A lot of ink has been spilt about the pro’s and con’s ofacademic peer review. I am not going to add to the existing literature on thismatter in this blogpost. Suffice it to say that I subscribe to theview that anonymous peer review is still the least deficient of the availablemechanisms to determine the quality of a given article submission. As an editor of two international journals I am painfully aware of the fact that occasionally the quality of peer review is notas good as it should be. Usually enraged or not so enraged emails from authorsgive us editors an indication that one or another of the reviewers we invitedto review a particular manuscript might not have been as diligent as would havebeen desirable. In some of those caseswe tend to embark on a second round of reviews. Either way, we depend on volunteers, also commonly knownas good academic citizens, to review articles submitted to the journal. OurEditorial Board members have graciously agreed to review a minimum of foursubmitted articles for us in any given year, many review quite a few moresubmissions.
Without dependable reviewers Bioethics and Developing World Bioethics could not function and deliver high-quality outputs. One problem we encounter frequently is that it often is verydifficult to find reviewers for submitted manuscripts. We know fromconversation with fellow editors at other bioethics and medical ethics journalsthat we are not alone in this. The ‘very difficult’ refers to a number ofdifferent problems, the accumulated effects of which have a deleterious effecton our operations. For starters, too many academics are very happy to submittheir manuscripts for review but they think little of returning theprofessional courtesy of their reviewers by responding positively toinvitations to review manuscripts for the journal. As a result, some of thosegood academic citizens who review diligently for us, get arguably overburdenedwith review requests, while those who prefer not to review content get a freeride. I wonder whether the Golden Rule might actually be more frequentlywritten about by academic ethicists than it is actually followed by us. It isnotable that junior academics tend to be more generous with their time whilemany (but by no means all) of the more established scholars are among the morefrequent non-respondents. The former also tend to provide longer, more in-depthand more constructive reviews. This, of course, is very much appreciated byauthors keen to improve their papers prior to submitting their final draft forpublication.
Other problems that typically delay – sometimes verysignificantly – decisions on submitted manuscripts have to do with invitedreviewers not responding to our invitations, lagging significantly behindagreed-upon deadlines for the delivery of the reviews, not delivering promisedreviews at all, but also producing reviews so devoid of critical substance thatthey are useless for all intent and purposes.
Part of the problem is undoubtedly that many academicinstitutions encourage free-riders by not giving serious credits forundertaking per reviews for academic journals, funding agencies and the like. Ifannual performance reviews, or tenure reviews do not include credits for suchwork it is understandable why academics turn down such work. This is veryunfortunate indeed. As academics weshould flag this issue within our institutions with a view toward establishingformal institutional recognition of demonstrable, quantifiable services to theacademic community.
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