Thursday, May 7, 2020

A new crisis -- A shortage of peer reviewers!


Amidst the crises of this virus thing, we've got another one going on. No one can seem to find peer reviewers. As much as I make fun of the speed and other weaknesses in the peer review process, it is obviously still critical to scientific progress.

We've got two papers out where the Editors have told us -- sorry -- no one will review this. Now, since my name is on it, you could just assume that they're both really really bad, or I've successfully annoyed every scientist in the world to the point that no one wants to read another word I've written, but this appears to be systematic.

I suspect that the grown-ups who have been doing the heavy lifting on this are at home where they have other responsibilities like children and methodically redoing their bathrooms with 1 cm square tiles (what I assume tenured PIs do in their spare time)

Editors -- the starter's are out -- time to go to your bench!



Seriously, there are people out there who may not be as buried in pressing responsibilities -- or haven't reviewed 10,000 papers in their lifetimes already. Proof? Someone set up a Google Document of people volunteering to review! (...and it's not just for postdocs...)



If you have ever wondered things like "hey -- why don't I ever get asked to review anything" because you'd love to. Now's your shot!  You can add yourself to the list here!



No comments:

Post a Comment