The Peer Review Process from Hell
When I was the editor of the American Political Science Review, I found the job quite enjoyable. That seemed to surprise many people, who assumed that my days would be full of unpleasant personal interactions with angry authors and laggardly reviewers. In six years, I did have a few of those, but not very many.
Most of those that I did have occurred when someone, X, submitted critical comments about an article we had published by someone else, Y. These exchanges typically had a nasty undertone, and in some of them the nastiness was right out there in the open. I did my best to keep the hostilities from getting out hand, but in some instances even my best efforts proved unavailing. Overseeing these exchanges was a pain in the neck — the worst part of the job, by far.
Of course, these exchanges can be unpleasant for X and/or Y, too. Here’s a perfect case in point, and a real horror story, as told in this piece by a justifiably angry Y, Rick Trebino, a physicist at Georgia Tech. Based on Trebino’s description, this is my nominee as the The Peer Review Process from Hell.
[Hat tip to Phil Young].
Comments
Lee: You were an excellent editor, but I’ve never enjoyed submitting articles to the APSR. I wonder if the journal is just so important to people’s careers that the associate editors and referees take it all too seriously. Submitting to statistics journals is much more pleasant, I think because there are several top statistics journals, all of which feel free to accept papers that they like (or, for that matter, to reject papers that they don’t like) without being worried about whether an article is of “APSR quality” or the equivalent.
P.S. Again, this is not meant at all as a negative comment on your editorship. It’s more an issue about the journal itself (and similarly for top journals in economics).
Posted by: Andrew![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.themonkeycage.org/nav-commenters.gif)
|
August 25, 2009 08:09 PM
“not APSR quality” is often code for “my paper was better than this one, and it didn’t get in, so I’m going to reject it.”
Posted by: Dan Nexon | August 27, 2009 07:31 PM
Is there a (cost-effective) solution to the arbitrariness of editing?
The only solution I can think of would be if there were two competing journals vying for prestige; in other fields there’s really no way without dramatically increasing work (at a time of decreasing peer-review) to remove vested interests.
However, what happened to the concept of right of reply? Especially if this acts to discredit an author with consequences of loss of livelihood, etc. It’s a good way to provoke debate, engage reader interest etc., especially if it examines underlying theoretical principles and how they apply to both situations.
And obviously imposing restrictions on comment length is going to be detrimental to the quality of the content if it’s excessively large or small.
- And Oh the Irony! On attempt to submit: “Comment Submission Error”
Posted by: Tom L | August 30, 2009 05:59 AM