46: Considering Pros and Cons with Peer Review Requests [Pt. 1]

How many requests to review article or book manuscripts do you receive on a regular basis? 

And do you have a process for deciding what you’ll take on in a given semester or academic year?

In this 46th episode of the Rise with Clarity Podcast I want to talk a little bit about the pros and cons entailed in doing peer reviews. I hope that by addressing some of these dimensions that aren’t talked about so openly, you can start to make more informed and strategic decisions about whether or not you’ll accept a peer review request that comes your way.

You can find the full written transcript at RisewithClarity.com/46, along with all of my other podcast episodes and other helpful resources for women of color faculty in higher education.

Dr. Katherine Lee is a Higher Ed Coach and Career Strategist and a former tenured professor at an R1 university. She helps women of color faculty to manage the tenure track, navigate politics, and take the next steps to advance their careers. To find more resources or to work with Katherine, check out her website at: Rise with Clarity.

Transcript

Hey Professors.

Let’s talk about peer reviews, which are a requisite part of academic life. How many requests to review article or book manuscripts do you receive on a regular basis? 

And do you have a process for deciding what you’ll take on in a given semester or academic year?

If you’re a new faculty member on the tenure track, it may seem flattering to get your first request in your inbox. After all, no one has asked you to do this kind of professional work before, and you’ve been identified as an expert in your area of research. 

There’s also a certain power that you may feel in helping to decide the fate of a manuscript on its publication journey. 

Additionally, you may feel like you have an obligation to respond affirmatively to the request because you are in the same system where your work will also be subject to peer reviews in the future.

But if you keep agreeing to do this kind of service at the expense of your own research and writing, then this can spiral into a lot of work that unfortunately won’t be formally recognized. It could actually chip away at the time you need for your own thinking and writing, if you’re not strategic about what you decide to accept and what you decide to decline. 

In this 46th episode of the Rise with Clarity Podcast I want to talk a little bit about the pros and the cons entailed in doing peer reviews. I hope that by addressing some of these dimensions that aren’t talked about so openly, you can start to make more informed and strategic decisions about whether or not you’ll accept a peer review request that comes your way.

You can find the full written transcript at RisewithClarity.com/46, along with all of my other podcast episodes and other helpful resources for women of color faculty in higher education.

So I remember in my first years of teaching, I started to regularly receive these requests to review article manuscripts for journals. At first, I was quite surprised and flattered. I mean, how did all of these editors find my e-mail address when I didn’t even know who some of them were.

The requests usually followed a standard form: Would you be interested in reviewing an article manuscript? Here is the abstract. If so, we would like your review back by this date (which was usually 4-6 weeks out). If you agree to this, we will send you our journal’s evaluation form as well as the manuscript.

In my first year, I think I accepted most if not all of these requests. In many ways, the assignment of reviewing an article manuscript and evaluating it for publication was a task that felt very time-bound and manageable for me. Article manuscripts aren’t generally very long and I felt like I could deliver on this ask. 

This was unlike the big lift that was required of me when thinking about my first book—something which I didn’t seriously work on until my second year on the tenure track, to be perfectly honest.

There are a lot of different factors to consider on the peer reviewer end that I didn’t really understand when I was a new professor. 

So, let’s go through some of these pros and cons.

What are the Advantages of Doing Peer Reviews?

Now, let me point out some of the definite perks to doing article manuscript reviews:

1) You can gain insights into what a specific journal’s guidelines are for publication because you will receive their evaluation form. This information could come in very handy if you are considering submitting an article to the same journal in the future.

2) If you are newer to the publication process, doing a review can be instructive for you in helping to think about common flaws related to argumentation and structure and how you can apply that critical reading lens to improve your own writing.

3) You learn about research that your peers are conducting in your area of expertise. 

4) You can help to sharpen an author’s manuscript with your constructive and thoughtful feedback and make it better.

5) You can give an honest opinion about whether or not a manuscript is actually ready or suitable for publication.

6) And lastly, you can potentially develop a good relationship with the journal's editor if your reader’s reports are helpful and your turnaround time is quick. 

What are the Disadvantages of Doing Peer Reviews?

OK, so what are some of the downsides, then?

1. If the requests come frequently and at critical junctures for you, then these requests can become very tricky to navigate. There may be times when you feel like you should say yes, but you don’t really have the time or the bandwidth to complete these tasks.

2. The number of peer reviews that you conduct do not factor into your publication record. Let me say that again. The number of peer reviews that you conduct do not factor into your publication record. So if you are at an R1 institution where research is considered important, then you do have to take this into consideration when managing your time.

3. Peer review requests are not equal. While reviewing an article may seem to be relatively straightforward, requests from editors to provide reader’s reports on book manuscripts take considerably more time, labor, and energy. If you’re given a timeline of 3 months over the summer to do a reader’s report, you also have to factor in the time to read the book closely, think through your feedback, and write up the report. And this will be in addition to your own writing that you’re trying to get done in the same time frame.

4. Many peer review requests for articles are double anonymized, meaning that the name of the author is not identified to the reviewer and vice versa. This is to ensure fairness and impartiality. But because your name is never officially outed, you can’t receive credit for performing this labor. You can certainly list the names of journals that you have reviewed for on your CV, but you aren’t able to provide additional identifying information beyond that. 

5. Your labor is uncompensated. I can only remember one time in my entire academic career when I was offered a very modest compensation for a review. The majority of the time, you're really doing this as a professional service or a duty to other scholars in your field. Some folks get stuck on the point, that certain types of journals demand free labor on the part of authors and reviewers, yet keep their journals behind paywalls and expensive subscriptions. Moreover, there are some academic or even predatory journals that charge authors an article processing fee for different reasons. So I think it’s fair to point out the exploitative practices that exist within the academic publishing world.

6. Lastly, if you are a minoritized scholar in a niche field or you happen to be one of the “lonely onlys” in your area of expertise—then you may be the go-to person for any sort of review that is even remotely connected to your research area. It may be harder to decline requests and to offer suitable alternative reviewers. You may also feel a sense of obligation to say yes because you’re trying to help cultivate and shape the scholarly field that you’re in. This can be important for you, but also exhausting. And since this is what would be considered as an occluded support genre—something which authors Mohammed Albakry and Clint Bryan has written about in relation to the recommendation letter genre—you may expend a lot more time and energy on this service without getting formal credit for.

Alright, now that I’ve gone through the pros and cons, which ones are landing for you right now? 

As you continue to field peer review requests, what are your own ground rules that you’d like to establish for yourself as you move forward this academic year? 

And how you can use those ground rules or questions you create to assess whether or not you will accept a given request in a semester or over the summer break? 

Do you have more clarity about which kinds of reviews you do want to give your time and attention to?

In a future podcast episode, I want to continue this discussion and think about some of the more thornier aspects of the peer review process, in addition to  sharing some of the ethical guidelines that exist for peer reviewers, but which are rarely talked about.

If you've developed your own ground rules for assessing whether or not to accept peer review requests, I’d love to hear them. Feel free to drop me a line at Katherine at RisewithClarity.com anytime.

That’s it for today.

Stay strong and stay well.