University of Sheffield

Tony O'Hagan - Academic pages

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Online Refereeing for Journals - A Rant


First, for the benefit of all journal editors and associate editors, I am retired. As part of my plan to make retirement mean something I am declining all requests to act as a referee (the good old English term) or reviewer (the American term which appears now to have usurped the English one completely). I still do lots of other unpaid things for the academic community, but I won't do refereeing.

And while we're on the subject, refereeing is unpaid. People do it out of a sense of duty. Journals are getting this absolutely crucial service for free. So why do they make it difficult?

I am referring to the increasing insistence by journals that referees interact with the refereeing process only through the journal's online portal. Quite apart from the fact that these are often awkward or even flakey, they inevitably restrict what a referee can do or say. In the good old days, I wrote a referee's report, giving just what information and comments I thought would be useful. That's no longer possible.

But I am retired and not doing refereeing, so why should I care any more? Because I can't even decline to referee a paper without going online to register for the journal's portal and then fill out a form! I try replying to the emails that they send me to ask me to refereee for them, but these replies go unread because the journal's request is sent from an email address that does not receive incoming messages.

How would they feel if in order to ask me to referee a paper they had to register to use my online refereeing request system and then fill out a lengthy request form? They find it convenient to just email out their requests, so why can't they accept email replies? Let me remind them again, referees are unpaid!

So finally, for the benefit of all journal editors and associate editors, I refuse to play your game. If you won't listen to email replies then you'll get no reply from me at all.

End of rant.


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Updated: 7 October 2012
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