Re: What steps are taken to reduce cronyism in the peer-review process?
- From: "Stephen Montgomery-Smith" <stephen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 11 Oct 2005 21:23:24 -0700
I have a bit of experience of how this works in mathematics, so maybe
my viewpoint will have some use for you.
There is definitely a certain amount of cronyism, mainly involving
friends refereeing the papers of their friends. But on the whole, the
process ends up being reasonably accurate, and most people like the
peer review process even if they think that it is sometimes unfair. It
does depend upon a certain honesty of the community, but if that fails,
I really don't see how the thing could ever hold together, no matter
what rules you have in place.
You always hear interesting stories. One friend of mine said that he
was sent the same paper to referee several times. Each time he
rejected it (not only was the result trivial, but it had already
appeared in the literature), he would soon reveive the same paper from
another journal. What the authors did was to remove one name at a time
from the list of references (the primary way editors choose the
referee, particularly if it is in a subject about which they don't know
too much), hoping to figure out who the referee was. Well eventually
my friend's name was ommitted from the list of referees, and the paper
did actually appear somewhere. But my friend got the last laugh - he
was asked to review the paper for Math Reviews (which are reviews
available for public viewing).
Another story - a well established mathematician from Europe received a
paper to referee. His report said that this paper was a word for word
translation of a paper he had written himself in his own language. The
authors, not to be outdone, then sent the paper to an Australian
journal, and successfully got it in. (This Australian journal later
released an apology, but it was hardly their fault.)
A story that happened to me. A friend and I cowrote a paper. He
submitted it to a journal, but didn't hear back from them for over a
year. He then wrote to me saying that he didn't remember if he had
actually sent the paper. I said I would handle it. I resubmitted the
paper to the same journal, carefully explaning that we thought we had
already submitted it, but weren't sure.
Two weeks later he received a rejection letter. The letter said that
this journal no longer published papers in this area, and it hadn't
even been refereed.
Guess what - two days later I received an enthusiastic acceptance
letter. Guess which letter we went with.
(I heard on the grape-vine that this journal had a lazy editor who was
replaced at about the time we sent the second submission.)
On the subject of lazy editors. One friend of mine submitted a paper
to a very prestigious journal, and didn't hear from them for a long
time. Finally he called the editor on the phone. "Did you receive my
paper," he asked. "Let me see, um (sounds of someone looking through
papers) did you send it in a brown envelope?"
My friend got so angry that he had the audacity to call the publishers
about this. It caused quite a stink.
Stephen
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: What steps are taken to reduce cronyism in the peer-review process?
- From: rja.carnegie@xxxxxxxxxx
- Re: What steps are taken to reduce cronyism in the peer-review process?
- References:
- What steps are taken to reduce cronyism in the peer-review process?
- From: Frank Sullivan
- What steps are taken to reduce cronyism in the peer-review process?
- Prev by Date: Re: The greatest scientific philosopher of all time
- Next by Date: Re: On Hitler: No true evilutionist I presume?
- Previous by thread: Re: What steps are taken to reduce cronyism in the peer-review process?
- Next by thread: Re: What steps are taken to reduce cronyism in the peer-review process?
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
