Peer Review Week 2016 #PeerRvWk16

So apparently it's Peer Review Week 2016, at least on Twitter. I thought I'd take the time to sketch out a few thoughts on the topic.

From my perspective, as someone who has contacted, discussed, and, mainly, negotiated with peer reviewers, they hold a special place in theAdmin's heart. 

To put it bluntly, peer reviewing is what makes the academic world go round. Is it perfect? Of course not. But the reviewers who ensure integrity in what is published, thus helping to create the body of scholarship required for any academic community, are more than just cogs in the great machine of publishing. How should peer reviewers be recognised? This is one of the main questions that pops up when discussing reviewing. For a double blind system to work, recognition is inherently difficult. Open peer review is a different story, but there are inherently difficult issues with both forms. Recognition-wise, is being included in a list at the end of a volume good enough? Is it enough to receive an automated email (however sincere) thanking you for your time and inviting you to submit your own work? 

The answers are, usually, no. Peer reviewers are some of my favourite people. Usually charitable, enthusiastic, innovative, and encouraging scholars who wish for nothing more than to help better their field by helping to create better scholarship. There are of course exceptions, but 9.9/10 who agree, do so with the best interest of the author and the field at heart. I've received countless confidential notes with reviews stating that if this is an ECR instead of a SCR, then they would like to modify the language to be more encouraging....if someone is at the beginning of their scholarly career then there is a massive amount of potential and they'd like to help with development. 

But how do we, as members of academia, recognise this hard work and this development potential? We must, firstly, recognise that what I like to refer to as "Reviewer Fatigue" is a real issue. This is when a good, solid reviewer is asked to review so many times that they either (A) grow tired of it and move on to something else or, more commonly (B) simply cannot complete the number of review requests in the time they have allotted for reviews. Reviewer Fatigue emerges for several reasons, and keeping it at bay was one of my main goals. Editors can quite easily become exasperated with repeated denials to review for whatever reason and so can quite easily begin to rely on a reviewer who repeatedly provides excellent quality - and just as importantly - timely reviews in order to meet the strict copy deadlines. And I don't mean to say that Reviewer Fatigue is generated by editors. The solution is a complicated one - one way theEditor dealt with it was when someone became such an integral part of the journal's processes for this reason, the reviewer was invited to join the editorial board. So, in part, recognition was duly awarded within the constraints of what an academic editor can actually do (keep in mind that who owns the journal and its revenue and who edits/runs the journal are two entirely separate entities, which is a debate for another time).

But I digress. So, what was my main reason for wanting to jot down some thoughts this week? Purely and simply to say one thing: 

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO REVIEWS

Seriously, give yourself a round of applause.......giphy.com

-theAdmin

Guest Post: Writing and Writer's Block as a Professor

This is part two of my two-parter (Part I can be found here). The point of the two-part guest post is to demonstrate a shared experience: writer's block and insecurities are not unique to ECRs. The below post is from a professor at a very highly ranked research university (friends in high places!). The conversation, like so many in academia, began in a bar and took surprisingly little convincing, as we were discussing the struggle of getting a paper written. When asked for the requirements, my three part response was simple: 1) write honestly about the experience 2) be as frank as you wish 3) anonymity will cover 1 and 2. 

So, without further ado, LaProfesseur, unabridged and unedited.

___

When theAdmin suggested I do a blog-style piece on the extent to which experienced academics still suffer from writers’ block, I thought:   ‘Yeah!  That’ll be fun!  I’ll do that right away!’  That was about six months ago. 

So, the answer, emphatically, is yes.  Even when the stakes are pretty low (apart from the threat of the ire* of theAdmin) some of us never do outgrow our love-hate relationship with writing.  I love having written something.  Actually writing something, myehh, not so much.   I still experience many of the same symptoms that I did when I was a novice keen to break in to the world of publishing but uncertain about how to do it.  That includes:  many of the same insecurities about whether I’m saying anything worthwhile; many of the same fears about certain Imagined Readers (I have two Imagined Readers who can freeze me mid-sentence if they pop into my mind);   many of the same infantile procrastination strategies (eyebrow plucking, anyone?).   So if you are looking for reassurance that you will outgrow bad habits and The Dreads, I’m sorry.  So if not comfort, what can an an experienced professor at a highly ranked research-intensive University offer to someone who shares the writer’s block affliction but has only just started to publish? Empathy:  definitely.  It’s hard.  My sympathies.  It’s not just you.  And…perhaps a little advice on how I have learnt to defeat myself (occasionally) at my own games.  A few of my more successful strategies (that is, sometimes they work) are below. 

• ·         Strategy one:  have a really solid outline.  These are not so onerous to write and once it’s done, you really are on your way.  This helps to focus the mind and start the flow.  It also helps to impose coherence.  Entropy is always a risk in the panic of writer’s-block-meets-deadline; a solid framework helps you to avoid it. 
• ·         Strategy two:   write something; anything.  The tyranny of the blank page is a nightmare.  Even a title, your name, a few references that you know you will use in the correct format for your target journal:  it all creates a comforting sense of progress.  I often infill sections of the outline that I know I can do easily or which I feel passionately about.  You can worry about how it all holds together later.
• ·         Strategy three:  speaking of flow, find it and go with it.  I don’t know the provenance of the expression and wouldn’t recommend taking it literally, but I suspect this is the wisdom of ‘write drunk; edit sober’.   Self-editing from a critical place is necessary eventually, but can be paralysing when you are trying to get into the flow.
• ·         Strategy four:  replace those dreaded Imagined Readers with some friendly, supportive people that see things your way and will appreciate your work.  Write for them first.  In later editing, you can defend yourself against the others.

A theme is emerging here, which is about acknowledging writing as a process with easier and more difficult stages.  Making the difficult stages easier and picking the low-hanging fruit of the easy stages allows you to get to a place where you feel the article taking shape.  Then it’s okay to let your more critical self out of that dungeon in your mind.

Ironically, I think I have a reputation for being pretty reliable.  In other words, I do usually manage to get things done despite the procrastination and various forms of torture I put myself through.   For all my flaws, I do respect both negotiated timelines and imposed deadlines; not respecting them only makes things much worse.  That is something I HAVE learnt and it is increasingly true as work intensifies.  Postponements and creative blocks are rarely a product of having too much to do.  You can make those deadlines too – and no-one needs to know the agony behind the scenes.

*NB – the Admin doesn’t really do ire – follow her kind and wise advice!

-LaProfesseur

Why Does Peer Review take so long? (Part I)

Questions from the Audience: Why does Peer Review take so long? (Part I)

This is one of the most common questions about the publishing process. You’ve submitted a paper and have been patient. You’ve checked your paper’s status through the online portal (or have received an update via whatever system the journal uses), and it still says Under Review. You go back to your daily life. You check again three weeks later and it still says Under Review. Same a month later. What’s taking so long? As many emails from authors asking about the delay often ask: reviewers are given deadlines, so what’s taking so long?

There are a myriad of reasons it could be taking so long. I’ll cover a few below and a few more in the next post. Whilst I do sympathise with authors and do empathise that it can be really quite anxiety-inducing waiting for the verdict, it can be quite frustrating when authors fail to take into consideration everything that happens on the editorial front. 

So, without further ado (and in no particular order), some reasons that it’s taking so long:

1.) It’s a workload issue.

By this, I mean that your paper is not the only submission we have. We have a lot of papers to evaluate and process, comment on, and think about suitable reviewers. Because your paper’s status says Under Review does not necessarily mean it has moved to peer review. Some journals operate a two-stage review, which means that the editor has the paper and is considering it. Editors also have to balance a full academic workload, so papers have to wait until we get to them. Which leads me to the next one..

2.) Someone is on leave

This could mean the administrator, the editor, or a reviewer who has agreed to do the review after s/he returns from leave. Yes, it’s frustrating to find out that your anxiety has been due to someone being on holiday, but there’s a few reasons that we would see this as a favourable option:

·         If the reviewer has been a particularly good (and reliable) reviewer in the past, then it is often worthwhile to wait for quality.

·        Having someone who agrees but flags up that they will be on leave for X amount of time still means we have a reviewer. Usually this person will get the review to us when they say they will because they are aware that we are being flexible.

·        Depending on the paper, it usually proves quicker to wait for someone to get back and do the review than try to find an alternate. Finding alternate reviewers is a very time consuming process (more on that in the next post).

3.) The paper is difficult to find a reviewer for

Some papers are just more difficult than others to get reviewed. This is usually due to the subject area being highly specialised, or the paper having a very unique methodology. Another reason could be that we’ve just reviewed a paper on a similar topic so have already engaged a list of reviewers in the area so must find more suitable reviewers. Reviewers aren’t paid, so we have the balancing act of being careful not to overuse them and take up too much of their time. We also have to check all the co-authors and the acknowledgements to make sure we don’t send the paper to someone involved in writing it. This sounds like a no-brainer, but for highly specialised papers, it can sometimes be difficult to find someone who won’t endanger the integrity of the double-blind system. 

4.)  It’s conference season/end of term/holiday season

When you have time to research and write papers, so does the rest of academia. This means that time pressure is on for everyone, including the editor and reviewers. They can take longer than planned, ask for extensions, get side-tracked – you name it, I’ve gotten it as a reason a review has been delayed. Still, it’s quicker to be flexible and allow an extension than start over finding another reviewer. People also refuse reviews if they are under pressure to finish their own papers and conference presentations. It’s understandable; they’re academics, too. But this means that the process takes longer as we have to ask, and, more time-consumingly, wait for replies from, more people. If they are away from the office, we can’t just assume they’ll say no and move on. Again, it’s a balancing act. If we just moved on and they were perfectly willing to do a review, then we run the risk of not only missing out on getting this review completed but also affecting future requests.

And all of these things can (and have) happened to a single paper. And we have a lot of papers.

Stay tuned, more reasons to come in the next post. In the meantime, hit the comment section or email with any questions.

-theAdmin.

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