[Air-L] to name reviewers or not

[Mathieu ONeil]

Hi

The people involved in the Journal of Peer Production decided to publish all reviews and - after some debate - the initial drafts of papers (it was actually an AOIR luminary who strongly argued that the impact of a review could only be assessed if the initial draft was released as well). Reviewers are anonymous during the process and can choose to be named or remain anonymous after publication. This is indeed meant to encourage better reviews as well as providing recognition to the work of reviewers. So far it seems to be working OK.

cheers,

Mathieu

________________________________________
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org [air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] on behalf of Johann Höchtl [johann.hoechtl at donau-uni.ac.at]
Sent: Sunday, September 08, 2013 15:35
To: Barry Wellman; air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-L] to name reviewers or not

On 2013-09-08 00:12, Barry Wellman wrote:
> dear Prof Hechtl,
>
> I strongly believe the opposite: instead of "more qualitative work" (I
> assume you meant "quality work", we will only get very positive
> reviews which won't be able to sort out the gold from the wheat from
> the chaff -- as few people want to get added to enemies' lists
I see what you mean, however I am uncertain to whom reviewers are more
obliged: To the authors or to the readers. I see that a negative verdict
might and surely will raise negative sentiments in the authors. But it
is unlikely that the authors will review a paper by the reviewer right
at the same time and reviewing shouldn't be about destroying a paper but
giving helpful advice anyway.

>
> PS: 5 reviewers/article seems an awful lot.
Sure, this is the max. But 5 called reviews will return 2 or 3
meaningful ones with some reviewers not responding or delivering
unacceptable reviews. Maybe this should tell us stgh. about our reviewers ;)
>
>   Barry Wellman
>  _______________________________________________________________________
>
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> ________________________________________________________________________
>
>>
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 12:49:26 +0200
>> From: Johann H?chtl <johann.hoechtl at donau-uni.ac.at>
>> To: air-l at aoir.org
>> Subject: [Air-L] Add the contact details of reviewers to published,
>>     peer-reviewed papers
>> Message-ID: <522B04B6.5050906 at donau-uni.ac.at>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>>
>> Dear colleagues,
>>
> [snip]
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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
>>
>>
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--
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

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