Yazan -

I recall receiving a completely ridiculous, demonstrably false comment from a referee for a rather prestigious statistics journal (though generally all statistics journals seem to have relatively low "impact factors") and I just did not have room in my busy schedule to oppose it.  As a referee myself, for that journal and others, I would hope never to have been so sloppy. If that referee knew his/her comments might be seen by others, then maybe such a low quality review would never take place. Maybe fewer biased reviews based on 'politics' of sorts would occur such as a friend of mine received.  It would be interesting to know just how widespread is the problem of personally motivated, or  shoddy reviews. But then, whenever we agree to referee, we are providing a free service, hopefully in the interest of others and the pursuit of progress, and to have to prepare remarks even more formally may be an unreasonable burden. The supply of referees may be more limited if more formal comments are required.

The referee process is too cumbersome as it is, and the pros and cons of changes to the various versions of it now would just be speculation.   It would be nice if a study were done to look into this, but I do not know of one. Perhaps someone else responding to your question will know of such a study.

Good question.

One alternative here may be conference papers with discussions.

Best wishes - Jim 

PS -  Ah!  Andras' comment came out while I was submitting this response. Good point.

ResearchGate has reviews. That would be another alternative.  -  I received good comments from someone on RG, apparently because I think I had accidentally activated a request for a review when my finger touched the screen on my phone.  :-)

However, for many "prestigious" journals, there is a problem, as you have described. 

Dear Yanzan,

Many journals do not reveal the names of the reviewers to the authors. Some journals publish the names of reviewers together  in the last part of a particular volume.The authors will not be able to know who reviewed whose manuscript. However, there are few journals where the name of the reviewers are revealed to the authors. The name of the editors is usually known to the authors. I think  good reviewers, unless biased (chances are very less),  would not mind if their names are disclosed to the authors.

Best wishes,

Subir.

Dear Yazan,

Reviews with or without the names of reviewers?

Dear Yazan,

If with names, it is called open review. This has been invented long time ago and we have had several discussions about it. Open review serves the transparency that would contribute to the correct treatment of manuscripts’ merit.  

Yazan -

I recall receiving a completely ridiculous, demonstrably false comment from a referee for a rather prestigious statistics journal (though generally all statistics journals seem to have relatively low "impact factors") and I just did not have room in my busy schedule to oppose it.  As a referee myself, for that journal and others, I would hope never to have been so sloppy. If that referee knew his/her comments might be seen by others, then maybe such a low quality review would never take place. Maybe fewer biased reviews based on 'politics' of sorts would occur such as a friend of mine received.  It would be interesting to know just how widespread is the problem of personally motivated, or  shoddy reviews. But then, whenever we agree to referee, we are providing a free service, hopefully in the interest of others and the pursuit of progress, and to have to prepare remarks even more formally may be an unreasonable burden. The supply of referees may be more limited if more formal comments are required.

The referee process is too cumbersome as it is, and the pros and cons of changes to the various versions of it now would just be speculation.   It would be nice if a study were done to look into this, but I do not know of one. Perhaps someone else responding to your question will know of such a study.

Good question.

One alternative here may be conference papers with discussions.

Best wishes - Jim 

PS -  Ah!  Andras' comment came out while I was submitting this response. Good point.

ResearchGate has reviews. That would be another alternative.  -  I received good comments from someone on RG, apparently because I think I had accidentally activated a request for a review when my finger touched the screen on my phone.  :-)

However, for many "prestigious" journals, there is a problem, as you have described. 

James has given his experience.

My experience is certainly different. A few years back I submitted a manuscript to a very reputed international botanical journal. The reviewer rejected my manuscript and the editor of the journal informed me the name of the reputed nomenclature specialist. I was completely dejected because it seemed to me that whatever I learned from him (reviewer; known to me) in my research career  was completely wrong. So I requested him for clarification of some points. I received an immediate reply:

Dear Dr Bandyopadhyay:

I owe you a sincere apology for my carelessness in reviewing your MS, "Lectotypification of Phanera macrostachya Benth. (Leguminosae: Caesalpinioideae)" submitted to the ***************.

You are perfectly correct that because Phanera macrostachya Benth. is validated solely by reference to the description in Roxburgh’s Flora Indica (1832), the name must be lectotypified by an element selected from the context of Roxburgh’s description of Bauhinia scandens.

My only excuse – and not a very good one – is that I started my review on 5 May reading the first few paragraphs and making what became Comments JM2 and JM3 and then had to put the paper aside for a few days. When I came back to it on 10 May (the date of the other Comments), I had completely forgotten that Bentham’s name was validates solely by reference to Roxburgh’s description and concentrated instead on your incorrect – and as it turns out irrelevant – argument that the Larsens had not cited a single specimen.

Again my apologies.

Best wishes

**********************

I BELIEVE VERY FEW PEOPLE IN THE WORLD HAS COURAGE TO SAY SO !!!!