The idea of scholarship is like a conversation. Ideas are created, published, debated, and weighed against one another over time. The information creators and information users discuss meaning, with effective researchers adding their voices to the conversation.
"Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress."
Burke, K. (1941). The philosophy of literary form (pp. 110-11). University of California Press.
Peer review is the process a scholarly article goes through before it is published. Having "peers," or fellow experts, review the work before publication helps ensure not only the originality of the research. but also the validity and quality of it as well. This process helps filter out articles that are invalid or of low-quality since those that do not pass peer review do not get published.
