I submitted my paper to [big time journal]. Eight months later, I get a rejection plus a single short referee report. Par for the course, but still frustrating. Then I notice an additional humiliation: I take great pains in the opening section of my paper to clearly state that although people who hold [view A] also often endorse something like [thesis B], those who wholeheartedly promote [thesis B] often take their view to entail the rejection of [view A]. As I put it, my paper is about the conflict between the stark proponents of [thesis B], who see their view as opposed to [view A], and those who endorse [view A] and some version of [thesis B]. At the end of a paragraph, I express this not-so-complicated thought in a way that I believe is not only maximally clear, but catchy and concise.Good question.
Now here's the unbelievable part: My reviewer mainly criticizes my paper's set-up on precisely the point about [view A] and [thesis B]. That is, I am criticized for not seeing that whereas those who hold [view A] often endorse some version of [thesis B], those who are first and foremost advocates of [thesis B] often oppose [view A]! This suggests that the reviewer did not read the opening pages of my paper. However... in the course of (mistakenly) criticizing me for mucking up the A/B issue, the reviewer plagiarizes my maximally clear, catchy and concise statement of the matter, as if it were his/her own!!!
Remind me: Why do we bother with this, again?
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Adventures in Journal Publishing
This just came in from an old friend. I wish I could say I'm surprised, but we all know how debased the whole process is these days. Nonetheless, this seems a new low.
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42 comments:
I feel the humilation. This year I had a paper rejected by two good journals. I received a single referee report both times (one report was two sentences!). Both reports revealed they had not read the paper. It was useless. The paper was eventually published elsewhere but the experience with those journals was dismal.
Ugh.
I just received two sets of comments that, primarily, took me to task for not sufficiently addressing the views of Q, despite my many protestations that I was only using 'Q-esque' to reference a group of views.
So, ok, rather than turn the article into yet another article on Q, I'm going to devise a different term for "view Qish."
Still, one migt wish that the [admittedly unrecompensed] reviewers had more open minds.
Nowhere near as bad as a two sentence 'review' (really?), but still frustrating.
In such a blatant case of professional malpractice, not to mention ridiculous plagiarism, isn't there some way to protest or voice a complaint to the editors? Surely neither the journal nor the lazy/incompetent/son-of-a-bitch-plagiarist reviewer should be allowed to get away with it?
I'm tempted to say the journals should be named and shamed. True it's really the reviewer at fault, but the editor ought to exercise some oversight over reviewers (though I guess they can't read every paper). At the least, these experiences ought to be reported to various sites that record journal performance, such as http://www.andrewcullison.com/journal-surveys/.
(1) I confess I have been lazy and waited c. 3-4 monthes to complete a referree report
(2) but, I did actually write a report ( memory fails, but I also believe I read the paper, probably more than once!)
(3) I think this is fucking crazy. I must be naive, but I can't imagine it--why not just decline to referree (not a good thing but better than being a ass)
(4) I have had reviews that roughly said "this paper defends view Q" I reject view Q, therefore this paper should be rejected by this journal.
That's just appalling. One of my most recent adventures is just comically exasperating.
Both referee reports at journal #1 more or less say, "interesting, but why the fuck are you saying x? No one thinks x and it's a terrible rhetorical strategy to structure your paper around x. What are you, stupid?" R&R. The resubmission is rejected. Oh well.
Journal #2 reports more or less say, "What's the matter with you? Clearly the key issue here is x -- why aren't you saying anything about x? What are you, stupid?"
Yes, referees. I am stupid. For I am now hard at work on x-ifying the fuck out of the revision.
Peer review in philosophy is becoming a joke. I also got outrageous "reviews" such as: (1) I cannot recommend publication because the author argues for p and I think p is false, (2) I cannot recommend publication because the author argues that p and I think p is implausible, (3) I cannot recommend publication because the author argues that p and no one thinks that p is true. And other such nonsense.
To save peer review in philosophy we need to name and shame reviewers.
And of course, we are assuming that your opening pages were clear and to the point, and not a muddled mess of awkward prose?
Everybody wants to 'name and shame' these days....
@ Anon 4:02,
We don't want to, we _need_ to in order to save peer review, since some reviewers apparently think that they can get away with doing a lousy job because they are anonymous.
*Everyone* knows that peer reviewers are asses. They take too long, they are jerks and incompetent. They clearly do not belong to the community of thoughtful scholars who submit papers to journals. That's why peer review is broken. It's clearly not the case that the very jerks who complain constitute the pool of referees. Which is odd, when you think about it.
@ Neil,
What does one thing have to do with the other? The fact the one submits papers to journals doesn’t make one a good reviewer. One can be a successful author and a lousy reviewer, just as one can be a lousy author and a good reviewer.
"*Everyone* knows that peer reviewers are asses. They take too long, they are jerks and incompetent. They clearly do not belong to the community of thoughtful scholars who submit papers to journals."
Agreed. But let's blame those at fault: editors-in-chief who select peer reviewers. Hey, Neil, you think we should blame the people who run journals? Do ya?
Ass.
I'm pretty I had a paper refereed this year by the person who refereed Spiros's friend's paper.
Dear Ass (as you sign yourself),
Obviously there is blame enough to go around. But folk are complaining about the reviewers. And they *are* the reviewers. I am an editor-in-chief myself. And - surprise - I am also a referee. And an author (wow!) Now I can tell you why reports take so goddamn long. I get a paper as an editor. My median time to send out the referee requests (editorial manager tracks these things) is less than 12 hours (why so long? Because lots of papers come in overnight). I then wait for *you*, the referees, to respond. And wait. And wait. Eventually you get back to me. Or then again, you don't. And I start again. Eventually I get referees to agree. And then I wait again. But you know all this.
There are two possibilities here, given how common the complaints are. Either the very people who are complaining are themselves the people who sit on referee requests for months, and then do a half-assed job because they finally get around to it under pressure from my repeated requests. Or the complainants are not refereeing, in which case they have no right to complain. My guess - indeed, as a referee who is also an editor, and therefore someone who is able to track patterns of agreeing to referee, refusals and reports - is in fact many of you belong in both camps. You turn down most requests, though you have time to write inane comments on blogs. When you accept one, you leave it sitting on your desk for months, then rush to do it. And you complain about referees.
Oh I know there are exceptions. I know there are people to really referee as much as they can within their field, and turn in thoughtful timely reports. But think about this: we editors know who these people are, and use them as much as we can. And we still get all the problems. That indicates that the pool of dicks is very large compared to the pool of decent referees. So I adjust the probability of which pool complainants belong to in light of this background knowledge. *You* are the problem.
I once submitted a paper to a second rate journal and received a short review back that did not address anything in the paper itself. Rather, the reviewer gave me what s/he probably thought was solid advice to a beginner - that professional philosophy papers needed to cite and respond to other philosophical work on the same topic and state a position clearly with respect to other views, blah blah blah. I've published a book and eight articles. The paper under review was precisely a response to two sets of views on a topic with the point of the piece being that both views were deficient - a totally standard structure for an article. Who the fuck did the reviewer think I was? Who does the reviewer think s/he is?
@8:31:
It's doesn't follow that just because a complainant isn't refereeing, she has no right to complain. There are a number of ways one can perform service to the profession. Refereeing is only one of them. In fact, there are good reasons for thinking that people who are not temperamentally suited to refereeing should be providing some different service rather than fucking up the publication process out of dislike for, and incompetence at, reviewing. Writing on a blog, which you just did in order to call people here dicks, is an entertainment with some limited value in airing problems. If you think people are wasting their times writing on blogs, you should perhaps be the first to set an example by refraining from doing so.
"the pool of dicks is very large" --Neil
Who can disagree with that?
What is your aim in philosophy -- to shew the fly the way out of the fly-bottle?
No, to shew the dick the way out of the dick-pool.
Instead of 'name & shame', how about more by way of incentives to be a referee? E.g., if the author found a ref's comments to be very helpful, the author can get the ref's name from the editor (only if the ref agrees to this) in order to acknowledge the ref by name. In a similar fashion, if the author adds a reply to a decent point that a ref made, the author can credit the ref by name for that point(instead of just saying 'My thanks to a referee for this point').
"Remind me: Why do we bother with this, again?"
Because not a single one of you has any skills that would get you a job outside of academia.
I have had one paper with 4 R&R's plus one conditional acceptance, and guess what? It's out for review again! Talk about hitting one's head...
12:32 --
I get that hyperbole is the coin of the realm, but you're a fucking idiot.
Insecure much, Glauc?
Is Glaucon being insecure or expressing anger at a rude and uniformed comment - addressed to everyone else, here, apparently? (These are all compatible, of course, but why assume that Glaucon is in the weakest position?)
oops" 'Uninformed'
Hey Neil, you jackass, thanks for the false dichotomy. What about those of us who are just getting started - ABDs and newly minted PhDs, who aren't being asked to referee by anyone, and who really need to get some pubs so we can have a chance in hell of continuing to work in the field, but who keep getting screwed by our elder colleagues who don't even bother to read the papers or keep up with the literature? I needed a pub to give me a prayer of landing a position this past season, and missed only primarily because my referees were lazy idiots who clearly didn't even bother to read the paper. Fuck them and fuck you.
I know Neil Kennedy.
Neil Kennedy is a good friend of mine.
You sir, are no Neil Kennedy.
And with that it's-only-about-me-and-the-world-conspires-against-me attitude, may you never become my colleague--or anyone's for that matter.
Because not a single one of you has any skills that would get you a job outside of academia.
If you think you can make universal claims about the qualifications of anonymous people about whom you know nothing (except that you know nothing about them – nothing except that they read this and post on this blog) … then you're a fucking idiot.
I usually encounter this kind of idiotic, anti-academic bullshit in the comments section of stories in the Chronicle or Inside Higher Ed or my local paper when they run a story about higher education.
The dipshit psychology is just the icing on the cupcake of fucking idiocy. "Hey, can I get a fucking idiiot cupcake with some dipshit frosting and some dumbfuck sprinkles?"
Sure, 12:32/12:10. I'm sure you'll love it!
Coming to this late but .... 'Neil' is right on the button here. I'm an editor too and indeed I have had author x complain bitterly over the time taken to get referees' reports on their paper and referee y fail to respond to repeated request for their report on another paper and yes, x = y.
As for 'early career' folk - it may come as some surprise but some of us old fart editor types do care about junior people and do try to ensure that they get quick responses where possible, even if that means short responses.
And finally and obviously, the proportion of non-dicks to dicks in the referee pool would be greatly improved if more of the former (of which I assume there are many reading this blog) would agree to referee when asked!
I hardly ever get asked to referee and I would like to be asked more
Why do we bother?
Because we have to. At least, those of us who are junior faculty, we don't have any choice. It's incredibly frustrating to be told on one day by my tenured colleagues that they understand how frustrating the review process is (waiting far too long for responses that sometimes aren't helpful)...and then on another day listen to them make snarky comments about how little I've published. I have 3 papers out for review, two of which have been out for more than a year. My colleagues have read my work and told me it's good...but that it only counts toward tenure once it's in print.
Some of my colleagues also will complain about how reviewing for journals takes time, so they put it off...and they don't seem to realize that one reason junior faculty (like me) aren't getting our work into print fast enough is because senior faculty (like them) are slowing down the process. (And I'm not claiming all my work would automatically get published. In fact, none of my published papers have been accepted without some suggestions for revision, large or small.)
I'm sure it's frustrating for senior faculty, to watch this nonsense taking place. But for junior faculty, this is stressful and painful. And if things are not going to change, then tenure and promotion committees need to rethink how they evaluate tenure files. It's like we are being told, "we know that the situation sucks, and there's nothing you can do about it...but you still need to publish so suck it up."
It's up to journals to start screening more, if possible. All too often, I referee something that is just utter crap. I haven't done that much refereeing, so maybe it's just an anomaly, but of the papers I have refereed, only one of them warranted a second look, and even that was a stretch. The stuff I have been refereeing is neither written well, nor argued well. I mean stuff that is in some ways worse than what I get from my students. That shit shouldn't make it to referees at all. So let's stop blaming referees please and take a look in the mirror the next time we waste someone's time with shit that isn't cooked. Nothing has ever been on my desk longer than a month.
To the journal editors in the audience: Is there anything that we junior faculty--and in particular, those of us who aren't asked to referee--could do to improve the situation?
To the people who design the CAPTCHA on this site: Fuck you. I'm not a robot, AFAIK, but I have absolutely no idea what the hell those first few inkblots were supposed to say.
2:26 pm. So far as I can see, the answer is not a lot. More junior faculty are more likely to accept referee requests, more likely to do them in a timely way, and more likely to turn in thoughtful reports. The problem tends to be with more senior folk, who you might think would have more time. My list of senior figures in particular fields, with strong records of publication in areas but who will never review papers that fall within their field grows ever longer. I use more junior people whenever I can. Of course, I need evidence that they are competent, though, and that typically means that they need to have published in a cognate area.
5:53. Perhaps you would have more luck with publishing if you learned to read? Just a thought.
The typo in the heading bothers me.
"More junior faculty are more likely to accept referee requests, more likely to do them in a timely way, and more likely to turn in thoughtful reports. The problem tends to be with more senior folk, who you might think would have more time. My list of senior figures in particular fields, with strong records of publication in areas but who will never review papers that fall within their field grows ever longer."
While one might think senior philosophers would have more time to review works, you might also find that many of them, particularly the ones with strong publication records, are busy trying to work on their own stuff. And I can't say that I blame them. I'm a grad student, and I've had my fair share of strife with journals this early in my career. Still, I can appreciate that once one has worked in the field for so long, one feels impelled to work on one's own projects without being dragged down by reviewing work that can often be time-consuming and, perhaps, not all that well-written or thought out.
Nevertheless, I do think there's something to be said for folks taking a bit more time to do decent and timely reviews. Again, my experience is limited, but from what I've seen and heard from other people it looks like the publication process is just busted, from the numbers people are having to deal with to the attitudes displayed to its role in finding and securing a job to the financial costs and rewards that are associated with it. I sure as hell don't know what to do. But at some level I just want to say to a whole bunch of people--hey jerk, do your job.
captcha: loquage
a loquacious use of language; a brief rambling monologue
I'm senior, and I definitely do not have more time for reviewing than I had when I was junior. It's not because of wanting time to do my own work -- obviously we all want that. It's because of other 'service' tasks, particularly writing tenure reviews. They are *very* time-consuming, and it's not good to turn them down.
I personally have a couple of other fairly time-consuming service chores, but they are a little more unusual; I assume other senior philosophers have other idiosyncratic work. And I have some service-to-the-university, but I count that in a separate time budget. When I was junior, I simply refused service-to-university, on the advice of my senior colleagues.
I still do some refereeing, but less than I did before I got tenure. A lot more service-to-the-profession time, but less journal refereeing.
Neil - I read just fine, asswipe. Quote from your post:
"There are two possibilities here, given how common the complaints are. Either the very people who are complaining are themselves the people who sit on referee requests for months, and then do a half-assed job because they finally get around to it under pressure from my repeated requests. Or the complainants are not refereeing, in which case they have no right to complain."
You assume that everyone worth talking about falls into one of three categories:
1) People who aren't complaining.
2) People who are complaining and doing a shitty job refereeing, which I'll agree, is bullshit.
and
3) People who are complaining and who are asked to referee but don't, which I'll also agree is bullshit.
This totally ignores the possibility that there are (a) legitimate complaints coming from people who are asked and who do referee, conscientiously, and/or (b) legitimate complaints coming from people who aren't even asked to referee at all. In other words, you beg the fuck out of the question, not to mention totally ignore the most vulnerable group in this whole situation - that is, early-career folks who need those pubs so just to stay alive.
Oh, and yes, I realize you say there are "exceptions." But your comments immediately following indicates that you're probably talking about the people in group (1) or, at most, in group (a), and not at all about the people in group (b).
And your response to pointing out that you absolutely used a piece-of-shit, first-year-fallacy false dichotomy? Implying I can't read.
Fuck you, Neil. If this is an example of your argumentation, you're a shit philosopher.
Motion to the floor: open journal reviewing more fully to graduate students, blind on their end of course. If they turn in good reports, we'll take pressure off the reviewing process and so help get decisions to more articles in a timely fashion. Authors get comments quickly, and grad students get exposure to what's current in their field, in the process cultivating some worthwhile habits to keep alive as they move on in the profession. Who knows, maybe some poor hack known as a good reviewer for Journal of the Current Fad would get a letter of support for it.
8:55. You know, despite the fact that you read me very uncharitably (in the usual dick way, reconstructing claims in a comments section on a blog as if they were meant to be formalizable), you are right I wasn't thinking very much about the ABDs and those who don't get asked to review. You might have pointed that out and maybe I would have replied politely. I might even had made explicit (and nicely formalizable) my exact claims, so you would not need to read them as if they were written in ordinary English. Maybe I would even had said I was wrong.
But you didn't. You said fuck you, asshole. And then you expected me to show you some respect. You don't deserve any.
By the way, in a comment which aims to show what a precise reader you are, you ought to avoid demonstrating that you don't know what "imply" means.
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