A Cybernetic Approach to the Procedures of Peer- Reviewing inScholarly Journals

Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. It is equally applicable to physical and social systems. Cybernetics describes the complex phenomena of the world, analyzes the relationships between a phenomenon with other phenomena of the environment then evaluates the methods of controlling them. Different sciences have taken advantages of cybernetics to explain the structure of plain and complex systems. This paper attempts to evaluate cybernetics and its elements and have a cybernetic approach to the procedures used in peer-review of the papers of scholarly journals. Simulation of peer-review with cybernetic systems indicates that this system has the main features of cybernetic systems. Adaptation of peer-review procedures in scholarly journals with cybernetic systems concerning the three elements of control, relationship and feedback can improve the functionality of these systems