I have a quick ethical question: I get lots of reviews these days. This is a common complaint among our readers. I would have liked if someone spent time with me in graduate school going over how to review a paper. I am by no means an expert, but I have enough experience that I feel I can convey some lessons to my grad students about it. The best way to do this, I think, is actually to review a paper with a student (give them a paper you’ve been asked to review, both review it, and then go over how you both did it). My concern: is this ethical? Is it a violation of some part of the review process? I know you’re not supposed to share papers you’ve been asked to review. But if it’s a teaching tool that doesn’t go beyond a grad student or two, is it cool? Input from editors or former editors would be particularly welcome.
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10 Comments
I have the same question so no answers here but… In my grad seminars this year and last, I gave out copies of my own work and the reviews I received on them. We spent some time discussing the work (very helpful as I was revising) and then discussing the reviews. It’s not perfect but I’d like to think I am *somewhat* objective about my own work and was fair in conveying to the students which comments were helpful, what constituted a reasonable and detailed review, etc. You might do this if a lot of editors have problems with you sharing current papers with grad students.
I’d recommend just asking the editor in question. Personally, I’d encourage it (as a former editor) as I think, like you, that there isn’t anywhere near enough training/socialization in the art of review writing. I would imagine that you should probably collect the paper back from the students after to protect it from being circulated in any unreasonable way.
In some fields, it is routine to hand papers off to graduate students or post-docs to do the core (or even all) of the review.
I commonly have advanced grad students do the first pass of a review I’ve been assigned, then go over with them the article and comments. I think it’s an entirely valid way of both spreading the labor and training grad students.
as a managing editor i rarely receive the request, but i think its a great idea and we almost always ok it. i do appreciate it though when reviewers ask…
For those of you who have grad students do practice reviews, is this part of a class? Or just for your advisees?
I would do one of two things:
1. Ask the editor
2. Do the review, submit it, and then bring a copy of the paper to the students to review it. That way, they’re giving their input after you’ve already submitted yours.
Over the years, I’ve had mixed responses from editors from the same journal: some say yes, some say no. One alternative is to ask someone in the discipline to share a paper that she/he has submitted, but that isn’t yet in print. This doesn’t violate any confidentiality concerns, so editors shouldn’t care.
I have students review the paper independently. I also review it, and we all share and critique each others’ reviews. If the author is really nice, he/she may be willing to share the reviews he/she got from the blind reviewers, and also his/her response. This is really helpful in driving home that (a) reviews can be all over the map, (b) some reviews are worth more time and attention than others, and (c) pretty much everyone has to modify papers before getting them accepted.
I’m sure if you ask the editor, the answer will always be yes.
Ah, but speaking from experience, the answer will NOT always be yes. In fact, I believe I’m only 1 for 3 in getting permission to have my students review a paper. Same journal, even, just different editors over the years.
i think the real trick is teaching people not to over-review and focus on nitpicky bullshit like whether the paper has overlooked some citation that’s kinda relevant (but doesn’t really change anything) or omitted variable bias paranoia. certainly, one of the things it’s taken me awhile to learn is the difference between a plausible criticism and an important criticism. editors often do a very good job of drawing attention to the important criticisms but they rarely do the converse and tell the author “don’t bother with reviewer 1′s first five comments, because like, who cares?” when i review i usually include the silly stuff as an fyi kind of thing but explicitly tell the author that it’s totally optional and i don’t really expect him or her to address it.
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[...] 2009 May 29 tags: review, scholarship, service, socialization by Lisa There’s a discussion going on over at scatterplot about the ethics of letting grad students help out with paper reviews. It seems that the general [...]