[Corpora-List] Corpora Digest, Vol 52, Issue 3

[Robert Zimbardo]

The moment reviewer names would not be anonymous anymore, I would stop
to review. As a young scholar, who could afford to non-anonymously
reject a paper/abstract by [insert big name here] without fearing that
that will backfire when application/postdoc renewal times are
approaching? At any career level, who could afford to non-anonymously
review a paper or book (proposal) by [insert big name here] negatively
without fearing a negative backlash when tenure/promotion letters are
up? Who can afford to maybe have annoyed someone who will be on an ESF
panel and 'retaliate'? And all of this is independent of whether the
reviewer is right or not, humans all too often retaliate even if they
are treated 'correctly'. What other reason would there be that pretty
much all reviews on LinguistList these days are by younger scholars
(who want to get the books cheap) and of course positive?

AS> It seems you have not carefully read this thread and are just
reacting in anger.
A truly scientific and pertinent statement that you had better made
anonymously ...

It surprises me how anyone can not see that double-blind reviewing is
the only way to go unless one wants to run the risk of breeding
in-groups and issuing gagging orders: it protects younger/less-known
scholars from being categorised by 'virtue' of 'not being well-known',
'not being from the right country', and it protects reviewers from
retaliation. Plus, I wonder how much the mere allegation by Yorick
that it is so easy to recognise authors is just not a cognitive bias;
making such an assertion does certainly not make that a fact (I
usually just make the opposite experience) and Graeme made that point
better than I could have. Even if some authors or reviewers were
recognisable from their submission or review, those who are not are
still protected and the 'undignifying' writing by not quoting oneself
that much, cmon please ... Are people here seriously saying that
paraphrasing two sentences and changing their precious name into
[anonymized] is too much to protect especially younger scholars from
bias and retaliation? Please tell me we are not that self-absorbed and
self-confident in our we-would-never-do-that stance. Plus, could there
be a reason they do that in most other disciplines?

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