I have spent about half of today refereeing a paper that I have recommended for rejection. This is not an easy task. When I first read the article I did not like it but that of course is not sufficient reason. A second read required that I check up on some of the references and make sure that the article is consistent, which it was but I did not agree on the applicability of the model proposed. More reading of the bibliography. I discover at least one self-reference that appears to be there for no reason other than to (perhaps) improve citation score (I am now grumpy). I discover another reference that is on a completely different subject that must be in by mistake (not a self citation, possibly pressing the wrong paper in endnote?). This is indicative of poor rereading.
A discrete phone call to a colleague allows me to discuss the mechanism and we agree that it is flawed. Now follows the difficult bit, I have to write a carefully worded letter justifying my concerns to the editor. I need to get a fortifying doughnut before I do this.
At last I have finished (about 4 hours for the process).
Brian, I was so disappointed when I found out the subject of your post.
When I saw ‘refereeing chores’ I imagined you as an official referee, positioned between two cleaners (Kim and Aggie, maybe) who were in a prize fight to see who could clean up best…
Was the English correct though?
@Bob Thanks for the interesting link to the thread of the other blog. This paper was well enough written by a non-english first language author. Most journals will ask a referee to reject a paper if the English is of poor quality. However, there can be an issue if the paper is refereed by a non-native speaker as they may not fell competent to judge on language quality.
That’s awful. Language is something that can be corrected, and doesn’t have much bearing on the science. I’m fairly anal about language, but even I wouldn’t go that far.
Most journals will ask a referee to reject a paper if the English is of poor quality.
Not the Nature journals, though. We employ professional editors and sub (copy) editors specifically to help authors (and referees!) on language matters. We provide quite a bit of advice about how to write a paper, including links to independent services and also have a web page called getting published in a Nature journal, which attempts to lift the veil over the publication process, and which is in eight languages. There are also quite a few language-editing services which authors can pay for (NPG has one).
I can imagine that specialist journals that don’t employ professional editors don’t have the resources to help authors significantly with the language. I hope they would not go so far as to reject a paper because the English isn’t very good, though – they could recommend a free service such as provided by SciDev.Net and suggest an author resubmits, at no “cost” to themselves.
But that’s a side issue, I was struck by your post, Brian, because it is true that ‘scientists as referees’ do so much for the scientific community. I only hope that the authors found your thoughtfulness useful, and revised their paper before submitting it somewhere else.
About 4 hours sounds roughly like what it takes for me. Even when a paper is quite good but requires minor revisions, it takes a while because you want to help it realize its maximum potential, since you are pretty sure that you will see it thereafter in the canon. When it’s awful, you can tell a couple of reasons to the editor and draw the line. The hardest/longest is with major revisions.
For obvious reasons, I don’t draw attention to language issues except as a minor comment with a couple of examples. Like Chris, I do consider that any native speakers on an author list, even if in the middle, ought to ensure the grammatical legibility. However, native is not always enough to guarantee grammar!
I have been putting off another chore, which is to act as a tie-breaking referee brought in by the editor to separate two very conflicting original referee’s reports. This probably won’t take as long as the chore of being an original referee but you never know. I had better get on with it now.
If you’re lucky, one of the two reviewers will already have represented your point of view. Good luck – and thanks on behalf of the authors!
Well, John Maddox taught me when I was a novice editor that “science isn’t decided by voting”. At Nature, referees of one manuscript tend to have very different areas of expertise, as our papers tend to be cross-disciplinary. So it is possible to weight the advice accordingly. We always try to avoid “tie breaking” referees because as often as not, the new referee raises new points, however much the editor asks them to stick to judging the points already raised. Then, the dilemma is whether to ask the author to address those, too (yes, probably), and the additional delays that may incur.
At Nature, we always show the referees each others’ comments on a paper. They tend to find this very useful and interesting. I think this can often help to resolve logjams (conflicting advice) – if the referees can see what each other say about a paper, or perhaps even discuss it in confidence before a decision is sent to the author? (What are the criticial points to address, what is icing, what is really a whole new paper, etc?)
I definitely appreciate seeing what other referees think about a paper, and would appreciate it if all journals sent all the reports out to the refs at the same time as the author gets them. This can often help as much, if not more, in the learning process for referees, as doing the review in the first place.
Er … what Maxine said.
I should have mentioned that I was not a “tie-breaking” referee but that I am an Associate Editor of the Journal in question and the policy is that all refereed papers are summarised by an AE. On reading the paper and the comments of the referees I could see that the positive referee gave no argument in favour of his decision (he/she just ticked the boxes) while the negative gave a weel argued critique and suggested remedial action. I agreed with all this and it was clear what the decision should be.
Brian, your post has attracted much comment over at FriendFeed, if you’re interested in these trivialities;-).
Good man!
By the way, agree that “wet” referee reports are not that helpful to anyone – author, editor or other referees. A bland paragraph saying “hmmm, yes, publish” with no details is not that helpful. I suggest that a well-argued, even if brief, constructive and specific critique is much more useful to all concerned (whether decision is to reject or accept).