Texts as Knowledge Claims: The Social Construction of Two Biology Articles

Abstract

The procedures of review and revision of a scientific article can be seen as part of the negotiation of the status that the scientific community will assign to the text's knowledge claim. This study locates some textual features of this negotiation by considering two articles by two biologists, the comments referees and colleagues made on them, and the authors' responses to these comments. The articles illustrate contrasting problems in the creation of a persona-one author is a well-known researcher in his field, and the other is publishing his first article in what is for him a new area. But they both have disagreements with journal editors and referees over the placement of their findings in a hierarchy of claims. And they both revise their articles to make them more conventional in form. Each article was reviewed five times before being accepted: while the long review makes the cases atypical, the layers of criticisms and responses allow us to see in detail processes that are usually compressed and decisions that are usually unnoticed.