Over the past few months, I have been involved in the review-editing for a journal as well as its board. I also have been doing quite a few paper reviews for other journals, and been through the publication process myself. It has really broadened my view of the issue – still probably very incomplete, but going a bit further than « the b*stards rejected ! They know nothing ! bwaahahah ! »
On the blindness of review :
What happened to double blind review ? I got all the authors details of the last three papers I reviewed. I thought double blind was the most frequent option but apparently not. Also, I recently got a review of one of my papers back in the form of an annoted pdf file. These comments give their author (initials anyway)… meaning I could potentially if I was arsed to do so, look that person up (not someone I could easily recognise like that). So reviewers could potentially be identified too… (this was ok cos it was rather positive and the paper was accepted !)
On the content of a review :
One of the things we all have to learn quite quickly is that not everyone sees eye to eye on what makes a good study. (« How can they not see my paper is the bestest ? ») but when you see it on someone else’s work you can take a colder look at it. But at least some people, even though they don’t think much of a paper, try to be constructive in their comments. Some other people tend to take the «ahah ! poor thing, how could you do that » approach, made quite obvious by their over use of exclamation marks. I don’t think any exclamation marks should be found in a review, let alone three in a row. This was interesting actually because I eventually resubmitted the paper to a different journal, trying to avoid that reviewer at any cost… so if a journal is competing for papers*, it possibly needs to be careful with reviewers and reviews…
On the role of the editor :
Please do take some time to take a look at the paper before wasting a reviewer’s time with it. You are not doing a favor to an author by considering the paper if it’s out of scope or not ready for review. The time when one could submit a shitty paper and have the reviewers do the work of improving it is OVER ! This is for editors as well as authors.
But with this new task, I really need to improve my style for writing letters of acceptance or rejection or whatever. I’ve mostly used the automatic draft, but I’ve seen a few instances where people were more personal and found it nice.
I look forward to your valuable contribution to this blog via the comments.
* : the strongest competition is still between authors probably, in any case, but in narrow fields, for young journals…
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6 comments:
I've heard some discussion about double-blind review lately and like you say, it seems pretty rare. I only know of two journals that use it, but to be fair, I'm not familiar with that many journals on that level.
There was that Behavioral Ecology study that found more papers by female authors after they instituted double-blind review.
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I wonder if double blind is more frequent in some fields than in others, or if there some other sort of factor here. I really don't understand how you can justify not doing it like that. Should look that study up. I suspect one other that could negatively influence reviewers if where you come from.
I've heard some people say that you can almost always figure out the authors anyway, so there's no point in being double-blind. I disagree, though, because I've only reviewed one paper where I knew any of the authors.
yes, I don't believe it's always possible, and I think even then, making double blind makes the point that you have to judge the work for what it is not for who made it.
IME, the vast majority of journals in my field do not use double blind review.
It's funny, I always assumed double blind was the gold standard; it might be gold but it's definitely not the standard, seemingly. I would think double blind is the interest of the authors, whitout interfering with reviewer work... so why is not used more often?
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