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[fiona]

If you've been slimed by the likes of these, you may vent after you read this article.

Or before. I don't care whether you've done the reading.

http://chronicle.com/article/The-5-Species-of-Journal/130016/

The Fiona

[bacardiandlime]

My work tends to inspire the confusing review. In this, I get two reviews: One says "too much of A, not enough of B" the other says "too much of B, not enough of A".

I have also received the nasty review, essentially "this sucks". I note that it's often the reviewers who feel a piece is irredeemably awful who write the longest reviews, iterating over three thousand words precisely how terrible the work is, an insult to the field, etc.

[untenured]

I can confirm there are plenty of these out there.

My problem is the 'coin-flip' reviewer, who seems to do little more than glance through the submission, pause for six seconds of self-reflection, and recommend accept or reject.  No detailed feedback, just 'yeah, accept' or 'no, reject'.  Such a review rarely comes from the strong scholars.

We also get the 'single issue' reviewer, who focuses on some minimally relevant sub-topic in the submission and evaluates the entire piece based on that issue.

My most frustrating experience was as an author.  I write in area Y where Professor X has deemed my work his competition.  So I submit a paper to a journal and get back a negative review that prominently commands (the reviewer indented this part for emphasis) that the paper cannot possibly go forward because it has not subordinated itself this particular seminal work.  No matter that I easily and clearly distinguished my submission from the paper from said work, this seminal wonder already addressed the question.  So since the seminal work already written about this topic, my piece was redundant.

And guess who I learn through the grapevine is that reviewer?  You guessed it ... Professor X, author of this supposedly 'seminal' work.  X got away with writing a review saying his own work precluded further consideration of paper that might develop an alternative theory in the field.

Am I wrong here to think this is slimy?

[betterslac]

I'm dealing with a "write the book I would have written" reviewer right now. The editor for my press is starting to come around to the reviewer's view, so now I'll have to do some reframing and putting in additional materials.

So the two articles I'm working on now will have to wait and I'll have to cross my fingers that I'll get the changes done before other stuff comes down the pike.

[lost_angeleno]

Maybe it would help if publishers didn't just send us a copy of a book and say "Review this." That's happened to me. I send the d*mned thing back, but perhaps others don't, and take out their irritation on the book.

[aside]

These species of evil or incompetent journal reviewers also publish book reviews, unfortunately, in which they wreak similar sorts of havoc, only publicly.

[mccfan]

I worked as an editorial intern in grad school, for the flagship journal in my field. It was quite eye-opening in a number of ways. Most reviewers are responsible, but we did get a lot of reviews that voted for dumping a submission because it "ignored the crucial work of X" when they were X. Often you can tell who your reviewer was if it says something like that. Academic egos know few bounds.

Untenured, I agree with you that what you describe is at least a bit slimy. One thing you might do in future, to avoid being reviewed by this enemy, is to thank them in your paper. Often there is a note at the outset of a paper thanking individuals who have given input on a paper. We never sent submissions out to be reviewed by anyone who was thanked by name, because it violated the double blind rule (they would have known who the author was). So, if you really want to make sure your rival doesn't get a chance to do a hatchet job on your manuscript, thank them in a prominent place at the start of the paper.

[mouseman]

Oh, I've had the "ignorant expert" and the "nasty reviewer" a number of times.  Giacalone missed a few, though.  There is the "I already wrote about this and my article was better" reviewer, who goes on and on about another article which did this so much better.  There is, of course, the "I haven't read the article" reviewer, who criticizes you for writing things that you never wrote and/or criticizes you for not writing things that you did write. There is also that old favorite, "I hate the article, but I won't tell you why".  This reviewer will write "I do not recommend this article for publication" and check the lowest rated squares on the online questionnaire.  No comments, no explanation.  Finally I submit the "I will keep on find reasons to reject this MS, no matter how many rounds it takes".  This reviewer keeps on coming up with new and novel reasons that the MS should be rejected.  I actually had a reviewer who went so far as to have a graduate student write a whole set of computer simulations to prove that one of my analyses was wrong.  This was after a second review, after I had successfully responded to all of his comments on the first review.  Talk about being slimed.

[hulkhogan]

I have also encountered (more than once) the "supportive rejecter. This person's comments are all positive and supporting and encouraging and sometimes even amount to praise, save for a few minor problems that I could fix in 15 minutes, but then the verdict is "reject outright." WTF?

[sciencephd]

Yes we keep hearing that the review system in the sciences is broken. 

The question is: what would work better ? 

The present systems works reasonably well...I would like to keep it, please.

[mouseman]

Yes we keep hearing that the review system in the sciences is broken. 

The question is: what would work better ? 

The present systems works reasonably well...I would like to keep it, please.

Like most things in academia, we use it, not because it's good, but because every other method is so much worse.  That doesn't mean that reviewers shouldn't do a  better job in reading and critiquing articles, and editors shouldn't do a better job at moderating the reviewers.

Thus, while I support this system as a whole, I reserve the right to b*tch about crappy reviewers and editors.

[totoro]

Oh, I've had the "ignorant expert" and the "nasty reviewer" a number of times.  Giacalone missed a few, though.  There is the "I already wrote about this and my article was better" reviewer, who goes on and on about another article which did this so much better.  There is, of course, the "I haven't read the article" reviewer, who criticizes you for writing things that you never wrote and/or criticizes you for not writing things that you did write. There is also that old favorite, "I hate the article, but I won't tell you why".  This reviewer will write "I do not recommend this article for publication" and check the lowest rated squares on the online questionnaire.  No comments, no explanation.  Finally I submit the "I will keep on find reasons to reject this MS, no matter how many rounds it takes".  This reviewer keeps on coming up with new and novel reasons that the MS should be rejected.  I actually had a reviewer who went so far as to have a graduate student write a whole set of computer simulations to prove that one of my analyses was wrong.  This was after a second review, after I had successfully responded to all of his comments on the first review.  Talk about being slimed.

I just sent the proofs in today for an article that went through 4-5 review rounds at the same journal. The same recalcitrant reviewer said one time: "I think this is mainly an empirical paper - cut the theory section". The next time they said: "Now I see that this should be mainly about the theory" and so forth. For our final submission we pointed this out to the editor and refused to make substantive revisions and we were accepted.

[merinoblue]

I don't recognize the reviewers I've had from this list. They've been fair, if a little too brief in their comments. But I'm still new to publishing.

The article addresses journal reviewers, not grant reviewers. I've had far more experience with the latter. I don't know if it's a valid comparison, but I've had consistently positive experiences with grant reviewers (as have colleagues). They have provided generous critical comments on what I've done well, and where I need to improve for the resubmission.

[totoro]

My experience with grant reviewers has been about the same as journal reviewers even though I've dealt with many, many more journal reviewers. On my last application (I got the grant but a reduced budget), one of the reviewers complained that we didn't mention all kinds of stuff that we clearly did. Obviously s/he didn't read it carefully at all.  And they generally didn't think it was much good. One of the other reviewers thought it was the best thing ever more or less. Sounds like most sets of journal reviews I get... Luckily, we were allowed a "rejoinder" where we pointed out that we had written all that stuff that the reviewer said wasn't there.

[bwwm1]

I just got a rejection where one reviewer described the paper as very unsophisticated, and another as of the highest quality. Sigh.