Peer Pressure

This is just like ASR….

As is usual, there continues to be considerable whining about the peer review process. I can relate. Sort of. But, the idea that there is another alternative is total bullshit. AND, the whining is just that, whining. Whining babies whining about their privilege being momentarily abrogated by people who think that maybe their shit does indeed stink. It’s especially discouraging that whining is coming from overprivileged full professors at major research universities who can’t seem to be bothered to revise manuscripts because they believe that their shit don’t stink.

Peer review is not broken. It works. It’s not perfect, but nothing is, duh…. We all may experience negative appraisals, and even unjust appraisals, but that is far better than a system which only publishes shit from the anointed ones.  Indeed, the bullshit open access online shit is just that, a venue for the anointed to act as if they published something peer-reviewed without all of that nasty peer review process.  If you are not one of the cool kids, they won’t accept your paper. Yeah, that’s better than peer review….if you are a full professor at a major PhD granting program who is in favor with the gatekeepers of those online bullshit journals.

Let me just tell you a thing or two, having published a dozen or four or more in real peer-reviewed journals. First, while we all should bitch about our negative reviews, acting like they are the problem is not productive. Once I get the piss out of my eyes, I try to approach all of my R and R’s from the perspective that the reviewers are always right. That’s not just to kiss ass. That’s because maybe I’m wrong and they’re right. I may not agree with criticisms, but it is essential that critiques are taken seriously and addressed in subsequent versions. Not doing so is really arrogant, counterproductive, and stagnates your scholarship. When people tell you repeatedly that your framing of a paper is misguided, you really should listen, particularly when this happens six or eight times at different journals and from people with different theoretical and methodological orientations. It’s really cheap these days to send a paper to another journal without doing shit to it, but if you really think you are Mark Granovetter and this is 1971 you are deluded.

I will now return to taking seriously the many criticisms of the two R and R’s I have on my plate….I suggest that you do the same, because it will make your scholarship better.