The peer review process is imperfect however you have to take a stoic
approach and be patient. I am nervous when i get totaly positive
reviews because it may mean that the reviewers are not doing their job
or that I have submitted a paper to a "hungry journal". I would say
that, in my field, about 1/3 of the reviewer simply do not get the poin
and read into the paper things that are not there. I see that as a
failure on my part in clarity and so revise wiht that in mind. Some
times reviewers criticism is based on outright error in fundamentals, in
which case a letter to the editor, calmly pointing this out is
appropriate. In a very few instances a bad review will come from
someone defending a bit of intellectual capital come what may. again a
well thought out letter to the editor is one possibility. I have had a
few papers that required "major revision" or even complete rewriting.
By and large the papers are the better for it. So hostile reviews,
although irritating and sometimes off the mark, can result in a clearer
paper. Please do not stop writing and submitting papers nor make
fundamental changes just to please the reviewers.
Xie Min wrote:
>
> T.-S. Lim ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> : I'd like to hear others' opinions regarding making the review process for
> : submitting papers to journals totally open. In my very limited experiences,
> : I've encountered referees who don't know what they're talking about. They even
>
> I think this is not uncommon. On the other hand, a journal also depends on
> the chief editor (who selects the referees, and also judges if a referee
> report is good or not) or Associate Editor (in some cases, the editor
> passes to the associate editor who is more knowledgeable with the topic,
> and the associate editor selects referees).
>
> : make silly comments. IMHO, they would think twice before writing any silly
> : comment if they know that their names would be made known to the author(s).
>
> The problem is you will then get positive reports with a long review
> process... I think most people will then decline to be a referee if
> they are not happy with the paper.
>
> : I'd like to venture that an open-review process would increase the overall
> : quality of the journal. Thank you for reading this. Email me if you'd like to
> : have a private discussion.
>
> If you like open-review, then an open discussion should be better...
>
> Anyway, either is acceptable (if handled properly), but an open
> review will probably cause more problems, unhappiness and conflict
> (we are all human being...). You can imagine what will happen if
> the presidential election is totally open (we know whom other
> voted...).
