Following a comment “somewhere else”, I’ve decided to test an hypothesis.
Does posting on specific days of the week affect the number of hits your thread garners?
It’ll be two tailed. And while I’m at it, I might as well bitch about something while my simulations are running.
According to my tame PhD. student, we’ve got five papers in review at the moment. That part’s nice. One of them have been in review for 6 months. That part’s not so nice. Especially considering the fact that I submitted a review last week that I completed within the requested 3 week period. Three weeks is less than six months. I probably won’t be submitting to the offending journal again.
How long is it appropriate to wait for this sort of thing? We’ve e-mailed the journal office 3 times, they replied some time after the 3rd (not before). Apparently they got 1 review, but the 2nd reviewer forgot. Automated systems shouldn’t let reviewers and editors forget for 6 months, should they? I know ours doesn’t.
The problem with this post is that it’s Friday, and the post isn’t silly enough. So you won’t get anyone commenting here.
Exactly, Bob.
Bob, your sense of ironing never ceases to amaze me.
(Seriously – you should see the creases in his t-shirts)
And here’s somewhere else, for those
slacking off work enough to beinterested.Steffi, I actually meant to include a link to your daily blogging experiment of the christmas/new year period. Did you notice any effect of day on your comment numbers?
That reads very similar to an (ongoing?) experience of mine. I submitted to ‘The Journal of Snail Velocity’ some time ago. Shortly after, as I was now on their list, they asked me to review a manuscript, which I happily did, and turned it round within their stipulated period (three weeks, or thereabouts). But it was six months before I got back the response to my submission. Interim E-mails informed me that the original second reviewer had not come good, so they recruited another, who then stalled. And they couldn’t do anything about it, because they concede clout to the reviewers. ‘Who runs this show?’, I thought; ‘kick the lazy t—-’s ass!’ One of the reviewers wanted a lot of work doing; but this was accompanied by being informed that it would be at least a year after acceptance before the thing appeared in print. By this time, I was already concerned that it had lost any impact it might have and was drifting into irrelevance, so it has sunk down my priority list.
I realise people are busy an’all. But there are things at stake sometimes.
Sucks to be us just now, Lee.
Can any editors out there tell us if there’s a secret (or public) system in place to punish poor reviewers? There was some discussion a while ago on NN about these matters, I don’t think there was any established system then, but it does really hurt people – those applying for jobs and grants – to have papers held up in this way. I ain’t accusing anyone of deliberately sabotaging things, but darn it, it’s frustrating.
Update: As if by magic,
the shopkeeper appearedI was sent a “Request to review” this afternoon after posting this blog. With the following time limits: “Please complete your review within three weeks.”Should I, or shouldn’t I, listeners?
You should; unless you are unable, in which case, you should at least inform so. (But you know this.)
Mike, my blogging experiment: I can’t say that I noticed a trend. The x-mas period (quite unintentionally) turned out to be a funny time to do it, anyway, because generally I think less people were posting, so most of my posts ended up somewhat near the top or on top of the list. Interesting, I’m sure it won’t happen again! That certainly may have drawn more people to look at my stuff, but it didn’t seem to draw that many more comments.
Concerning your question to editors.. (puts hat on): no, of course there isn’t a way to ‘punish’ slack reviewers, since it’s a community service they provide for free. The only thing you can do is keep track of how reviewers are doing, how thorough and timely they are, and stop sending stuff to those that slack. Which also means that the good ones sometimes get buried with requests… so any journal is always looking for new, good reviewers.
er…. what Steffi said.
Hmmmm….regarding Steffi’s comment… So, basically reviewing papers for journals has no direct benefit to someone’s career (only potentially negative if they get asked to do it over and over and over again and have little time) but everyone generally accepts that the process is part of being a scientist, and that it’s part of the whole system of peer review, so they do it anyway, because they eventually want other people to review their submissions, and if nobody reviewed anything, nothing would get done…
(I’m just thinking out loud. I’m giving a talk about blogging in 5 or 6 weeks or so – you can figure out where this thought leads…)
Thanks for the advice, Cath. I did, and now my world’s a little hazy.
I think that bus is one stop short of a station.
Eva: I believe most publishers will write something up about your reviewing activity for a journal, and many people show this to their department heads when it comes time for promotion. In our journals, we also have ‘Review Editors’ who get listed by name in the printed journal and on the web page, so there’s something more to show for it – their reviewing load is somewhat larger than average.