in my expereince (5 years on transactions) i have to say that i agree with
chris hamnett in that i rarely encountered negative refereeing; i can think
of only 2 instances when i could not see why the referee had bothered to
put finger to keyboard.
on the contrary, most referees contribute an enormous amount - to the
extent that i did once think that it would be worth publishing some reports
as part of an ongoing conversation in the journal and as examples of
enviable excellence in critical and supportive collaboration.
that authors may sometimes feel that, in making their comments, referees
had not read the paper that they felt that they had written, can ,if the
objective is to communicate a message to others through the publication of
paper, itself be a very helpful and positive result.
as ever, the critical issue here is collaboration - between authors,
referees and editors. i can't help feeling that such collaboration is a
good thing in itself and the results are, in my experience (as a
frequently-criticised author as well as editor!) almost always very
worthwhile in a whole variety of ways going well beyond the fate of an
individual paper or publication.
roger lee
roger lee
reader in geography
department of geography
queen mary, university of london
london e1 4ns
telephone 0171 975 5410
fax 0181 981 6276
web addresses
department of geography http://www.geog.qmw.ac.uk/
elecTRonic transactions http://ppt.geog.qmw.ac.uk/
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|