Authors are well advised to check out editorial policies on review processes. While you may assume sending a paper to a international “peer reviewed” journal assures you of a blind review process, some even “better” journals (such as the International Journal of Production Economics) only subscribe to a single-blind review – i.e. authors do not know who their reviewers are but reviewers certainly do know who the authors are. This is not to say there wouldn’t be good arguments to present for single-blind or even open reviews, the question is just why this is not openly stated in the journal’s editorial policy… So this is not blind, it’s just candid. More room for ring-a-ring-o’-roses. Nobody said it was easy to be a scientist 
Gyöngyi
5 responses so far ↓
James Cooke // April 16, 2009 at 4:20 pm |
Although I can’t speak for peer-reviewed journals, we here at Supply Chain Quarterly only keep the author’s name a secret to a member of the editorial board who gets asked to comment on a submission.
Frankly, I would want to know something about the author’s background to establish his or her authority on the topic and to determine his or her bias if any. Since many articles submissions are often marketing pieces in disguise, it’s important to determine whether the article merits publication as it advances thought leadership in the supply chain – even if the author may be engaged in a soft sell for a product or service.
gyoengyi // June 3, 2009 at 7:05 am |
Both the blind review and the open source review have their advantages. And it isn’t as if “double-blind peer review” would exclude knowing who the author or reviewer is, there are after all not all that many experts in any field that one couldn’t guess. The thing is, though, that it would be good to know in advance what one is in for, it’s not a good surprise if a review is e.g. single-blind but the journal has failed to mention this on their website.
In any case, here’s a way open source reviews could look like
Gyöngyi
husdal.com // May 13, 2009 at 9:15 am |
As the occasional reviewer for journals and book chapters I agree with James here. I do prefer to know who the author is. Mind you, even in a “blind” review the file properties or the selection of references or the way the references are used sometimes leave enough clues for some googling. I also have to admit that there have been “blind” papers that I have rejected for publication based on poor quality, only later to discover (through said googling) that this was an established academic in the field. That said, I probably would still have rejected the paper had I known about the author.
The Catch 22 of Academic Publishing « husdal.com // May 26, 2009 at 11:06 pm |
[...] long ago I came across an interesting blog post on interorganisational.org, titled Questions of science, science and progress, referring to Ring a Ring o Roses, an article published in Journal of Management Studies that [...]
The Catch 22 of Academic Publishing « husdal.com // July 7, 2009 at 11:08 pm |
[...] long ago I came across an interesting blog post on interorganisational.org, titled Questions of science, science and progress, referring to Ring a Ring o Roses, an article published in Journal of Management Studies that [...]