around the globe. Thus far in 2013, venues have included the NSF TUES PI Conference in Washington D.C., RMIT: Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City, the United Nations Staff College in Turin, Italy, and at the 3rd International Symposium on Integrating Research, Education, and Problem Solving (Special Track on Case Methodologies), Orlando Florida.
Dr. Gill is passionate about using technology as a teaching tool and has studied distance learning, strategy, and practice, alternative course designs, and tools for course development and delivery, all under the general heading of informing science. His research in this area has been published in many journals, including Informing Science, Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, the Journal of Information Systems Education, eLearn, and the Journal of IT Education. He has also published multiple times in MIS Quarterly, the MIS discipline’s leading journal—his most recent article considering the MIS fields from an informing science perspective. His academic service includes stints on the editorial boards of six journals. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Informing Science: the International Journal of the Emerging Transdiscipline and the Journal of IT Education: Discussion Cases. He serves as a Governor and Fellow of the Informing Science Institute.
Professor Nagib Callaos is the Founding President of the a 32 years old Multi-Disciplinary Organization oriented to 1) solve real life problems which mostly require multi-disciplinary teams and 2) to synergistically relate all disciplinary and inter-disciplinary departments of the University Simon Bolivar with the public and the private sectors as well as with business and the Venezuelan society at large. He is also the Founding President of the IIIS and the Founding Editor in Chief of the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics (JSCI). He is former Dean of Research and Development of the University Simon Bolivar.
Professor Callaos was also the founding president of several organizations on research, development, and technological innovation, e.g. The Foundation of Research and Development of the University Simon Bolivar, the founding president of the Venezuelan Fund for Technological Innovations (created by presidential decree), which required the evaluation of projects from any discipline as well as technological innovations that required multi-disciplinary teams, The Venezuelan Association of Executives in Patents and Copyrights. As a professional, Dr. Callaos was for many years consultant in Information Systems in the largest corporations in Venezuela including its Central Bank. In this context he is the Founding president of a consulting 32 years old consulting firm in information systems and software engineering. His main research, academic, and professional activities, along almost 50 years were in the area of Systemic Methodologies of Information System Development, Group Decision Support Systems, and Action-Research mainly via Operations Research. He tutored more than 100 undergraduate and graduate theses and produced more than 100 research papers and reflection articles. He has also edited, or co-edited many books, mostly conferences proceedings.
In a survey of members of the Scientific Research Society, "only 8% agreed that 'peer review works well as it is'." (Chubin and Hackett, 1990, Peerless Science, Peer Review and U.S. Science Policy; State University of New York Press, p. 192). What has been done on this critical issue since 1990?
Chubin and Hackett (1990) resumed their findings as follows: "Today peer review is besieged on both practical and symbolic grounds. In their complaints, critics point to the operating characteristics of peer review: low level of consensus among reviewers, inconsistencies of judgment, errors of omission (when a flawed or fraudulent manuscript slips through) and commission (when a competitor's manuscript is blocked or delayed, or its results or arguments are stolen), the partisan flavor of reviewer comments (which seemingly violates principles of impartiality), and the unsettling influence of authors' characteristics on the fate of their manuscripts. These are neither a blueprint for selecting the best science nor an enactment of the values we hope science will honor" (p.122).
David Kaplan a highly cited author, stated briefly the problem at hand, saying that "Despite its importance as the ultimate gatekeeper of scientific publication and funding, peer review is known to engender bias, incompetence, excessive expense, ineffectiveness, and corruption. A surfeit of publications has documented the deficiencies of this system … and italics added] Yet so far, in spite of the teeth gnashing, nothing is being chewed…Investigation of the peer-review system has failed to provide validation for its use…In one study, previously published articles were altered to disguise their origin and resubmitted to the journals that had originally published the manuscripts…Most of these altered papers were not recognized and were rejected on supposed "scientific grounds." (How to Fix Peer Review, 1995, The Scientist, Vol. 19, Issue 1, Jun. 6. p. 10) [emphasis and italics added]. Kaplan’s suggested solution is an essential part of the two-tier process implemented, since 2006, by the International Institute of Informatics and Systemics (IIIS) in its conferences and journals publications.
When Horrobin was editor of Prostaglandins and Medicine, and Medical Hypothesis titled his comments on the subject as "Peer Review: A Philosophically Faulty Concept which is Proving Disastrous for Science" [emphasis and italics added]. (The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 5, No. 2, June 1982, 1982, pp. 217-218).
When David Lazarus was Editor-in-Chief for the American Physical Society (which publishes The Physical Review, Physical Review Letters and Review of Modern Physics) asserted that "In only about 10-15% of cases do two referees agree on acceptance or rejection the first time around." [emphasis and italics added]. (Interreferee agreement and acceptance rates in physics, The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 5, No. 2, June 1982, p. 219) Lazarus added that "…the peer-reviewed system's being of finite value, particularly when used deceptively…We [in the Physical Review] rely on the honesty and integrity of our authors - and their own self-selection of the quality of the papers they send us - as much as on our referees and editors, to ensure the quality of our journals." [emphasis and italics added] In the same context, Hopps, in an article titled "Peer Review: A Trust, Not a Vault" asserts that the submission of spurious manuscripts to evaluate a journal-review process is an example of "violation of trust between journal and author." (Social Work, 34, p.3-4. Referenced in Speck, R. L.,1993, Publication Peer Review: An Annotated Bibliography) [emphasis and italics added]
Ziman, former editor of Science Progress, affirms that "The peer-review process seems not merely imperfect: It is an entirely useless, if not positively harmful activity, based upon quite erroneous assumptions." (Bias, incompetence, or bad management? The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 5, No. 2, June, pp.245-246) [emphasis and italics added]
Among the conclusions Weller (2002) made in her book, after analyzing more than 200 studies on peer reviewing in more than 300 journals, affirmed that "Peer review's outstanding weaknesses is that error of judgment, either unintentional or intentional, are sometimes made. Asking someone to volunteer personal time evaluating the work of another, possibly a competitor, by its very nature invites a host of potential problems, anywhere from holding a manuscript and not reviewing it to a careless review to fraudulent behavior." (Editorial Peer Review, its Strength and Weaknesses, 2002, p. 308).
This is why the International Institute of Informatics and Systemics (IIIS) initiated in 2005 a process combining Action-Research, Action-Learning and Action-Design in order to continuously improving its peer-review methodology. As a consequence, the IIIS have been continuously increasing the IIIS effectiveness of peer-review. The following are example of scholars that have been participating in IIIS’s conferences for about ten years.
Dr. Jeremy Horne, President-emeritus of the Southwest Area Division, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), USA affirmed that “IIIS had conferences specifically devoted to the quality of the peer review process, and I discovered that there was a great tumult in academia over it. Editors of journals, such as Lancet[Horton, Richard (2000). "Genetically modified food: consternation, confusion, and crack-up". MJA 172 (4): 148–9. PMID 10772580.], scorned the quality of peer review, but in all the conferences with which I have been associated, not one ever devoted the much needed attention to improving it. The IIIS’ conference on Knowledge Generation and Communications Management (KGCM) did. If other organizations and conferences … devoted even 1/10 the attention as IIIS has, there surely would be more serious discussion meeting the concerns of about data manipulation, fraud, and other quality problems
Professor Grandon Gill, Editor-in-Chief of Informing Science, Editor of the Journal of IT Education and Founding Editor of Journal of Information Technology Education, affirmed that the IIIS developed “some of the most innovative peer review procedures that I have ever seen.”.
Now that Block Chain Technologies seems to have a high potential for definitely improving the effectiveness and the fairness of peer review, the IIIS scheduled this next conversational session to inter-share information and ideas regarding this issue. This participatory panel provides context and introduce the next conversational session.
