Susan forsburg at salk.edu writes:
>I think the reflexive criticism is a huge problem in science--reviewers
>MUST find something nitpicky in their reviews.
Sometimes, if the review is critical, it is hard to distinguish valid
criticism from nit-picking. Especially if the reviewer was severely
annoyed by the problems in the paper. A good "bad" review takes far
longer to write than a good "good" review, and can be exhausting and
painful for the reviewer.
>Do you ever get a review back that says, "this is a nice paper. publish
>it." ? I don't. I WRITE reviews like that, but I don't think the
>editors pay attention.
On one paper I wrote, both reviewers not only were glowing and kind,
but offered additional references and unpublished data, and signed.
Neither reviewer knew me or my co-author, so this was not a case of
the buddy network in action. Oddly, the cover letter from the editor
was hostile, stating that to get the paper up to snuff would require
a complete re-write. Perhaps the editor rarely gets a submission in
ready-to-accept condition? My co-author and I worked *very* hard on
that paper, and fought a lot over the discussion section, but to me
those nice reviews more than made up for the effort.
Unfortunately for me, all the papers I have reviewed so far seem to
have been drafts. They were a pain to review and gave me a poor
impression of their authors. In writing a careful review, I felt
that I was doing a large part of the authors' job for them, gratis.
It would be so much easier to write something brief and dismissive.
--
Una Smith Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Yale University
una.smith at yale.edu New Haven, CT 06520-8106
