Reviews in the time of COVID
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Reviews in the time of COVID Jonathan Simon1 Published online: 14 October 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
At the beginning of this year, I replaced Luciano Boschiero as the history of science editor for Metascience, and I would like to thank him for the hard work he has put into the journal as well as the help he gave me in getting up to speed. Brad Wray and Lori Nash also showed me the ropes, with Palanimathu Athimoolam, Ties Nijssen and Eric Pieren taking care of the publishing side for Springer with great professionalism and efficiency. As university administrators and managers strive to get more academic value for money out of their staff, academics are under unrelenting pressure to publish. Unfortunately, academic book reviews do not count for a great deal in the evaluation of research, and so some researchers are reluctant to take on the task of writing a book review. This is regrettable, as reviews have the merit of not only helping hard-pressed colleagues to keep abreast of outlying literature associated with their area of expertise but also allowing specialists to engage with published research in a more rigorous way than might otherwise be the case. One positive side effect of the overworked condition of academics is that it gives an opportunity for early-career colleagues to publish as well. In this issue we have a freshly minted PhD writing on the history of skin lighteners, giving us a taste of how subjects and approaches are evolving with the arrival of these fresh talents. The symposium around David Miller’s new book on James Watt demonstrates what leading academics have to offer in terms of research and reflection with its three thoughtful reviews and a stimulating response. Indeed, the value of book reviews is perhaps most evident when a book is discussed from a variety of perspectives and an author is given a chance to address the critics, as in the case of a symposium. Through these symposia and the other reviews in Metascience, we are looking to sustain a virtuous circle based on the academic community’s recognition of quality and timely reviews of books in the delimited and yet now very extensive area of science studies. As we are all painfully aware, an unpredictable factor has now entered all our lives: COVID-19. The sudden upturn in interest in the logic of clinical trials, the history of the Spanish flu and vaccination, among other subjects, has brought to light * Jonathan Simon jonathan.simon@univ‑lorraine.fr 1
Archives Poincaré UMR 7117, Philosophy Department, University of Lorraine, Nancy, France
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the value of science studies in understanding this exceptional global medico-politico-scientific phenomenon. We can hope that our academic community will benefit in return from the light it has been able to shine on the pandemic, which is maybe not as unprecedented as many seem to think. On the practical side, the epidemic has underlined the importance of the online availability of reviews, although the reaction of several publishe
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