The peer group

Dated: 

15 March 1981

Though Dijkstra's own research publications were cited a lot, he himself did not want to judge the quality of one's work in terms of number of citations, nor in terms of number of papers.

Dijkstra moreover questioned the goal of concensus and the peer-review process itself:

Such a concensus can only be reached at pretty homogeneous levels of concern and abstraction, whereas originality often requires a drastic departure from them in order to give profound attention to what all the others ignore. [EWD783]

Did Dijkstra's contemporaries share his concerns? What is the situation today?

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