Re: Both Sides Now

Dr. Levine’s points are well taken — it is too easy to forget one’s audiences in the rush. I’d like to add another point, namely the mentoring of young academics in the art of accepting criticism of their ideas. Too often we hear such criticism as personal, and especially younger scholars need to be assured that reviews are aimed at the ideas and the way they have been expressed, not at their creator.

George Allen, at 9:25 am EST on December 7, 2007

ethical reviewing

Outside readers can easily identify with some of Caroline’s exasperation, with the sense of pressure, the tamping down of available time. But manuscripts don’t in those situations come over the transom. We agree to read them and that promise is one we must honor in an open spirit, quotidian pressures notwithstanding. When reading, what are one’s values? What does one owe the writer and the manuscript in front of one? Some work is simply bad or notably underdeveloped. I’ve been guilty of sending out something of the sort, partly out of blind enthusiasm, partly to get an outsider’s perspective on what I am doing. Invariably I have been grateful for any help, even crabby help. But when reading I do my best to enter into the writer’s project and help him or her. What is new and interesting here? What are the best points? How might they be more fully developed — and so on. If the manuscript is not yet ready for degree presentation or for publication, I will say so with whatever editorial and specialist advice I can muster. I do the same in book reviews. Panning someone’s work is easy, a cheap temptation, but always unethical. Irremediably bad work is rare and should be passed over in silence. Afterall, from what does a sarcastic or savaging review save us?

John Hill, Professor at English Department, USNA, at 9:50 am EST on December 7, 2007

On writing & editing

Having been both an author and peer reviewer of journal articles, I agree with Dr Levine that it is important to “identify with both writer and reader at the same time” which is indeed “harder than it seems.” Writing a useful review report can be just as tough and deserves as much care and consideration as one hopes was put into the manuscript being circulated. The best friend here of the reviewer is a discriminating journal editor, who will not bother to circulate ill-conceived or poorly executed pieces. The only impatience reviewers should feel entitled to display is in response to the discovery of misconduct. Having been a peer reader who received a piece I discovered rife with plagiarism, I felt no hesitation in being worse-than-crabby when documenting the acts of theft in my response to the editor and author. To everyone else, peer readers owe equanimity, if not the endorsement for publication.

Tom Flint, Director of Accreditation at Kaplan University, at 12:35 pm EST on December 7, 2007

Tthe other side

With all due respect, I would differ from the other commenters. As a former publisher, my own observation is that peer reviewers are often too soft. This spirit of generosity is evident in Professor Levine’s article itself. One notes a very generous assumption that most projects do not deserve (in commenter John Hill’s term) to be panned. Instead, she suggests that a series of well-placed diplomatic suggestions should be enough to help most authors make their projects publishable.

This a misguided, if common, notion. We are not operating in a kindergarten classroom, where every child needs to be encouraged to explore and discover their talents. We’re talking about adults who have been thoroughly educated and trained and certified by the academy, and so should be accorded the respectful presumption that they’re capable of meeting the standards of their profession.

If they have not been trained to write a book, this seems less like an excuse to give them a pass on a less-than-inspired manuscript than a reason to insist that graduate programs start doing more to prepare their charges for the real world. In my conversations and panels on the subject back in my publishing days, I often talked about how sad it is that most graduate programs don’t prepare their students to do the work that they’ll actually spend most of their lives doing: teaching, writing books and articles, and administering an educational bureaucracy. It’s downright perverse. But to turn that systemic failure into a rationale for not rejecting manuscripts is going a bit far.

The fact is, there are many, many manuscripts out there that genuinely don’t deserve to be published in their current state. Some can be salvaged by careful editing; others not. Many are competent, but not exciting, or new, or challenging, or any of the other things we look for in a good academic book. They may be worthy of acceptance as a rite of professional passage, but that should not be equated with publication, which serves entirely other purposes.

One of the lesser, but not insignificant, reasons for the ongoing crisis in scholarly publishing is the profusion of books that even specialists in the field don’t want to read (the equally serious problems in the journals world are the result of very different historical factors, and aren’t addressed here). This proliferation is the responsibility of the presses themselves, to be sure, but peer reviewers have made their own contribution to the problem by so rarely saying no to undistinguished projects. Their weaknesses are treated as a remedial challenge, rather than a fatal flaw—a fine alternative, except that most readers also avoid the equally fraught task of suggesting a sufficiently deep and thorough remedial strategy.

Peer reviewers have an obligation to be frank, judgmental and critical. A lot of faculty members find this to be uncomfortable work, and so adopt a narrow and anodyne approach (criticize a footnote on page 12, ask for some additional discussion of the issue laid out on page 110, etc.), rather than really pushing their colleagues to do their best work.

It all comes back to graduate training: just as we don’t teach future scholars to teach, write or operate in a bureaucracy, neither do we sufficiently train them to critique the work of their peers or write proper readers’ reports, although almost all of them will have to do so repeatedly in their careers.

With all due respect to Caroline Levine, I don’t think the answer is learning to be nice. I think it’s learning to scrupulous and honest—a much harder thing—when we don’t find a manuscript thoroughly exciting, and to assert ourselves as being qualified to make those judgments. It’s not easy: self-doubt is as much an obstacle as regard for the feelings of others.

To criticize diplomatically is admirable, but it would be far, far better to criticize in a curmudgenonly fashion, if necessary, than not to criticize at all.

Jim Reische, at 12:35 pm EST on December 7, 2007

Brainless, Bigoted, or Envious Readers

Good essay and good comments to think about. I’m afraid I review abrasively at times, especially if the author involved is showing excessive laziness or smugness, since I don’t think those are vices our profession needs a hell of a lot more of.

Another problem not yet discussed is the anonymous reader whose perspective, and possibly his underwear, is severely twisted. He may drop the hatchet on a prospective rival, a writer of whose erudition his own training leaves him unaware, or a person who, God forbid, despises the inane sophistry currently infesting the profession. Of course there’s nothing to do about this sort of thing other than to ask your librarian to cancel that subscription. Then submit more wisely in the future, comforting yourself with the thought that dumb-asses are a dime a dozen.

Thanks for the thoughtful perspectives, all. I’ll try to moderate my vicious instincts.

Hnaef, at 8:45 pm EST on December 7, 2007

What I read about peer review in the humanities, or hear from my friends in those disciplines, always amazes me. What point is there to a three-month deadline for a review? You never spend that long actually mulling over the manuscript. And from what I hear, many reviews take much longer in reality.

I work in astrophysics and our industry standard deadline is now to return a referee report in *four weeks* (it used to be longer). So if it slips a little, you still get the report back in five weeks. When the revised manuscript comes back, the referee nominally gets another four weeks, but unless there are still big problems, he/she should give the thumbs up or down sooner. This way, if the first submission is adequate, you can generally get an article accepted with revisions in four months or so, depending on how long you take to do the revisions. When I hear stories of philosophy articles taking over a year and getting rejected, I cringe.

I don’t think being considerate to the author means going easy on the criticism. It means being constructive and not petty. “Don’t be a jerk.” This maxim ought to be written in journals’ instructions to referees.

T. Dolby, at 6:25 am EST on December 9, 2007