"Consider the source!" That's what my grandma used to counsel when I whined
about gossip and unfounded criticism. But it seems to me that reviews should
be considered part of the paper. Largely because of its transparency and
directness, I value Ecolog more than tedious, pretentious papers as a source
of good bottom-line thinking on ecology.
And open criticism is the other; at Ecolog, you get lots of feedback when
you err, and that is the most welcomest contribution of all. I sometimes get
some "interesting" comments via off-list email too, which, if I want to post
so the rest of you are aware of it, I must get the contributor's permission
to post my rebuttal along with the off-list review. This, of course, never
happens, because those who expose themselves in rude ways want to confine
their flashing to their victims. I suspect that this practice of off-list
sniping (to put it politely) is not limited to me, so we "Ecologgers" are
being deprived of some pretty creative comment. My own policy is to nearly
always post to the list (except when I figure it might not get past David
for some good reason), and to always expect that the recipient of the email
has every right to post the review and rebuttal onto Ecolog. I do fully
understand that such posts put David on the spot, as he doesn't want "flame
wars" on Ecolog, but, then, as grandma said, we should be able to "consider
the source." Anyone has my permission to publish anything I send them that
is in the slightest of relevance to ecology or otherwise of interest to
Ecolog subscribers.
Where I grew up, rudeness was often rewarded by a punch in the nose. Punches
were rare, and people were polite but frank. Courtesy was a social
institution. I miss the plain-speaking evenness of those people. Perpetual
archival of pixel petulance on Ecolog might keep the discourse even more
civil and certainly more informative than it is. I suspect that published,
signed reviews would similarly shape-up the quality of the academic
discourse much as it did the social discourse of my boyhood.
As the beer ad says in England, "Take Courage!"
WT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Greenberg" <greenb...@ucdavis.edu>
To: <ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2010 1:40 PM
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Are reviews anonymous?
Wow, I clearly hit on a painful topic here! I've been getting asked
on-list and off- to clarify, a bit, why I might want to do what my
original question was about: make the reviews (but not the identity of
the reviewers) I've received of my OWN papers public to other people.
I would hazard to guess 99% of us have had a least one paper rejected
due to a reviewer who did a less-than-stellar job at reviewing a paper
-- whether laziness, unfamiliarity with the subject matter, politics,
competition on a subject that the reviewer may be trying to get
published themself, etc (how often have you thought "Did this person
even read my paper?"). There don't seem to be a lot of forums out
there to shed light on "good reviews" vs. "bad reviews" -- we receive
them, we complain to our co-authors and other people we are close to,
but, as my OP indicated, I wanted to know if we could turn around and
show the world these types of reviews in an attempt, not as revenge
(since the reviewer remains anonymous), but to let people know these
types of reviews are unhelpful and can really damage the scientific
process, hopefully to get across to the people producing these bad
reviews they need to think about how they treat their role in the
peer-review process, and to teach new reviewers how to write good
reviews.
I want to clarify a point: I don't mean that a "bad review" is one in
which your paper is rejected, a "bad review" I define a bad review as
one that does little to help improve a paper that may have potential.
--j
On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 12:02 PM, Murray Efford
<murray.eff...@otago.ac.nz> wrote:
James Crants has it right. I recently wrote a harsh review of a poor paper
by a high-profile author, pointing out numerical and conceptual errors and
disregard of the literature. I did what I thought was the decent thing and
signed the review. The paper was published with a less-than-gracious
acknowledgment of my contribution. This should not have got past the
editors, but it did, and I will not sign reviews for them again. Anonymity
serves to depersonalise the review process and dilute the pernicious
effects of status and reputation.
Murray Efford
________________________________________
From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news
[ecolo...@listserv.umd.edu] On Behalf Of James Crants [jcra...@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, 3 March 2010 5:39 a.m.
To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Are reviews anonymous?
On the other hand, if the reviewers are anonymous, the authors should be,
too. I think transparency is a bad thing, in this case; I think reviews
should be double-blind.
While reviewer anonymity allows reviewers to be impolite and harsh, it
also
protects them from retribution for simply being honest when a paper is
bad.
Yes, scientists should all be mature enough to accept a negative review
without trying to punish the reviewer, but some just aren't up to that
challenge (if you can't think of a way for one scientist to punish
another,
or if you can't think of a scientist who would do such a thing, you can't
be
trying that hard). Even if you can't imagine deliberately punishing
someone
for their review, you must be able to imagine being miffed at a colleague
who gives your paper a bad review, or having them be miffed at you, even
if
the bad review is merited. That's an incentive to be polite, sure, but
also
an incentive to let things slide that shouldn't be allowed to slide. I
think the benefits of reviewer anonymity outweigh the costs.
Author anonymity would have a similar advantage: it would make it
harder for reviewers to pan someone's work just because they don't
personally like the author, or to reward their friends with favorable
reviews. Obviously, if the reviewer is quite familiar with the author's
other work, it is possible to identify the author by writing style, study
system, and hypotheses raised, but any uncertainty about the authorship of
a paper under review should go one step toward dissuading reviewers from
letting personal feelings hold too much sway over their judgement.
Author anonymity could also prevent reviewers from judging authors and
their
works harshly based on their earlier submission of an unpublishable paper.
If you thought someone's submitted paper was a real dog, you might not
think
much of their intelligence, and you'd give less credence to anything else
they said subsequently. If the author were genuinely a poor scientist,
you'd be ahead of the game by learning to doubt them early on, but if they
were a solid researcher, and their name were on a bad paper for any of a
hundred other possible reasons, you'd be cheating yourself by selling them
short.
(Sorry for taking another step down this tangental path. Also, I wish our
language had a singular pronoun for a person of unspecified sex.)
Jim Crants
On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 3:44 AM, Marc Kochzius
<kochz...@uni-bremen.de>wrote:
Dear All,
I agree completely with Kevin that reviewers should sign their review.
That's what I started to do and I will not make any reviews for journals
that insist that I stay anonymous. From my point of view the problem is
that
some colleagues hide in anonymity and provide reviews that are not
adequate
(e.g. impolite, unsubstantiated criticism). Another problem in this
context
are the editors. I think it is their responsibility to check if a review
is
adequate. However, my experience is rather that most editors just pass
the
review to me and I just wonder what kind of reviews I receive. In many
cases
there is absolutely no quality control regarding the reviews. From many
journals I also never get a feedback about my review, nor do I receive
the
reports of the other reviewers. This makes it impossible for me to
evaluate
if my review was in concordance with the other reviewers.
Regarding the anonymity of the author, I think both sides (author and
reviewer) should be named, the system should be as transparent as
possible.
Unfortunately, it is currently not transparent at all.
Cheers,
Marc
Kevin Murray wrote:
Off the point here, but I think that the anonymity should be reversed.
Authors should be anonymous and reviewers should be named.
Start a peer review revolution...sign all of your reviews!!!
Regarding YOUR own reviews. It seems that, if they are anonymous, then
posting should be ok. If the reviewer is named, however, you should not
post. No laws or moral values were consulted in regards to this email.
KLM
On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 5:09 PM, Jonathan Greenberg
<greenb...@ucdavis.edu
>wrote:
Interesting -- I'm primarily interested in reviews YOU receive on your
own submitted manuscript (which, 99% of the time, you don't know who
they are from) -- are you allowed to post these in any public forum?
Since the reviews cannot be linked back to an individual (unless that
individual steps forward and takes credit for it), and it is a
criticism of your own work, it seems like one should feel free to post
these if you want. I was interested in compiling the types of reviews
people get on manuscripts for teaching purposes, so I'm trying to find
out if its legit for people to share these reviews with me if they end
up going out into the public (e.g. on a website)?
--j
On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 3:07 PM, Jonathan Greenberg <jgrn...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Interesting -- I'm primarily interested in reviews YOU receive on your
own submitted manuscript (which, 99% of the time, you don't know who
they are from) -- are you allowed to post these in any public forum?
Since the reviews cannot be linked back to an individual (unless that
individual steps forward and takes credit for it), and it is a
criticism of your own work, it seems like one should feel free to post
these if you want. I was interested in compiling the types of reviews
people get on manuscripts for teaching purposes, so I'm trying to find
out if its legit for people to share these reviews with me if they end
up going out into the public (e.g. on a website)?
--j
On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 2:16 PM, Christopher Brown <cabr...@tntech.edu>
wrote:
Jonathan,
As it so happens, a message close to yours in my email folder was
from
a
review I did for American Naturalist. As part of the message from the
editor is the line "Please keep all reviews, including your own,
confidential." Thus, at least for Am Nat, it appears that the reviews
should remain unpublished in any form.
CAB
********************************************
Chris Brown
Associate Professor
Dept. of Biology, Box 5063
Tennessee Tech University
Cookeville, TN 38505
email: cabr...@tntech.edu
website: iweb.tntech.edu/cabrown
-----Original Message-----
From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news
[mailto:ecolo...@listserv.umd.edu] On Behalf Of Jonathan Greenberg
Sent: Monday, March 01, 2010 12:48 PM
To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU
Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Are reviews anonymous?
Quick question that came up recently that I was curious about -- I
know
REVIEWERS are anonymous, but are the reviews you get supposed to be
anonymous, or can they be posted in a public forum?
--j
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