Open AccessComments on “Anonymous reviews”
Author(s) -
Okal Emille A.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
eos, transactions american geophysical union
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.316
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 2324-9250
pISSN - 0096-3941
DOI - 10.1029/2003eo390009
Subject(s) - anonymity , test (biology) , style (visual arts) , sort , psychology , perspective (graphical) , tone (literature) , recall , law , computer science , history , political science , cognitive psychology , linguistics , philosophy , artificial intelligence , information retrieval , paleontology , archaeology , biology
I would like to add the triple perspective of a now‐retired editor (GRL, 1993–19997), a reviewer and author to the ongoing debate in Eos about anonymous versus signed reviews. As an editor, I did not keep precise statistics, but my recollection would be that a little under (perhaps 40%) of the more than 3000 reviews I handled were signed. While some sort of "trend" expectedly existed between glowing reviews and signed ones, the correlation would probably not have passed a statistical test. By and large, my reviewers, whether or not they waived anonymity, were a professional and responsible pool, and the kind of personal and potentially unethical antagonisms described by Myrl Beck was the rare exception, rather than the rule, among anonymous reviews. The careful editor should be able to recognize this attitude in the tone and style of the review, and through comparison with other reviews of the same paper.