[Air-L] Add the contact details of reviewers to published, peer-reviewed papers

[Johann Höchtl]

Dear colleagues,

I get  regulary invited to review papers. I like reviewing papers, good 
written papers enlarge my expertise (and even "bad" ones almost ever 
have stgh. to offer)

I take reviews serious, even when I decide to reject a submission. Good 
comments addressing scientific rigor, reasoning and style, can be a 
tremendous help to improve a paper for a later submission. At the same 
time I hope to get meaningful reviews for papers I am co-authoring.

Our department is running a scientific journal. Submission are reviewed 
by ~5 reviewers and we regularly receive reviews which vary quality-wise 
in broad ranges, from thoroughly carried out to a mere "good written". 
Some of them might be unacceptable (thus ~5reviews per submission).

Sure, it is our liability to carefully select reviewers. And most of the 
time reviews are voluntary carried out in spare time. However, apart 
from these arguments justifying hasty reviews, what strikes me is the 
fact that the reviewers identities are kept in secrecy.

Bachelor, master & PhD-thesis all carry the supervisor in bold letters. 
Peer-reviewed papers (or journals) for which the gentle reader might 
have to pay prices up into the hundreds of <your currency> though keep 
the reviewers, which are rampart to keep quality, in clandestine.

I don't know where this habit comes from, but it must be somewhere 
deeply enshrined, as I am not aware of a style manual which describes 
where to put and how to format reviewer contact details of papers 
(though there might be such).

Knowing the reviewers of papers, both the authors as well as the reader, 
has a couple of advantages:

* The reviewer is more obliged to deliver qualitative work as the paper 
is under public scrutiny in respect to her / his effort put into 
reviewing the paper.
* The reviewer is especially obliged to the authors as her / his verdict 
will have to be carefully justified.
* These forces will increase the quality of a papers.
* It will encourage scientific discourse

Though there are also possible disadvantages:

* There might be less papers published as reviews will be carried out 
with increased rigor and reviewers more tending to reject than to 
approve to avoid qualitative discussions afterwards.

I for one will start to discuss this topic with our journal editors and 
gather their opinions.

This is a general topic and should this be inappropriate for this 
mailing list I apologize and will put it on a blog.

Regards,

    Johann

-- 
Dr. Johann Höchtl
Zentrum für E-Governance
Donau-Universität Krems
Dr.-Karl-Dorrek-Straße 30
A-3500 Krems
Tel.: ++43 2732 893 2304
Mail:Johann.hoechtl at donau-uni.ac.at