Earlier this week, GradAdvisor and I sent a manuscript off to a FairlyGlamorousMag.
Of the many byzantine components to actually submitting a paper, suggesting candidate reviewers has to be the weirdest. You know that the editors will probably select one of your suggestions, plus one (or two) people you didn't suggest. You obviously want the ms. to go to scientists who are going to be judicious, fair, and--let's be honest--favorable.
It's sort of like ordering off a Chinese Menu A and Menu B, except that you can only define the options on Menu A, not pick an item off it; and you can't define Menu B at all--you can only try to guess which dishes are likely to be on it, and strategize accordingly with your suggestions for Menu A.
I ended up listing four suggested reviewers, two of whom are likely to be favorable but would not have necessarily sprung to the editor's mind; two of whom are likely to be a bit harsher, but are more obvious based on research similarity. I deliberately left OFF the list two people who I think would be favorable, but who will hopefully occur to the editor on his own.
I don't even know if this was the right way to go about it, but GradAdvisor was on vacation so I just plunged ahead. 24 hours later I was already second-guessing myself and agonizing that I should have done it differently. How, I'm not sure.
If people ran restaurants like this, they would go out of business. I'm going gray here.
Hey, only 4-6 more weeks to wait!
15 years ago
3 comments:
In my experience, the process has been totally arbitrary, and it's not worth second-guessing yourself about your suggestions.
Sometimes, I've found that the editors don't take any of the suggestions; other times, all of the reviewers come off the suggestion list. I suppose it has a lot to do with the editor's familiarity with your subfield, as well as how much time he has to come up with his own reviewers.
What I find even more interesting is when the journal asks if there are any reviewers you don't want. Ha! If there were, I don't think I'd even put them down- that to me is like Russian roulette!
To CE,
I do put reviewers I do not want and up to now it served me well.
Depending on field/sub-field (in my case highly controversial PI is the issue :)) getting rid off biased/closed-mined/dishonest/too political people saves editor's and my time.
Yes, I listed one "opposed" reviewer who has exhibited significant bias against my GradAdvisor in the past. For the most part the editors will respect that, but I think if you list five or six people you "oppose" then they may not.
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