Ecologgers-
While I definitely advocate caution in this situation, I have also
had people from more than one agency we work with suggest we pay for outside
reviewers of our reports. I've always supported agencies seeking outside
reviewers of our work as a way to get constructive criticism- but always
felt a bit uneasy about the idea of paying for such reviews. But it is
possible that the review request was a legitimate request as part of the
government's internal review process which I believe is still required for
federal scientists prior to publishing.
The incident raises two questions to me. First, what is the best
way to investigate. I suspect that contacting the author would be the first
thing I would do as he/she will know if his/her paper is being subjected to
an internal or other preliminary review prior to submission (this kind of
review request clearly did not come from an academic journal). Contacting
the author does remove the possibility of yours being an anonymous review if
it is a legitimate request, but as a preliminary review, it facilitates a
more constructive process of improving the work. Moreover, it alerts the
author that his/her work is linked to suspicious activity if it is not a
legitimate review request.
The second question is whether it is appropriate to pay reviewers.
We typically think of reviews as a volunteer activity, and many ecologists
do not have time built in to their position for conducting outside reviews.
Using payment as a way to encourage timely, thoughtful and well written
reviews does have some appeal, especially as a way to encourage outside peer
reviews of technical reports and similar publications that have great
influence over the management of our natural resources. On the other hand,
especially if the author, the author's institution or clients are paying for
a review, there is always at least the appearance that the review process
depends on something other than the quality of the work being reviewed.
Brian Hudgens
Research Ecologist
Institute for Wildlife Studies
PO Box 1104
Arcata, CA 95518
(707) 822-4258
[email protected]
Original post:
Dear Ecologgers:
I wanted to alert you all to a potential phishing effort in which I was
recently involved.
Last week I was contacted by someone with an "epamail.epa.gov" email address
about reviewing a manuscript written by someone whom I knew worked in the
area of the supposed manuscript topic. In fact, I had corresponded with
that person relatively recently. In the initial email, there was no contact
information for the person requesting the review, other than the email
address, there was no mention of the journal to which the manuscript had
been submitted, but there was an offer of $100 for reviewing the
manuscript... {Rest of text ommitted}
