Can you believe this is the fifth year of Peer Review Week?!
There’s a great post about the history of PRW on the Scholarly Kitchen if you’re keen to learn more about how it started and what it’s grown into. Most years have had a theme, from transparency to diversity, and the topic chosen for 2019 is…
‘Quality in Peer Review’
So we’re asking:
What’s the best (or worst) review you’ve ever received? And why
We’d love to hear from you so please do take the opportunity to share your thoughts and experiences on Peer Review! Simply use the comment box at the bottom of this post to share your answers.
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The ones I hate the most are from people who clearly didn't make the effort of even reading the manuscript. Sometimes they're funny, just one line, like: Nice work, I look forward to see it published. As an author, it indeed makes life easy but it doesn't go in the direction of increasing the quality of the article. As a fellow reviewer they make me very frustrated.
The best one are indeed from people who appreciate the good parts of the work and brutally yet respectfully criticise the weak parts, providing suggestions on how to improve it.
A general thought is that, being scholars always very busy, higher quality reviews can't happen without lower quantity of reviews.
I absolutely agree! Such short reviews aren't useful at all. You at least want some suggestions for future improvement, even if the paper is already good enough to publish.