Create peer review guidelines

[wang-arthur]

Create resource on best practices for peer reviewing / writing readers' reports to share with both authors and reviewers

For publishers

• Association of University Presses Best Practices for Peer Review
• Peer Review Transparency
• Review Maps ("A framework for exposing and sharing human- and machine-readable review histories.") and DocMaps ("A community-endorsed framework for capturing valuable context about the processes used to create documents in a machine-readable way.")

For authors

• Include guidelines for understanding decisions, responding to readers' reports, and R&Rs?
• Should we write our own or share selected resources?
• Manuscript Works
  • https://manuscriptworks.com/blog/reader-reports
  • https://newsletter.manuscriptworks.com/p/a-template-for-your-response-to-reader
• Resources by Wendy Belcher
  • Parsing the Decision Letter
  • Journal Article book (chapter/section on revisions & corresponding with journal editors)
• Ideas on Fire: Responding to readers' reports
• Handling a Difficult Peer Review by Courtney Berger, Duke UP
• See resources from Peer Review Week

Reviewer instructions examples/models:

• JCMS Editorial Wiki and peer review instructions
• The Art of Manuscript Reviewing by Barbara Young Welke (recommended by Nate Holdren)
• Reviewing guidelines by Wendy Belcher
• "Don't be Cruel", by Sin Wang Chong and Shannon Mason

Characteristics of good readers' reports:

Responses to this Tweet

• The best reader reports I've received have:
  a. taken the time to outline what works about the piece
  b. suggested relevant resources to strengthen the argument (an accessible archive in one case and a foundational theorist I'd overlooked in another)

  — Deborah Thurman (@nevernotyet) March 20, 2023

• Seconded! I've had more than a few, for sure. For me, the criterion of a reader report is that it recognizes what the writer is intending to do and identifies where that intention can be strengthened. It's the criterion by which I write my own reports.

  — Dr. Mike Sell (@mike_sell) March 21, 2023

• I think they treated my work as iterative. Some readers when they get the R&R script back will just do a mental checklist (did they answer what I asked?) & then move on. This reader kept probing patiently, not to gatekeep, but to get at what the best version of the argument is.

  — Beryl Pong (@berylpong) March 21, 2023

• Also from Joe Jeon on Facebook:

For me, it's all about critique that is rooted in an understanding of the project. I've come to really appreciate tough reviews, even and especially when they are negative. It helps to see where you are either falling short of your ambitions or else how/where you are being misread (and where you are not making yourself as clear as you might). BTW, I received excellent reports from P45.

OTOH, I've received reviews that are petty or sometimes territorial that just have a different account of the topic. It's bad if they can't provisionally inhabit the horizons of a set of claims if only to offer fuller critique.

[wang-arthur]

Visual outline of peer review process (ugly draft! will make a prettier version, maybe with Figma?)

[wang-arthur]

Jean Lee Cole, "Crisis Standards of Peer Review" (2022), h/t Sarah Salter