Editorial

Ten Commandments for Journal Referees

RELATIVELY LITTLE HAS BEEN published on the ethics of peer review (Campanario,1998a, 1998b; Souder, 2011). The following pieces of advice pertain to the difficultart of refereeing manuscripts for philosophy journals.

1. Do not impose your own views in controversial issues on the author. In manyphilosophical problem areas there are several competing, legitimate stand-points. When reviewing a manuscript your task is to assess whether thepaper adds something new and important to the discussion and whether theargumentation is of high professional quality. Papers not sharing your ownviewpoints may be well worth publishing. It is your task to evaluate theirvalue for the viewpoint they represent (Mallard et al., 2009).

2. Do not use refereeing as a means to increase your own citation count. Pointout the absence of important references, even if they are to your own work.But do not give preference to your own papers. As a rule of thumb, if youbelieve that the author can recognize you through your self-references thenyou should probably consider removing them.

3. Respect confidentiality. It is not appropriate to inform others about the paperyou are reviewing, unless you need to do so in order to solicit their help withthe review. In such cases, tell the editor whose help you have enlisted.

4. Do not use ideas from the paper until it has been published, and then referto it. Doing otherwise is plagiarism. In philosophy it is often more difficultthan in other disciplines to distinguish between inspiration, cryptomnesia,and plagiarism (Hansson, 2008). Therefore it is particularly important to beon one’s guard against inadvertently appropriating ideas from papers onehas reviewed.

5. Be fair to authors whose English is deficient. For people whose first lan-guage has a very different structure, English can be much more difficult tolearn than it is for speakers of most Indo-European languages. If a paper iswritten in bad English but is nevertheless understandable, give advice onwhether language editing can make it publishable.

6. Be constructive in your criticism. If your recommendation is negative,tell the author clearly what is wrong or incomplete, but do not use unnec-essarily harsh language. Instead, give good arguments and useful refer-ences. If you believe a manuscript to be irreparable, it is often better tosay so in a message to the editor than in the report intended for theauthor.

bs_bs_banner

THEORIA, 2013, 79, 187–188doi:10.1111/theo.12024

© 2013 Stiftelsen Theoria

7. Do not go beyond your areas of expertise. If there are parts or aspects ofthe manuscript that you are not fully competent to judge, mention thateither in the report or in a separate message to the editor. The editor maythen decide to assign an additional reviewer.

8. Avoid or disclose conflicts of interest. If it would be inappropriate for youto evaluate the author’s promotion or funding proposal, then it is probablynot a good idea for you to review the manuscript. In doubtful cases,consult with the editor.

9. Do not cause unnecessary delays. In this respect it advisable to follow thegolden rule of reviewing, namely to “treat all manuscripts in the samemanner that you would want your own treated” (Benos et al., 2003). Itfollows that you should not cause delays that you would have consideredunreasonable in the review of your own articles.

10. Do your share. Reviewing may be burdensome, but we all have to do ourshare. In addition, reviewing is often rewarding and helps to develop ourcompetence (Cain, 1999). Just like listening to conference presentations, itcontributes to your picture of what is going on and what problems othersfind interesting. Furthermore, the experience of reading papers as areviewer provides a useful perspective for improving one’s own writing.

Sven Ove Hansson

References

BENOS, D. J., KIRK, K. L. and HALL, J. E. (2003) “How to Review a Paper.” Advances inPhysiology Education 27: 47–52.

CAIN, J. (1999) “Why Be My Colleague’s Keeper? Moral Justifications for Peer Review.”Science and Engineering Ethics 5: 531–540.

CAMPANARIO, J. M. (1998a) “Peer Review for Journals as it Stands Today – Part 1.” ScienceCommunication 19: 181–211.

CAMPANARIO, J. M. (1998b) “Peer Review for Journals as it Stands Today – Part 2.” ScienceCommunication 19: 277–306.

HANSSON, S. O. (2008) “Philosophical Plagiarism.” Theoria 74: 97–101.MALLARD, G., LAMONT, M. and GUETZKOW, J. (2009) “Fairness as Appropriateness: Nego-

tiating Epistemological Differences in Peer Review.” Science, Technology and HumanValues 34: 573–606.

SOUDER, L. (2011) “The Ethics of Scholarly Peer Review: A Review of the Literature.”Learned Publishing 24: 55–72.

188 SVEN OVE HANSSON

© 2013 Stiftelsen Theoria