I generally was taught that reviewers should keep their reviews confidential forever. I was invited to review an article that was recently published. It was then picked up by a major news source in the area that tracks interesting developments. The journal article reports a recent trend observed across 5 waves of World Values Survey data that appears to counter what was a prevailing observation. What is your sense of the correctness of mentioning this article and my role as I write about the conclusions in a blog for a third group? I imagine the purpose would be to share that I was a critical reviewer and was won over by the findings, even though I had some recommendations for improvement. Thoughts?
Thank you Holly. This is a great question. I think we must look at it from both sides. How does the reviewer feel having their review public (are they identified with it?) but then how does the author feel about knowing the identity of a given reviewer? Do they learn who was attached to which review? What if a review was particularly mean or unhelpful? Might this situation complicate professional relationships down the road? If a junior faculty receives a glowing/great review from a senior colleague in their field could they feel beholden to that individual somehow?
Thanks, Charlie! Those are helpful perspectives to consider. The authors of this article are Russian demographers so I will never meet them. There were several reviewers, but my review was intended to be helpful--suggesting some literature I thought should be referenced (not mine) which they did do. I see your point about obligation. My blog was due today to The Religious Studies project. I decided not to say I was a reviewer on the article, but I did discuss it since I think it captures a very interesting probably countervailing trend in response to the Do people grow more religious as they age or is the cohort effect stronger question.
Yes, so context is everything. Does the author and reviewer "run" in the same circles? Is there a senior/junior kind of dynamic? This is an interesting and complex question. I have had review requests that are single blind but in those I know the authors and they don't know me. I have gone ahead and done those reviews but knowing who they are does create bias (positive or negative) even if that is not an intended mental process. I still prefer double blind reviews.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Those are really good questions to consider. In this case, I thought the authors were Japanese because a demographic example they provided was from Japan and the writing wasn't from a native English speaker. However, I was quite surprised to later learn the authors were Russian. I haven't had many single-blind articles come my way for review. Typically those would be a report or something. I was asked to review an NIHR report from a funded study about technology and medicine here. (That's only because I sit on an NIHR Health Services and Delivery research prioritisation panel. There were 4 arms of research and a lot of Co-Is.)
The single blind thing seems to come from those open access journals that are new. It seems to me the proliferation of open access journals with publication fees is changing the landscape of how scholarly published work is done? Not sure how I feel about that. I remember someone telling me once about keeping one's role as a external tenure reviewer private due to the potential that if the candidate learned of your role, and they were successful they might feel beholding to you. I had never thought of that?
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