Q1: How does peer review work for historians? Especially considering its inherently a social study, subjective, human based (both the studied and person doing the studying), interpretive discipline? There is a huge swath between negationism and requiring agreement with the orthodox narrative. It seems like there are threads on the evolution of science and peer review here, but nothing on peer review for history journals.
Q2: For some reason, it didn't occur to me that peer review for history journals existed until recently, like right about just now. I started doing research for a speech in my public speaking class, and my topic was on the alt-right and bad history (Lost Cause, the "flag" and the monuments), I joked that I would have gotten shot for this speech if I was in Texas but maybe not because of my skin tone (I'm of Chinese descent), and then I also realized that joke was probably a bit off-color, but didn't say anything because I had to give my speech. Reflecting upon my poor performance (I also made some mistakes I was warned about ahead of time, was quite incoherent and rambling, and took 10 minutes instead of the allocated 5 because I was ill prepared and didn't practice), I knew that Lost Causers had won in the school system, but this question hit me, "can the persistence of said beliefs (sorry if this breaks the 20 year rule, but if it does, then I'm only asking up to the limit) be attributed to the lack of understanding of peer review and lack of (public) access to proper historical resources?" I know the Lost Cause has been around for quite awhile due to people like Jubal Early and Jefferson Davis, but has it simply been that peer review hasn't been around long enough or hasn't diffused properly?
Q3: Also. I think I found a mistake, that might have spread to another author, but I have been unable to verify because I'm a poor college student, and the databases that I have access to don't include recent scholarship, which means you have to go to the academic journal itself and pay more money.. which I don't have, and I hope my school does have.
The Wikipedia articles are suspiciously close in the quotes, and according to the forum post, it looks like a mistake was made, first made by Blight (I even read one of his other articles in the research process and glanced through others, he seems quite credible), and another person copied his mistake, named Budiansky, which seems to have made its way to both Chernow's Grant and Egerton's Wars of Reconstruction. Am I wrong? Its possible maybe both Longstreet and Mosby felt the same way and said it in a similar wording that caused a mix-up?
https://civilwartalk.com/threads/longstreet-quote.120507/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Longstreet#cite_ref-FOOTNOTEChernow2017857_213-0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_S._Mosby#cite_ref-74
Q4: Are books published separately not part of the print magazine peer reviewed?
Q5: I asked my communication professor who teaches my public speaking class in question this, but didn't get much of an answer (just saying use best judgment and keep in mind the parameters of your speech and that it just depends on the topic and length, but if you actually have to give a serious enough speech, it might be worth giving out a separate sheet of references), but how many sources is too much? See, I was outlining for my 5 minute speech, and I was unsure what to talk about, so I just started writing down thoughts, and then trying to make some coherent bullet points, and then just started typing and making sense of them. I actually broke some of the assignment rules on structure for the speech, but I ended up typing a 2.8k word monstrosity, which would have taken at least 30 minutes (if I speak at a normal pace, maybe 20 at a debater speed), and I had 35 sources. Not all of them were peer-reviewed works, but how do I know whats too much for the level of depth I can go into for a general undergraduate college audience? And how do I not misrepresent historians? Something tells me this is the exact problem science communicators have when it comes to climate change. In hindsight, I should have just discussed the bad history, and made a side-mention of the alt-right, and maybe cited a thorough search history from stormfront to show the prevalence of those beliefs.
PS. I was unsure what I wanted to major in, I ended up going Poly Sci (its really not a science, but I might open up the postmodernist critics of the (natural) sciences) since I want to become an attorney, and eventual politician, but I have too many interests, including history, so I apologize for asking so much. I just hope legal citations are not this complicated, good thing all opinions are in public domain and free.
Edit 1:
Q6: this thread here: https://civilwartalk.com/threads/counting-the-confederate-service-records-of-black-and-mulatto-men.142783/, actually does appear to have a list of the thing that I've seen claimed as a myth. I don't have an account, (because I've been busy and I don't want to read through another TOS and PP, sorry I'm a privacy pidgeon, I would but I don't have time) so I can't look through the evidence. Judging from their first page that describes the requirements/methodology, it seems that this is legit.
Regarding the methodology, right from the post
" If desired, additional information related to the individual, such as US Census records, Freedmen’s Bureau records, and USCT records may be posted in addition to at least one of the specified types of documentation/evidence.
Acceptable types of documentation/evidence:
Unless specifically addressed by period documents, it is not the intent of this thread to speculate on motivations; whether these men volunteered, were conscripted, or were forced into service; whether or not they supported certain causes; or status, whether free or enslaved. If you’d like to discuss these questions, you’ll find plenty of other threads here at CivilWarTalk dedicated to those topics.
Thank you in advance for complying with the intent of this thread."
In my opinion, I'm guessing the high standards is to prevent Lost Cause apologists from inventing/exaggerating rumors or what have you.
Maybe the high standards explains why the numbers definitely seen off compared to what seems to be the general consensus (that various slaves were forced by masters to work as auxillia for the Confederates, but were never officially counted by them). It seems like to counter bad history, that they have a pretty high bar for what they would count. Could something like this pass peer review muster? Like instead of citizen science, would this by citizen history? (Please don't ban me for asking a question about something that alot of sources say is a myth but my curiosity led me to this thread). Maybe its too recent to be part of peer review?
Woof. What a long question.
Let me just explain how peer review works for historians (Q1): the same way it does in the sciences. Which is to say, you submit your article to a journal, if the editor thinks it is worth reviewing, they send it out to between one and three reviewers. Sometimes these are anonymous reviews (the author doesn't learn who you are), sometimes they are not, sometimes you (the reviewer) gets to choose. There are pros and cons to each of these methods.
The reviewer then reads the article and writes a summary report on it. They can usually give separate feedback to the author and to the editor. They end with a recommendation to either accept for publication, accept with revisions, revise and resubmit, or reject, or some variant of those options. The editor compiles these reviews and then interprets them into the final recommendation for the piece. Editors have a lot of power in peer review. None of this, again, is unique to history. This is how all fields do peer review, essentially, with some minor details.
Especially considering its inherently a social study, subjective, human based (both the studied and person doing the studying), interpretive discipline?
I really don't know what you're asking here. Peer review is not meant to determine whether something is true. It is meant to determine whether the piece of scholarship is good enough for wider distribution. It is not fact-checking (a very different sort of activity, which is basically only practiced by media outlets, and even those, less and less). When you read something, you are asking, "do I see anything here that is a core problem, or a core question unasked, or a core thing missed?" If one is very deep in the subject of the article, one can sometimes say, "well, I know from reading such and such source that this interpretation is 100% wrong." But often one is reading things that look at sources one has not seen or topics one has not personally researched. So you can say, "well, this seems well-argued and well-cited and they seem to have dealt with the obvious objections and know the literature."
Peer review is just meant to be a gatekeeper to keep out plainly wrong or misleading stuff. "Truth," inasmuch as it is sought and believed in, is something that the historical community produces over time, with the back-and-forth of articles, talks, and so on. Peer review is just a "is this article worth taking into account in our search for truth?" sort of check, not a "this is true" sort of check.
It is not very different in history or science or anything else in this way. Peer review is not, for example, replication. That is a separate activity of scholarship. If your question is, "doesn't this inherently rest on the same sorts of assumptions and biases of the reviewers, and doesn't that mitigate against the change of the status quo?" Yes, that's the main problem with all peer review — it is inherently conservative. But it also forces authors to justify heterodox positions or discoveries with unusual evidence and force, and so perhaps that it is a good thing.
On Q5, "are books peer reviewed?" the answer is: books by academic presses are typically peer reviewed. Books by trade presses are frequently not. The process is not unlike what I described above, though the "reader report" is far more lengthy for a book.
On your general point, inasmuch as I follow it (it is indeed rambling), I don't think the prevalence of one form of historical narrative in the popular or political understanding has anything to do with peer review. Peer review is a form of scholarly activity used to try and develop scholarly ideas about truth. These are frequently entirely irrelevant to the type of people who peddle historical narratives for political gain or popular support. The Lost Cause narrative is not peddled by people today because they don't understand that academic historians think it is trash. It is peddled by people because it makes them feel better about a political position they already had to begin with, or because they don't realize they've been propagandized to. The type of people who peddle such things generally are not interested in learning that academic experts think their sense of history is wrong; they take that not as an excuse to learn better history, but to distrust academic experts. So it goes.