FUNKNET Digest, Vol 78, Issue 20

s.t. bischoff bischoff.st at gmail.com
Wed Mar 31 23:02:13 UTC 2010


I would like to echo Martin's comments...I had a paper on finite state
morphology reviewed poorly because there was "no reference to the work of
Chomsky". The paper had nothing to do with formal linguistics and was in no
way germane to generative linguistics, so there was no way to reference
Chomsky. Not having tenure, and being constantly reminded of the need to
publish, it would be disingenuous of me to say that such comments always
went unheeded. However, they did for that particular paper. Paul Postal has
an interesting chapter on the review process for grant funding that some
might find interesting in his "Skeptical Linguistic Essays" (which was
available online at his NYU website last year).

Shannon

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 12:30 PM, <funknet-request at mailman.rice.edu> wrote:

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>   1. peer review: selecting and helping vs. shaping (Martin Haspelmath)
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:32:29 +0200
> From: Martin Haspelmath <haspelmath at eva.mpg.de>
> Subject: [FUNKNET] peer review: selecting and helping vs. shaping
> To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> Message-ID: <4BB316AD.2010309 at eva.mpg.de>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
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> Yes, peer review often has the effect of improving a paper, but in my
> experience, it is equally often the case that a paper changes in the
> direction desired by the reviewers, without really getting better. The
> author wants to publish the paper in the journal, so she goes out of her
> way to please the reviewers.
>
> I think this latter outcome, which is really unfortunate, could be
> avoided by giving authors just one of two decisions: "accept with
> recommended revisions" or "reject".
>
> If the paper is accepted with recommended revisions, the author can then
> make use of those suggestions from the reviewers that he finds helpful,
> while ignoring those that would lead into directions he doesn't want to
> take.
>
> So if we eliminate "revise and resubmit", we would retain the positive
> effects of peer review, while getting rid of the negative effects that
> arise from reviewers who feel they want to shape a paper. The task of
> reviewers should be to help authors improve the paper, and to advise the
> editor on which papers to select for publication. Their task should not
> be to shape the paper.
>
> Martin Haspelmath
>
> Lise Menn wrote:
> > I think peer review by and large not only works very well, but is an
> > excellent teaching tool. I have frequently taught courses on writing
> > for publication in linguistics in which I begin with a ms of mine that
> > has been labeled 'revise and resubmit' by a journal editor. I let
> > students read it without telling them what the judgement was. Then I
> > show them the comments from the journal reviewers. They are shocked at
> > how, let us say, direct some reviewers are in their criticisms. Then I
> > show them the ms after it has been corrected to respond to the
> > reviewers' objections. No matter what they thought of the original
> > version, they all agree that the final, accepted ms is superior and
> > that the peer-reviewers were very helpful to the process, even the
> > particularly nasty ones.
> >
> > This exercise also has the effect of reducing the fear of submission
> > that some graduate students have. It makes them feel like 'Gee, if Dan
> > can get published, anybody can. Even me.' And that of course is
> > exactly what I am trying to get across in the class about publishing
> > and the usefulness of peer review.
> >
> > Dan
>
>
> --
> Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de)
> Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6
> D-04103 Leipzig
> Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> End of FUNKNET Digest, Vol 78, Issue 20
> ***************************************
>



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