Far from being taken as a personal (subjective) communication, the reviewer's comments may contain malicious statements*, which allude to the existence of racism issues in the single-blind peer review system. I am asking this question based on my modest experience in submitting manuscripts. If the answer is yes, is this related to the reviewer's suspicions of fraud ? Finally, How do editors deal with such cases in order to take the right decision for publishing or rejecting papers ?
*Please refer to the following document : Perspectives in publishing No. 2 : Is peer review in crisis ? (August 2004) by Elsevier.
Actually this is quite an interesting topic! I would love to hear your opinions on "Institute fetishism". I would argue that if it was possible to submit two copies of the very same paper after altering the affiliation of the authors, the likelihood of having a favorable review would be drastically higher for the version "submitted" from a reputable and famous university or institute.
I think much depends on the referee and on the editors, therefore it is hard to make general statements. After seven years of editorial wok I observed that
1. The number of papers coming from non-Western countries and from authors of non-Western origin increases exponentially - as it should, due to their greater numbers. (I am convinced that the distribution of talents is rather homogeneous, so the success rate is very much biased by the economic possibilities of the given country)
2. Some Western referees are sensitive to cultural differences, which they consider differences in exactness or sophistication. I am sure we would not fare much better if Chinese or Indian poetry should be published. (That may seem to be joke, ut it isn't).
3. I have seen very strict referees among Chinese, Turkish, Indian, Iranian etc. scientists, therefore rigor does not depend on whether the referee comes from Western on non-Westren countries.
4. There are petty personal quarrels between groups and persons - irrespective whether they come trom the Western or other cultures.
By and large I had positive experience so far, the occurence of nasty authors and referees is fairly low.
Dear colleague, thank you very much for your answer. I believe that answers of well experienced scientists (especially editors) are of great interest for me (and other young authors) to better understand how the editorial/reviewing systems work.
Actually this is quite an interesting topic! I would love to hear your opinions on "Institute fetishism". I would argue that if it was possible to submit two copies of the very same paper after altering the affiliation of the authors, the likelihood of having a favorable review would be drastically higher for the version "submitted" from a reputable and famous university or institute.
Many thanks dear Mustafa. For this sensitive question, every single answer counts! I agree with what you wrote, but I think that the reputation of a given institution does not necessarily reflect the honesty of authors, which are definitely responsible of the manuscript content. History shows many cases of fraudulent scientists from well known institutions. In addition to what Gyorgy said, I speculate that there may be an intuitively negative vision towards authors from certain geographical regions or ethnic origins. I know many persons who fight for getting their modest (but honest) papers published in reputable journals, but who cares ?!! For the concept “Institute Fetishism”, I really don’t know its accurate definition :) . I need more information about the extent of its effect on the reviewing process.
Dear Mohamed,
the review process is certainly not completely blind to cultural and, particularly, language-related biases. However, this problem affects not so much race-related, but more authors with other mother tongs than english. Being an author and a reviewer myself, it is difficult to value the scientific content of a manuscript if the language is so impaired that I cannot even guess the precise content.
However, language editing services or native speaking editing can improve this (nearly universal) weakness a lot. Because it is not up to the reviewer to perform this editing.
You are right that the review process is not an objective process, but to my opinion too strictly structured reviews do not give me as a reviewer the opportunity to value and/or criticize the manuscript.
P.S.: I have done reviews also for journals which use double-blind reviewing. These methods which could reduce direct "racism", however, cannot reduce language- and style-related problems. Therefore, the best way to reduce such problems is high-quality language (and possibly style) editing.
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