The introduction of academic journal was to give a platform to researchers to present their innovations before the large audience. They only responsible for writing article based on their findings and send it to the editors. Editors, on the other hand was responsible for formatting, editing, and bringing any changes with the permission of the authors. The term peer review is a modern idea to evaluate the standard of an article before it goes and disseminate to the larger audience. However, with the passing of time, the practice of scholarly journals have been adopted different changes and how far editors and peer reviewers are contributing to the polishing of a journal is questionable.
The question has kindled in my mind due to the recent behavior of a journal editor and three peer reviewers of a different journal. The editor has asked me to format once again according to their style, which I did almost 95%, I did not write the running head.
So what is the "Job description" of an Editor of an Scholarly Journal?
The peer reviewers supposed to be the expert of the field, however, is rare now a days. Among three reviewers one has accepted with only one correction, second reviewer has asked for five corrections (Minor Correction), and the final one rejected with re submission. Now, I do not see any convergence among the reviewers, who suppose to have same level of expertise, who do not share same kind of evaluation. What I believe, if an article is non-standard, it should be rejected by all reviewers, if good, it should be the opposite.
Therefore, how justified is to rely on those peer reviewers to assess an article and chose its destination?
This is a burning question of the day.I am also looking for the answer.Thank you for raising such a question, generating huge controversy currently.
Thanks Mr. Karim for your comment. A rarely debated issue amid academics.
It is in fact very much under discussion, but perhaps not in the fora that you visit.
If peer reviewing were easy, we could simply let a computer assess the text, and automatically provide a file with comments. But natural language interpreters do not understand mathematics, and they may also make mistakes with the language handling, just as how a human can make language mistakes that might trigger more mistakes by the interpreter of the manuscript. Hence the need for humans with a strong expertize on the narrow subject of a given scientific journal. There is also a matter of phrasing, such that the message in the article will be immediate to the readers of the journal; hence reviewers and editors need to be very sharp. There is also a more delicate matter - that of the balance of the items that necessarily need to be in there (see Subben's checklist): how could a computer program that parsed the submitted text understand the underlying message? No, humans are needed.
The next hurdle is that there are several people involved in the process - the editor who needs to find pertinent reviewers, the reviewers' disparate views of the text, and the author(s) wishes, too. It is quite clear that a computer cannot successfully parse the manuscript and make any sense of it - and in particular it cannot decide whether the paper is acceptable or not. This is work for humans.
Let me know what an alternative to peer reviewing could be designed. I will eagerly read it.
Peer - review is a MUST! We do need it!
The most rewarding aspect of editorial work is helping authors to improve their papers. There is often a drastic improvement between the first and final version of a manuscript, and this reflects the added value of traditional peer-reviewed journals as compared to, e.g., public repositories or journals ensuring fast publication with only a shallow review. The most difficult part is finding the right balance between the legitimate aspiration of authors for fast publication, and the necessity of maintaining a high quality of peer-review, bearing in mind that reviewers accept this time-consuming task as a voluntary service to the research community...
https://www.elsevier.com/connect/editors-update/editor-in-a-60-second-spotlight-thierry-denoeux?utm_campaign=Editor%27s%20update_July2019_STMJ&utm_medium=email&utm_dgroup=Editors%20update_JULY2019_Subscribers&utm_acid=23303843&SIS_ID=0&dgcid=Editor%27s%20update_July2019_STMJ&CMX_ID=&utm_in=DM553880&utm_source=AC_30
It's quite bad as it is already. The quality of peer reviewing also vary a lot among scientific journals, and in particular among the "scholars" that actually read the manuscripts and provide reviews. Some journals are excellent in providing and handling good reviewers, while others have a somewhat less consistent review quality. Nevertheless we do not have any other system, and in the 30+ years that I have been a scholar, I have not come across anything better.
If someone has an idea, bring it forward!
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