Academic

To Re(view) or not to Re(view)?

By Jacqueline Lipton

It seems to be that time of year where I'm receiving a ton of requests to review articles for peer-reviewed journals - as I suspect many of you are too.  They are not all law journals as I do a lot of interdisciplinary work (law and information technology, law and business etc).  I am a real sucker for this - or in other words maybe I'm not so good at protecting my time, but unless there's absolutely no way physically possible for me to review an article, I usually agree to review it.  What are other people's practices?  I do feel quite a responsibility to this academic career of ours to participate in ways that help journals and help other writers and I have always felt this is an important thing for us to do, although if I didn't do this, I could probably save myself a lot of time for my own writing.  I also usually learn a lot from reviewing other people's work which I think often informs my own writing and teaching - so there's clear pluses and minuses all around.  The same issues arise with promotion and tenure reviews which I'm increasingly asked to write.  I see the main differences between these reviews and peer review for journals being that: (a) P & T reviews are obviously more significant in terms of the impact they have on people's careers so you absolutely have to be prepared to invest sufficient time into them; (b) P & T reviews are likely to involve more reading than peer reviewing a journal article ie you may be asked to review more than one article for a candidate; and, (c) P & T reviews are more likely to be concentrated in one particular time of the year ie early fall - often a time when you are otherwise very busy.

Do people think there's a higher obligation to the profession to say "yes" to P&T reviews than to reviewing things for journals?  If so, do you make sure there's some years when you keep early fall relatively free in order to accept invitations to do these reviews?  Do you say "yes" to reviewing someone's work even if you don't think that you're likely to write a favorable review?  I would feel much more uncomfortable about doing a P&T reference where I wasn't convinced that the person should be promoted than about rejecting an article in a peer review process for a journal (or recommending publication subject to major revisions).

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on September 10, 2009 (boomark / email).