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I'm not a fan of returning to this form of communication. In a recent review, which was single-blind, I had a paper from a group I know well and the principle

I'm not a fan of returning to this form of communication. In a recent review, which was single-blind, I had a paper from a group I know well and the principle author was a heavy-weight in my field, and certainly will review proposals I write in the future. The paper had good content but it was clearly written by a graduate student of his and it really needed work. I made numerous suggestions for revision that I would have felt very hesitant to do if the reviews were fully open (e.g. if my name had been attached). I would have been inclined to simply accept this paper with minor revisions so that the PI did not have any impression I was being unreasonable. As another example, I had a recent double-open review for a conference where I had to attach my name to a review that was not able to accept the paper. I felt (and still do) that this submission was absolutely not acceptable given the standards of this proceedings. Now, this group has seen my name and associated it with a 'reject', and I am worried that should we meet in the future, this could cloud our interactions. For both, I've thought about this a great deal and I stand completely by my reviews, my criticisms, and I did try to come across as professional as possible. But I would have preferred to be anonymous, and I see no reason my name being attached would have helped the review process.

forgottenpass 9y ago
>I would have been inclined to simply accept this paper with minor revisions so that the PI did not have any impression I was being unreasonable. The impression I get is that this article is about the fact that despite your connections with the author and team, various pressures of the review process (and probably timelines) prevented you from saying to the principle author in private, "Hey buddy, your work looks promising, but your graduate student really needs an editor." I find that review of the form "this is good, but needs cleanup" is the easiest to give or to receive in the type of reviews I participate in. If you can't even attach your name to that, I'm inclined to believe there are problems with the system that anonymity alone doesn't solve.
gosheroo 9y ago
Agree it wouldn't work in the modern age of science with all the careers, bureaucracy and funding involved. But those days were the days of the amateur. And a return to amateurism may well be the best way forward in a number of intellectual pursuits.
santaclaus 9y ago
It's not like you can't get a 95% idea of who is reviewing a paper now, at least in CS. Look up the list of technical committee members (since CS is conference centric), find the two with enough expertise in your area to be the primary or secondary reviewer, boom you have found two of your reviewers. Typically works when the papers are blind too, people have very different paper writing styles.
- arcanus 9y ago
  Good point. For the first paper, I bet that group would have put me in a top-5 list, and they certainly would have put my group (or someone from it) in the first place. But that slightly anonymous element helps, because typically you aren't sure who reviewed your paper.

forgottenpass 9y ago

>I would have been inclined to simply accept this paper with minor revisions so that the PI did not have any impression I was being unreasonable. The impression I get is that this article is about the fact that despite your connections with the author and team, various pressures of the review process (and probably timelines) prevented you from saying to the principle author in private, "Hey buddy, your work looks promising, but your graduate student really needs an editor." I find that review of the form "this is good, but needs cleanup" is the easiest to give or to receive in the type of reviews I participate in. If you can't even attach your name to that, I'm inclined to believe there are problems with the system that anonymity alone doesn't solve.

gosheroo 9y ago

Agree it wouldn't work in the modern age of science with all the careers, bureaucracy and funding involved. But those days were the days of the amateur. And a return to amateurism may well be the best way forward in a number of intellectual pursuits.

santaclaus 9y ago

It's not like you can't get a 95% idea of who is reviewing a paper now, at least in CS. Look up the list of technical committee members (since CS is conference centric), find the two with enough expertise in your area to be the primary or secondary reviewer, boom you have found two of your reviewers. Typically works when the papers are blind too, people have very different paper writing styles.

arcanus 9y ago
Good point. For the first paper, I bet that group would have put me in a top-5 list, and they certainly would have put my group (or someone from it) in the first place. But that slightly anonymous element helps, because typically you aren't sure who reviewed your paper.