Hello,
Today I would like to ask you about Ph.D. craftsmanship and your experience with the process of publishing. Please, read the following article: https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2020/04/how-tell-whether-you-re-victim-bad-peer-review and share your history and feelings related to the peer-review process. For example, have you experienced a peer-review that was more personal rather than professional?
I have to worry you. I don't have much experience with reviews. I tried to publish two scientific articles and their reviews prevented it. Strange, in a way I agreed with them and gave up work on them. I'm currently completing a new scientific article, which - I hope - will form the basis of my doctoral dissertation (its introduction) and will be sent for review. I'm curious how it goes :-D
ReplyDeleteFingers crossed! :)
DeleteIndeed, it's rather unpleasant feeling when you have to open the mail with your reviews. I haven't experienced anything bad when submitting articles to conferences, but I received some harsh/very direct comments when submitting abstracts to workshops. I think that sometimes it may be caused by some cultural differences or not so good command of English. I mean reviewers aren't necessarily English native speakers and something that sounds natural in their native language is a little bit off when translated directly to English. Some people also think that the good review is a review where they prove that the author is stupid and have no idea what he's writing about. Another case may be that the article isn't clear or precise enough, reviewers didn't understand some aspects and just criticize it based on their interpretation that indeed may be worth a harsh criticism. Anyways, I wouldn't treat those reviews personal.
ReplyDeleteYou have a good point about the language barrier. If English is not your native language, it's a complicated task to share your feelings and thoughts, not hurting anybody.
DeleteI don’t have much experience with reviewers. I remember that we sent our paper to journal and it was rejected. For one reviewer our work was bad. Sometimes reviewers wrote that our English was poor. We always send our paper to person who knows English perfectly and translate text for money. It’s very strange because for one reviewer our English is very good and for another one is very bad.
ReplyDeleteI had the same situation! When the native speaker checked the article, it came back with this generic comment, that "English should be improved" :))
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ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I do not have much experience in publishing scientific articles, but getting negative reviews from reviewers is very, very unpleasant (*
ReplyDeleteI have no personal experience with this yet, but I have seen some of the project grants' assessments. They often referred to completely non-substantive arguments and used unverified information about the author of the project found on the internet (although the correct information was included in the grant). But as this is not specifically about my person, I prefer not to reveal more details. The fact is, however, that not always such reviews have a lot in common with a professional and reliable assessment.
ReplyDeleteYes, grants are also an interesting field of the reviewer's matter. Indeed, all applications are intended to be checked by experts in a given area, yet often that reviews are based on very superficial research.
DeleteI have heard of several cases that the reviewer rated the article poorly because he was prejudiced. When my article that I wrote a long time ago was reviewed, I got mixed reviews. One was positive, the other very positive and the third very negative. Two reviews had mutually exclusive content. I was wondering if, according to this reviewer, my article was really so bad, or simply did not consider this topic too innovative, developing, needed. Especially since he did not present specific arguments, which elements could be improved, which way to direct future research. I think that reviewers are often busy with other things than just reviewing someone else's articles and each of us has a better and worse mood. If this is not a professional approach, it can happen. If this is one review out of several, and not, for example, three negative ones then you should not worry so much. After all, two others liked it. You just have to remember to take into account the corrections from this unfavorable reviewer, so as not to expose yourself to more criticism on his part.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, as mentioned in a given article, two reviews that had mutually exclusive content are notorious. It's essential to read them carefully and reply to every point in rebuttal process if we like to defend our work.
DeleteI still don’t have much experience in paper review process, but I can imagine that this is an issue. Not all people are suitable for being reviewers, I imagine it’s hard for them to read paper in the same field as theirs with better results than their ones. Moreover people are not objective by nature, can have worse day, or simply by envious. In my opinion reviewers that are to critical and in addition not professional should be eliminated from this function.
ReplyDeleteIt would be a nice process of reviewing reviewers before reviews :)
DeleteHave you experienced a peer-review that was more personal rather than professional?
ReplyDeleteI'm behind the schedule - no experience with peer-review of scientific article. Peer-reviews of my non-scientific articles were OK, given me good feedback to correct things that wasn't clear enough.
I'm bewitched with https://openreview.net/ service. It's real pleasure to read and gives me hope that it's like that in other places, that peer-review is so geared towards producing best possible papers and objective judgement.
+1 for https://openreview.net/ :)
DeleteWhen it comes to scientific articles, I don't have any yet, so I can't address it. However, as for the conferences I have participated in, I have mixed feelings. It seems to me that some reviewers refer to the speeches at a very high level and even if there is something wrong, they try to explain, help and, above all, understand. unfortunately there is also the other side, they are people who from the very beginning think that the topic is useless, that the person who prepares it does not know what he is doing, etc. It is a pity that asking them for specific help, or any tips they prefer to run away, that it doesn't concern them, that they don't have time, that someone who promotes me takes care of me, etc. It is also sad when someone promises to help and somehow never gets help (it's better now) not to promise and not to hope). Fortunately, there is a group of people who approach the problem with openness and help (specifically) by sacrificing their own time and for that they deserve respect.
ReplyDeleteConferences could be very stressful if you'll have somebody in the audience whose goal is to challenge your public speech. And yes, people sacrificing their time to help in the research deserves a lot of respect!
DeleteI unfortunately didn't publish anything yet ;/
ReplyDeleteI tried publish one article but the opinion was that it isn''t nothing special so now I'm working on something other. I have hope that I will end my article at the end of this month so we will see...maybe this time the reviews would be better!
So far, fortunately, I have no unpleasant memories of the review process. However, some strange situations happened to me. I once sent an article to a conference and got two reviews. Both reviews were positive, that the article was not rejected. In the first review the reviewer wrote that he liked some points of my paper and the second reviewer wrote that he did not like the points, the first reviewer liked! I did not know what to do ☹ I adopted an intermediate position. I slightly improved the article according to the reviewer's review 2 by writing to him that in fact some things need to be improved and left some, explaining my point of view. At the same time, I also wrote to the reviewer 1 that I corrected some elements in the article. Fortunately, it succeeded and the article was published.
ReplyDeleteI had another interesting situation in the autumn when I sent an article to a journal. The reviewer wrote a review asking to quote two of his articles! : D
Conflicting reviews of two reviewers are one thing. But the strangest thing I have heard of is the acceptance of the publication after anonymization of the data, where it was previously rejected due to the origin of the surveyed sample of subjects(Poland). Apparently, for some, we are not an interesting research subject. Comments on bad English are common. I would understand this considering my poor English, but I pay for a language correction!Often with approval, reviews help improve the article. There are also reviews like - I don't like it.Why? Becouse.... I wonder then if the reviewer read the paper.I also remember my first review - it was extremely negative and rude. Where the magazine was worth nothing and the work itself was not bad, but it only required further development.
ReplyDelete