Oh, woe. My latest oeuvre has been rejected outright by the journal I submitted it to. This is my first real rejection. The first paper I wrote was accepted almost without change in a pretty good journal. My second paper, in perhaps the number two journal in the field of fluid mechanics required a bit of a fight to get it published, with the main change being shortening it from a full-blown article to a brief communication. My third paper was an almighty battle to get published, as well as coming after a ridiculously long wait for the referee reports. But finally it was published last year in probably the top journal in the field. The rejected paper was submitted to a fairly good journal, but on a topic I have not previously published in. I have mixed feelings about the rejection.
There is a certain amount of frustration that I cannot really respond to the referees since the editor has closed the door to a resubmission. Certainly I think that several of their comments were unfair and besides the point – in fact, missing the point entirely. It is also difficult not to take rejection personally, but I suppose I should get used to it. I think that the job of a referee is to inform the editor whether the paper (a) is original, (b) does not contain any glaring errors or poor methodology, (c) is written in a clear and accessible style, (d) is of a suitable level for the journal. I’m not sure I have seen many reports like this. Unless the work is truly stellar, they tend rather to defend territory, question assumptions the authors made, and generally raise barriers to publication.
But a key point made by some proponents of the web-archive model of publication – simply uploading papers to web archives without peer review – is that most scientists can tell for themselves whether a paper in their field is worth reading or not (after all, this is the basis of peer review) and this way at least more ideas are released into the zeitgeist. Here’s how Joao Magueijo puts it on page 216 of his 2003 book Faster Than the Speed of Light.
Some people think that this [web-archiving without peer review] is bad. They claim that Web archives have no quality control. That is true, but I would argue that the refereeing process associated with current journals provides no real quality control either. And in any case we don’t need it; anyone should know which papers are worth reading without the need for prior filtering.
Since Magueijo also claims that “[r]eferee reports are often empty of scientific content and reflect nothing but the authors’ social standing, or their good or bad relations with the referee” and indeed that “editors can be totally illiterate”, why then do people continue to submit their work to peer reviewed journals?
They have no choice. The establishment is set up so that one’s official scientific record takes into account only publications in refereed journals, a totally artificial imposition. As a result, I myself publish all my papers in refereed journals, but regard the process cynically, as a chore not dissimilar to flushing the toilet or emptying the garbage bin.
In case this all sounds like a case of sour grapes, I should point out that I have never been a fan of the peer review process (in actuality, rather than some platonic ideal), even before this latest adventure. But, like Magueijo, my promotions and funding depend to a very large degree on my peer-reviewed publications, so I will thoughtfully consider the referees’ comments, edit my paper, and submit it to another journal.
Filed under: science | Tagged: arxiv, peer review, publishing, science, writing
Sorry to hear about your rejection Phil but you’re clearly taking it head on, picking yourself up and carrying on. I completely agree with you about the failings of peer review and your ideal of what peer review should be (but sadly never is). I also agree with your comments about scientists being able to make up their own minds. Of course they are, they don’t need somebody else to filter everything for them. If peer review ever had a good side it was when publishing space was limited and people got most of their information from paper journals, so maybe it brought a kind of democracy to the editing process, but the net has changed all that, and it lets all of us make up our minds instead. I know from a friend who until recently worked in the scientific journals publishing industry that all journals are facing serious decline in the face of web publishing.
In my field, medicine, the bigger worry is not so much peer review but drug company funding of research – that really distorts the science!
Good quotes from Magueijo. Thank you
Thanks for your considered response and synpathy, Bob. It’s often a little tricky to raise these issues because it can sound like sour grapes; it’s usually those to whom rejection is a frequent visitor who complain about peer review. That doesn’t negate the serious criticisms of it, however.
Why not make all peer review double blind, for example. I read recently (urgh, where? SciAm?) that in a wee experiment, a couple of journals made all reviewing double blind and as a result a significantly higher proportion of papers by female authors were published. A terrifying nugget of information, that.
Do you publish in any peer-reviewed places, Bob?
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