A lot of ink has been spilt about the pro’s and con’s of
academic peer review. I am not going to add to the existing literature on this
matter in this blogpost. Suffice it to say that I subscribe to the
view that anonymous peer review is still the least deficient of the available
mechanisms to determine the quality of a given article submission. As an editor of two international journals I am painfully aware of the fact that occasionally the quality of peer review is not
as good as it should be. Usually enraged or not so enraged emails from authors
give us editors an indication that one or another of the reviewers we invited
to review a particular manuscript might not have been as diligent as would have
been desirable. In some of those cases
we tend to embark on a second round of reviews. Either way, we depend on volunteers, also commonly known
as good academic citizens, to review articles submitted to the journal. Our
Editorial Board members have graciously agreed to review a minimum of four
submitted articles for us in any given year, many review quite a few more
submissions.
Without dependable reviewers Bioethics and Developing World Bioethics could not function and deliver high-quality outputs. One problem we encounter frequently is that it often is very
difficult to find reviewers for submitted manuscripts. We know from
conversation with fellow editors at other bioethics and medical ethics journals
that we are not alone in this. The ‘very difficult’ refers to a number of
different problems, the accumulated effects of which have a deleterious effect
on our operations. For starters, too many academics are very happy to submit
their manuscripts for review but they think little of returning the
professional courtesy of their reviewers by responding positively to
invitations to review manuscripts for the journal. As a result, some of those
good academic citizens, who review diligently for us, get arguably overburdened
with review requests, while those who prefer not to review content get a free
ride. I wonder whether the Golden Rule might actually be more frequently
written about by academic ethicists than it is actually followed by us. It is
notable that junior academics tend to be more generous with their time while
many (but by no means all) of the more established scholars are among the more
frequent non-responders. The former also tend to provide longer, more in-depth
and more constructive reviews. This, of course, is very much appreciated by
authors keen to improve their papers prior to submitting their final draft for
publication.
Other problems that typically delay – sometimes very
significantly – decisions on submitted manuscripts have to do with invited
reviewers not responding to our invitations, lagging significantly behind
agreed-upon deadlines for the delivery of the reviews, not delivering promised
reviews at all, but also producing reviews so devoid of critical substance that
they are useless for all intent and purposes.
Part of the problem is undoubtedly that many academic
institutions encourage free-riders by not giving serious credits for
undertaking per reviews for academic journals, funding agencies and the like. If
annual performance reviews, or tenure reviews do not include credits for such
work it is understandable why academics turn down such work. This is very
unfortunate indeed. As academics we
should flag this issue within our institutions with a view toward establishing
formal institutional recognition of demonstrable, quantifiable services to the
academic community.
