Abstract

The double‐blind peer‐review of manuscripts for potential publication is a longstanding tradition in the production of scholarship. Nursing has adopted this tradition to secure a place of legitimacy and authority for its scholarship amongst the other disciplines in the academy. However, despite its ubiquity and avowed utility, the peer‐review has not generally been the subject of much research let alone intense philosophical scrutiny and debate. This manuscript attempts such an engagement with a view to uncovering specific concerns about the essentially conservative and sometimes restrictive effects the double‐blind peer‐review produces. Drawing on the deconstructionist writings of Derrida and his acolytes this paper attempts to dig beneath the surface mechanics of the double‐blind peer‐review and in so doing, expose its rather shaky philosophical foundations. It is written to open debate from others who too, have harboured doubts about its adequacy and supremacy as a technology in the production of (legitimate) knowledge.