The literature on the peer review process in academic journal, book publishing, and in foundation grant awards is fully analyzed and carefully indexed.

Peer review is the sometimes controversial practice of subjecting an academic manuscript or project to critique by scholars in the same area of expertise. It is employed widely by journal editors and, to a lesser extent, by book editors, and it is a major factor in the determination of foundation grants. Doubts have been raised about the efficacy and ethics of peer review, but the process has never been systematically studied. Speck has collected and carefully analyzed and annotated 780 sources published from 1960 to the present which would provide the basis for such research. A detailed classified subject index pinpoints specific issues in the author-editor-referee relationship.