3 ms·
I think reviews tend to be overly critical primarily because reviewers are forced to find excuses to reject 9/10 of the papers that landed on their desk, most o
by drewm1980 10y ago
I think reviews tend to be overly critical primarily because reviewers are forced to find excuses to reject 9/10 of the papers that landed on their desk, most of which they weren't even interested in reading.
I strongly believe that review could be almost exclusively through positive feedback, with crowd-sourced minimal annotations in the margins, i.e. "the idea in this paragraph came from <earlier paper link>", and "this idea is novel; wish I thought of it", and "there is a strong analogy between this paragraph and <some other tangentially related idea>"
- comicjk 10y agoIt is not my experience that reviewers are overly critical. The notes I have seen fall into three categories: 1) pointing out the nagging issue that I knew but avoided, 2) misunderstandings, which are annoying but show how the paper is not clear enough, 3) genuine insights which I would not have seen. I have never wanted these to be more positive, but I can see the benefits such a cultural shift would have. Phrasing the notes as positive feedback would benefit the happiness of the authors, but make the notes lengthier and increase the effort for the (volunteer) reviewers. I wonder if the editor could reframe the reviewers' notes to improve the tone before sending them to the authors? At least in chemistry where I work, a rejection rate of 9/10 at the review stage would be very unusual. It is possible that reviewers in the triage stage are harsher but I never see these reviews.