Signing reviews, 2018

Seen on Twitter, two days apart.

First, Kay Tye:

Dear everyone! You don’t need to wonder if I reviewed your paper anymore. I now sign ALL of my reviews.
Inspired by @pollyp1 who does this and I asked her why and she said “I decided to be ethical.” I do it to promote transparency, accountability and fairness. #openscience

I particularly noted this reply from Leslie Vosshall: (the “@pollyp1” mentioned in the prior tweet).

Open peer review would instantly end the dangerous game of “guess the reviewer.” This happens all the time with senior people guessing that some junior person trashed their paper and then holding grudges. But usually they guess wrong and inadvertently damage innocents.

Second, one day later, Tim Mosca:

Since becoming an assistant prof, I’ve reviewed ~ 12 papers. Signed one. Received a phone call from the senior (tenured) author asking, “Who do you think you are to make anything less than glowing comments?” So there are still dangers for young, non-tenured profs when reviewing.

The threads arising from these tweets are well worth perusing.

I’ve signed many reviews for a long time, and nothing bad has happened. I used to be much more in favour of everyone signing reviews, but long discussions about the value of pseudonyms on blogs, plus the ample opportunity to see people behaving badly on social media, significantly altered my views. But the problem is that everyone will remember a single bad story, and not pay attention to the many times where someone signed a review and everything was fine. Or cases where something positive came out of signing peer reviews.

How can we weigh the pros of transparency with the cons of abuse? I don’t know where that balance is, but I think there has to a some kind of balance. But the underlying issue here is not signing reviews, but that people feel they can be vindictive assholes. Univeristies do not do enough to address that kind of poor professional behaviour.