tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456348657596914237.post6814050904930000374..comments2024-03-29T01:19:46.849-04:00Comments on Eco-Evo Evo-Eco: How to be a reviewer/editorBen Hallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17875404974157070805noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456348657596914237.post-49840565634301723302017-07-22T12:55:48.884-04:002017-07-22T12:55:48.884-04:00Hey Andy, I'm going to cite this post in an in...Hey Andy, I'm going to cite this post in an in revision ms. on advice to early career scientists on how to deal with problems in the editorial process. Keep up the good work. How come Bernatchez is trying to stay under the radar with those "Unknown" posts Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09557572481287992790noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456348657596914237.post-22831213118865546102016-09-19T16:36:10.286-04:002016-09-19T16:36:10.286-04:00Evolution Letters, another damn Open Access Journa...Evolution Letters, another damn Open Access Journal. Andrew, you think they will Accept everything? .... http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2056-3744<br />louis.bernatchezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03817955553072352242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456348657596914237.post-55569412194892366582016-09-14T12:34:22.846-04:002016-09-14T12:34:22.846-04:00.. and by the way... you are both an outstanding r..... and by the way... you are both an outstanding reviewer AND an outstanding AE ! LBlouis.bernatchezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03817955553072352242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456348657596914237.post-9661040047567588982016-09-14T12:33:46.043-04:002016-09-14T12:33:46.043-04:00Oups, sorry for not adding my name on the previous...Oups, sorry for not adding my name on the previous: Louis (Bernatchez)louis.bernatchezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03817955553072352242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456348657596914237.post-58423089967775400342016-09-14T12:32:43.804-04:002016-09-14T12:32:43.804-04:00Andrew, as I previously replied to one of your blo...Andrew, as I previously replied to one of your blogs, I totally disagree with the way you are putting ALL Open Access journals in the same bucket. Given your stature, you may influence lots of younr researchers on this false reality. I know at least one Open Access journal that is not a fit at all with your "PlosOne" vision of all OA journals. What about several excelllent other Plos journals, or some very strong BMCs, or nature Communications. Yes of course publishers are out there for money, but this is another story that concerns essentially any non-Society journals, being Open Access or not...louis.bernatchezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03817955553072352242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456348657596914237.post-11439000846352381912015-04-13T14:46:48.183-04:002015-04-13T14:46:48.183-04:00I couldn't agree more. Good constructive revie...I couldn't agree more. Good constructive reviewing demands a lot of time many people are not willing to do, unfortunately. Rejecting is just the easy way out.Andreshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15896868163445021099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456348657596914237.post-49976902923483189482014-12-12T11:13:30.054-05:002014-12-12T11:13:30.054-05:00If I submit somewhere else, I run the risk of havi...If I submit somewhere else, I run the risk of having a new editor send my manuscript out to the same reviewers who rejected / made unreasonable revision suggestions at the last journal. Both editors and reviewers work* for multiple journals, often with multiple publishers, so there is no reliable way for me as an aspiring and headstrong author to choose a journal that will not send my m/s to the same jerks who just told me I suck.<br /><br />* I realize very few editors and effectively zero reviewers regard that work as their "day job", nor are most reviewers (I don't know about editors) paid for their efforts. It's still work, for an organization.<br /><br />Regardless of whether my paper is any good, its eventual publication in any particular journal is not a reliable indication of quality - good journals publish boring, trivial, and just plain bad papers and bad journals occassionally publish really good stuff. There is presumably a frequency / quality distribution for each journal that we, as readers, can use to guess at an individual paper's likely quality, but my hunch is that the variance along that axis is sufficiently large to make any such guesses rather weak.<br /><br />And "Don't Ever Reject Papers", justified by "they'll show up in the literature anyways, unimproved" sounds excessively pessimistic - everything is going to hell anyways, don't waste your time paddling against the current. Some papers, surely, need to be crushed on sight?TheBrummellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08973380652057861796noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456348657596914237.post-65461957611691372862014-11-29T09:15:39.483-05:002014-11-29T09:15:39.483-05:00Ah, yes, That is certainly annoying. Here is the c...Ah, yes, That is certainly annoying. Here is the cool part though. You don't HAVE to follow the suggestions. You can either:<br /><br />1. Try to convince the reviewer/editor otherwise through revisions and a good cover letter. I have found this often works as long as you are polite and well reasoned.<br /><br />2. Submit somewhere else, which is no different from if you had been rejected. As what I am suggesting amounts to a collaboration between reviewer/author (mediated by the editor), either party can withdraw at any time they like. I am merely suggesting that the reviewer needn't so quickly be the one to withdraw (i.e., reject the paper) thus giving the author more options (withdraw = submit elsewhere, continue = revise).Andrew Hendryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03653724437118653645noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456348657596914237.post-59157964869465711902014-11-29T09:05:09.272-05:002014-11-29T09:05:09.272-05:00Interesting read, and I mostly agree, especially w...Interesting read, and I mostly agree, especially with the notion that people should accept papers more frequently because they just come out somewhere else anyway. However, I strongly disagree with the notion that as a reviewer, "You and the authors can work together to craft the best possible paper – what a wonderful world (Fig. 2)." I just don't see why a reviewer should have the power to dictate how I spend my time and research dollars based on a (typically) shallow reading of our work. It is not their paper and it isn't really their place to suggest major new experiments or directions. For every useful suggestion from a reviewer, I've literally had something like 20 useless suggestions that just eat up time and patience. If the evidence doesn't support the claims, then just say that. Perhaps suggest what claims the evidence does support. If the authors want to make a stronger claim, it should be up to them to decide how best to support it.<br /><br />More thoughts here:<br />http://rajlaboratory.blogspot.com/2014/04/how-to-review-paper.htmlARhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13811773097412828786noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456348657596914237.post-75426926847200633882014-11-05T09:32:02.175-05:002014-11-05T09:32:02.175-05:00Steve,
I would agree entirely if the world were d...Steve,<br /><br />I would agree entirely if the world were divided into two types of journals: venerable journals of high quality and new journals of abysmal quality. If so, we would all know to pay attention to the former and ignore the latter. However, the world is full of everything in between, including many newish journals of mediocre quality (think ... no just kidding, I won't name any). I would expect that someone rejected from Am Nat would submit to those mediocre journals and not to ones that are known to be abysmal. Since there are dozens of journals of mediocre quality, such is where a paper rejected from venerable journals will end up – not in abysmal journals. Yet readers can’t ignore those mediocre journals since they have some great stuff. So, in the end, a paper rejected from Am Nat will get just as much exposure in YOUR MEDIOCRE JOURNAL HERE. The exception – as I noted – is Science/Nature, where publication will get you much more exposure (deservedly or not) than in Am Nat or any other venerable or mediocre journal. <br /><br />Cheers,<br /><br />andrew<br />Andrew Hendryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03653724437118653645noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456348657596914237.post-89659781357640944462014-11-05T07:40:23.762-05:002014-11-05T07:40:23.762-05:00 My numbers would be similar to Andrew’s, although... My numbers would be similar to Andrew’s, although with somewhat fewer “reviewer” roles and somewhat more “editor” roles. Which may be why I’d agree wholeheartedly with Andrew’s “how to be an editor”, but have some reservations about his “how to be a reviewer”. <br /> I think the key point onw which we’d differ is Andrew’s suggestion that “in the literature” is a binary thing – a paper is either “in” or “out”, and (Andrew is quite right) you can’t keep it “out”. But the literature is not that simple. Instead, we have venerable journals of high quality (think American Naturalist); new journals of high quality (think Ecology Letters); and new journals of abysmal quality (think the Erudite Journal of Ecology and Environmental Research, from which I got some lovely spam the other day). (That we mostly don’t have venerable journals of abysmal quality is reassuring). If I review a paper and reject it, and that paper ends up unmodified in the Erudite Journal, I would not agree with Andrew that I’ve made the literature worse – instead, I would say that I’ve acted to preserve the accurate signalling associated with the location of a particular paper in the literature. “In” and “out” has only limited signalling power, but “Am Nat” vs. “Erudite” has quite a bit. Actually, I think Andrew is tacitly endorsing this view in his comments about journal fit and the quality of manuscripts for the very top journals.<br /> Having played up our disagreement, let me finish by enthusiastically seconding Andrew’s advice that the best quality papers are made by reviewers and authors working together. Wonderful reviewers have made great contributions to some of my papers – sometimes, while rejecting them!<br /><br /> - Steve Heard<br />Stephen Heardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01447261122370883924noreply@blogger.com