Donna Yates

Pre-prints in social science: does anyone have any experience with how journals feel about this? Your own thoughts?

I've got a complete paper that is hot right now, basically today, and it maybe can't wait for journal publication. One issue I can see is that it kills double blind peer review, but everyone on earth would know it is me writing this so that's gone anyway.

@academicchatter #academia

Nov 24, 2022 at 10:17amWeb
Show threadAaron KingNov 24, 2022
@Drdonnayates @academicchatter to a person not into that stuff but into tech, the blindness of the peer review depends a lot more on the reviewer not snooping online. If you’re into a topic you probably know all the writers and can guess from style or just Google paragraphs to find the author.
Show threadDonna YatesNov 24, 2022
@trendoid @academicchatter Oh I think blind peer review is a farce. I always know who I am reviewing, and anyone who can't tell a paper is mine shouldn't be reviewing it! It's more the issue that journals seem to like to keep up the facade or peer review being double blind.
Show threadMatt BerkleyNov 24, 2022

@Drdonnayates @trendoid @academicchatter

If someone begins writing about a topic which few people have published on, might a reviewer be too lenient/scrutinise less, wrongly believing that they know who the author is (or believing that they know the author is one of a few who are established)?

Show threadDonna YatesNov 24, 2022
@MattBerkley @trendoid @academicchatter I'm not sure I follow. In what circumstance?
Show threadMatt BerkleyNov 24, 2022

@Drdonnayates @trendoid @academicchatter

If reviewers guess who's written the paper, they might guess wrong, and give a more "biased" review than they would have if the review process hadn't been blind.

Show threadMatt BerkleyNov 24, 2022

@Drdonnayates @trendoid @academicchatter

The biases which the process is designed to avoid - from "blind" faith in authors' reputations for quality work and so on - might be even more inappropriate (ie lead to worse decisions) where the reviewer wrongly believes/suspects that the author is a particular person or belongs to a known set of possible authors.

Show threadMatt BerkleyNov 24, 2022

@Drdonnayates @trendoid @academicchatter

Maybe in some fields, for each author whose identity a reviewer guesses correctly, there are several others who reviewers think might be an author but who aren't in fact; perhaps these suspicions could influence the result.

Show threadAaron KingNov 24, 2022
@MattBerkley @Drdonnayates @academicchatter that’s true. Guessing wrong is probably as accurate as guessing right.
Show threadDr Suzy J StylesNov 25, 2022

@academicchatter @Drdonnayates @MattBerkley @trendoid

#mystery 😂
Review She Wrote

After four rounds of peer review, #Reviewer3 is found dead at his keyboard. The Editor is missing. The suspects are the article authors, but the journal’s system won’t reveal the their names without the editor’s login.

Can Emeritus Professor JG Fletcher use #Clues in the manuscript to figure out who is responsible before they come after her?

@academicchatter

Show threadPamela OliverNov 24, 2022
@Drdonnayates @academicchatter I believe the blindness of peer review is more to keep the reviewer blind to the author than vice versa. Even without Googling I recognize the work of top people in my field. Keeping both reviewer and author named seems to me to risk quid pro quo in reviews. I am a big proponent of preprints and am one of the moderators on SocArXiv.
Show threadDonna YatesNov 24, 2022
@pamelaoliver @academicchatter Oh excellent! Do you find any complaints about preprints coming from the sociology journal arena?
Show threadPamela OliverNov 24, 2022
@Drdonnayates @academicchatter mostly no. When the paper is published you can link to the published version and include "please cite as" on the preprint, and that helps the journal citations.
Show threadDonna YatesNov 24, 2022
@pamelaoliver @academicchatter This is all very helpful! I think I'll put the preprint up tomorrow.
Show threadPamela OliverNov 24, 2022
@Drdonnayates @academicchatter feel free to ask if you want advice. I've done this several times. You can update the PDF attached to an entry as long as the title stays the same. If you change the title it gets a new number. But in my experience it is still easy to do.
Show threadPamela OliverNov 24, 2022
@Drdonnayates @academicchatter PS the Am Soc Assoc explicitly says that preprints are not prior publication in its journals, and most journals do not consider it prior publication. US law requiring publicly accessible publication of federally funded research is also fueling preprints, and the value of preprints has become recognized with COVID research.
Show threadprofmattdecarloNov 24, 2022

@Drdonnayates @academicchatter

Dude, it makes peer review so much less stressful. Get your stuff out there. Then it's a matter of getting the journal's stamp of approval months (or let's face it years) later