Money, Responsibility, and the Time to Review -- What's Up?

3/22/2018

This is going to be a quick one. I've got multiple research endeavors I need to keep moving along, lab housekeeping to do, students coming in, and prep for field school tomorrow. It's a busy day. They all are. And that's why I feel compelled to wonder (somewhat rhetorically) how I should value my time and how much of an ear I should turn to those that want to "buy" it.

For professional archaeologists, participating in the peer review process comes with the territory. Peer review, however imperfect it may be, is a mechanism of quality control: if someone with legitimate expertise can raise serious/significant questions about aspects of your work, you should be able to address those questions one way or another before the work is published.

We all get asked to anonymously read and comment on articles that fall within our particular wheelhouses. For various reasons (time, conflicts, lack of interest, etc.) I don't always say "yes." But most of the time I do.

We do peer review for journals for no direct compensation. It can take a lot of time to carefully read and comment on a submission, especially if the paper is somewhere in the zone where it will be publishable after non-trivial adjustments (i.e., it's not good enough to give say "publish now" but not poor enough to say "toss it out"). I think most of us consider doing journal-based peer review to be part of our responsibilities as scholars.

I will admit I'm increasingly conflicted about doing review work for journals that limit public access using paywalls. I would prefer that everyone -- especially those that support the research through tax dollars -- be able to read everything. Those concerns are increasingly factoring in to my decisions about what review requests to accept and where to submit my own work for publication.

But then there are cases where we are offered something to read, review, or comment on a piece of scholarly work. I've recently done two book reviews for American Antiquity (copies here) and I did an essay for Reviews in Anthropology that included review of three new books. In those cases, I got a publication out of the deal.

This week, I got an email asking me to review a textbook and provide "detailed feedback" within one month. For my troubles, the publisher -- a major book publisher -- offered me the princely sum of $150 or $300 worth of books.

How long would it take me to carefully review and provide detailed feedback on an entire textbook? If it took me 20 hours I'd barely be making minimum wage. And I'd be putting all the other things I need to do on hold to accomplish that. Do I have a "duty" to devote my time to reviewing a textbook that will be sold for profit? I'm just not feeling it.

A few months ago, I received an envelope that contained an advertising flyer for a book, a hand-written letter, and $5 in one dollar bills. The letter urged me to buy the book but did not mention what I was supposed to do with the $5. I guess it was supposed to be some kind of incentive to move the book up in the queue of "things I need to read." Right?

I have remained strangely paralyzed about it: the bills are still in a pile on my table. Something about it feels oddly icky. Yet I continue to let them sit there.

My pile of Washingtons.

I need some validation. Tell me it's okay to use the money to get a Dr. Pepper from the vending machine across the street.

I can barely keep up with reading the abstracts of the "first tier" literature that is coming out in my areas of interest, let alone reading it all or devoting multiple work days to mark up someone else's textbook. I can't be the only one who feels somewhat besieged.

8 Comments

Greg Little

3/22/2018 12:08:25 pm

I was a peer reviewer for about 20 years for journals in psychology, psychiatry, and criminal statistics. Never got paid nor offered anything other than being listed in the annual list of reviewers--I did sometimes get a complimentary copy of the journal. I did do a couple dozen professional book reviews and that, at least, got my name in the journal as a "publication." So I got a copy of the book I reviewed for free. And doing that also allowed me to meet BF Skinner and a couple other "names" in my field. Eventually I just stopped doing it, and focused my time and effort on issuing my own journal articles. The journals begged for reviewers and back then they only had libraries that subscribed to their journals. Then they started making it a real publishing business using the publishing model to sell single digital copies, charge a lot for subscriptions, and even most colleges dropped the physical copies of the journals. Those that still get the physical copies usually keep them in the related department in a closed area. Then they started having submission fees and publication fees. All those "paywall" journals keep the results of research from the public and eventually hurts research support.

I still get requests to do reviews but just don't have the time nor the inclination. I see no advantage at all to doing them and no longer see it as a professional obligation -- especially since the journals are now all essentially profit-making institutions. That's OK, but they need to pay reviewers.

If you have the return address on the handwritten note you got with the $5, send the bills back. Stop looking at them. They are there to manipulate you. If there is no handwritten note, drop them as a donation to some cause.

You don't need a Dr. Pepper. Have a beer. Then use your time to do what you see is worthwhile.

Greg

Shane

3/22/2018 07:07:49 pm

Greg, this comment is all I need to know to come to the conclusion that you're probably a pretty rad dude.

Jim

3/22/2018 12:29:49 pm

Yup, go for a beer.
I have had a number of requests to use my photos for publication (for free, of course, and the glory of being published) I agreed on the first request with the condition that they supply me with a copy of the book it was to appear in. Never received the book, not a peep, not even a thank you. I know it was printed as a friends daughter pointed it out to me in her school textbook. Yay,, I'm famous.
Have a beer, chalk it up to past due.

Bill Wagner

3/22/2018 01:42:58 pm

Good for you, Andy.

Peer Review is supposed to operate as a quality control mechanism. And sometimes it does. As time goes on and the standard (beginning with grammar) keeps relaxing, I wish it worked better.

Other times it is simply re-introducing the necessity that authors have their work reviewed by the educational village soviet for orthodoxy, it being well known that current orthodox opinion (like, until recently, Clovis First via Beringia) and Truth are synonymous (/sarcasm).

That, in turn, was simply reimposing the Counter-Reformation's imprimatur/nihil obstat necessity -- again, vetting for orthodoxy attested by recognised authorities (who, in turn, answered to those above them).

How many non-tenured academics would have signed off on Stanford & Bradley's Across Atlantic Ice, if only out of support for academic freedom to publish heterodox ideas in principle? And if they had, how many of them would have been ostracized and subjected to professional reprisals for breaking ranks?

Just as the power to tax necessarily entails the power to destroy, the power to withhold approval necessary for publication is the power to hold heterodox authors hostage until/unless they bring their findings into congruence with current groupthink.

That Peer Review has operated in exactly this spirit is common knowledge. From that perspective, opting out could easily be seen as a principled position.

Matt B

3/22/2018 05:28:57 pm

I have found that limiting myself to 3 journal-article reviews a years is appropriate. Sometimes I break that rule if the article is particularly important to me or to my research, but usually 3 is sufficient. I still get the requests and feel terrible about declining, but to do a proper and thorough review, I may spend 4-6 weeks reading, thinking, and writing about a paper - it's all I can do. I ignore all unsolicited review requests for textbooks and manuscripts, unless the authors are explicitly clear that they will acknowledge my contribution in print. It's a bit draconian, but it helps to keep me sane.

David G. Anderson

3/22/2018 10:51:44 pm

Reviewing is hard work, and necessary to the advancement of our profession. But, having said that, must admit I no longer even try to keep up with all the review requests I get. While I still manage to do quite a few reviews each year, and put a lot of effort into them, I let many others fall by the wayside unanswered or usually if I know the editor a brief but courteous statement to the effect of 'Sorry, I simply don’t have the time now.” I have a strong sense of guilt about not agreeing to review everything that crosses my desk, or failing to respond to requests in a timely fashion if I am occupied in other matters, but I also decided years ago that I can't spend a substantial portion of my time reviewing papers and books, especially on short notice, when I have many demands on my time personal and professional. So my philosophy is that I review what is related to and relevant to my own research, when I have the available time, by a good outlet as discussed further on in this essay, and above all if the paper is by someone whose work I am interested in following. That still leaves a lot to read, though!

Reviews are considered a service to the profession by universities, but as all faculty are assumed to be doing them anyway, they don't actually count for much in promotion and tenure decisions, or annual performance reviews. It is where you publish that matters, not where you review manuscripts. The same applies to grants, but that is another subject… and at least by conducting grant proposal reviews, you learn how to write successful ones yourself, so there is a much more tangible reward for the effort, if a bit indirect. I conduct reviews in part to keep up with my field, since I want to see cutting edge research as it is being created, not when it is published, which is oftentimes years later.

I do reviews because I took to heart the lesson I was told as a young graduate student: since every ms submitted for publication typically requires three peer reviewers, for every paper I publish, I should review at least three others, and for every book, at least two or three other books. So I try to keep to that ratio, at a minimum. But stuff comes in where I can't see the relevance and wonder how my name came out of the hat, or know the authors won't listen to the commentary I provide anyway. With regard to the latter, with some (fortunately fairly few) 'scholars' if my comments were ignored, I simply no longer bother to review anything with their name on it, because I know that regardless of what I say, they will find a way to publish it somewhere with minimal revision.

Likewise, I soon stop reviewing a manuscript that is poorly written, researched, or illustrated, where it is clear the author expects the reviewers to point out what they need to do to fix things. They should have done it right, or better, before submitting. Especially irritating are cases where students are encouraged to submit papers, yet it is clear they did not have their peers or professors read them carefully. I rarely reject manuscripts outright, preferring instead to suggest revisions, but when an ms is riddled with errors I point out a few, and then send it back, and indicate whether I would be willing to look at it again if and when it was resubmitted in a professional manner. I just wish some journals and journal editors did triage first. Some do, some don't, and I increasingly appreciate the editors that spare reviewers such dross, and tend to ignore requests from those that don’t.

Finally, I have growing ethical issues reviewing manuscripts for journals with steep paywalls or who refuse to grant copyright to authors or allow them to distribute their work openly. I am increasingly inclined to write and review for open access journals over outlets with substantial restrictions on the information, but after a long career of doing the opposite, it is hard to change my habits. I do know that the first lesson fiction writers learn is ‘never give up the rights to your work’ but in academic publishing we are so used to the opposite that requests to retain copyright are almost invariably met with a statement to the effect that “we just won’t publish it, then.” I think academics are far more naïve, and more ruthlessly exploited, by publishers than their literary colleagues in this regard. Of course, we make our living by publishing, not by the numbers of readers who pay for our work (although we are rated by the numbers of things we publish, and how our published work is regarded and used by our colleagues... citation indices are increasingly considered important by university administrators). I do continue to review books for university presses in my research areas, but only rarely now do reviews for private presses where the cost of the published volume will make it inaccessible to most people. Even then I won’t do a review unless the press makes a substantial effort t

David G. Anderson

3/22/2018 10:57:35 pm

CONTINUATION OF MY COMMENT (apparently I passed some arbitrary word limit)

... to produce a high quality product, provides good services to the writers in the production stages (i.e., competent copy editing, legible figure production), and produces the volume in a timely fashion. I also really appreciate those presses that advertise their products well, and show up at our professional conferences to sell their books. If they don’t show, I feel far less of an obligation to conduct reviews.

So I continue to review manuscripts, suspect I do more than many folks (I average reviewing about 8-10 papers and 1-2 books a year), but feel increasingly guilty about the many I pass on. But I’ve learned to live with the guilt, for the reasons noted above.

jaap link

3/27/2018 03:08:34 pm

Hi Andy! Interesting conundrum. The idea of you watching those measly 5 dollars is an artwork all of itself! Did you iron them? No? OK then, don't.
I spent half my life working 80 hours/week without much of a thank-you from my employers. Would have hated to be thanked that way, so that was all as it should be. Nor would I wish to be thanked by my students, as part of my job was to transfer atonomy to them! Getting compliments from them would imply that I had goofed at my job. The very best teaching you've had is something you don't remember, because you rightfully credit all success to your own decisions/considerations. This is how the world turns, and doesn't exhaust anything. And I'm not saying the teacher can't have a presence! Just saying he mustn't imagine to be the only one at the wheel. But I must also admit to having said that dominant teachers often get in the way of real learning ... It's a very subtle game, this ...
Automatons are not subtle! They're rude and they crush everything in sight, alive or dead. Publishing firms, or rather their young and ambitious employees, will often shove workloads in the direction of sensitive people trying to do a job. The mechanism allows this. And of course this goes nowhere!
Now who wrote this hand-written letter? Was it photo-copied?
I hope you get my drift, you who are an expert at unmasking cheats!

Money, Responsibility, and the Time to Review -- What's Up?

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