Some thoughts on peer review of computing materials

Abstract

It is well known that over the past decade and a half social and behavioral scientists have become heavy users of computation facilities for a variety of purposes, chiefly in data-management and measurement analyses, in statistical analysis, both descriptive and inferential, and more recently in data and process simulations. At the same time, most social scientists have been, and many will continue to be, amateurs in computational practice. In addition, the types of computation which they need (or at least, have used) are often repetitive; relative to the total volume of use by social scientists there has been little demand for computational novelty.