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I just submitted my first peer review for a journal and it was obvious to me within the first page who had written it. Not necessarily a condemnation of the pro
by benbreen 11y ago
I just submitted my first peer review for a journal and it was obvious to me within the first page who had written it. Not necessarily a condemnation of the process (I think it remains the best we have available) but now that I see behind the curtain a bit, it's striking to me how peer review is at best a semi-blind process. (Likewise, looking back at peer reviewer's comments on my own work, I can now guess who most of them were with the benefit of a few more years experience in the field, mainly because everyone tends to cite their friends).
The biggest current problem seems to me to be the ridiculous time lag between submission and acceptance or rejection (up to a year in many cases). If there were more of a financial incentive, I can imagine someone making a peer review platform that circumvents having to add track changes comments on Word and manage everything via emails (which is the norm in my field). The thing I'm imagining would be both a document sharing and editing platform and a CMS that allows journal editors to manage scheduling and assigning tasks, sort of like a customized version of Asana wedded with Google Docs. Anyone know if something like this already exists? I'm coming from a social sciences and humanities background so I don't know what the norm is in STEM fields.