Academic Freedom and Peer Reviews of Research Proposals and Papers.

Academic freedom--the freedom of professional persons to present unpopular views--can exist only when there is freedom from severe sanctions such as censorship of research proposals and papers. Peer reviews are invaluable to researchers struggling to improve their work. They are also invaluable to administrators who must allocate limited funds and journal pages among competing researchers. However, evidence indicates that some administrators use peer criticisms to justify the suppression in whole or part of unpopular proposals and papers. Such prior restraint is censorship unless the administrators can prove that it is justified because of gross incompetence or financial exigency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]