Newsgroups: comp.sources.d Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!mintaka!bloom-picayune.mit.edu!athena.mit.edu!jik From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) Subject: Re: v01INF1: Status - Status of comp.sources.reviewed Message-ID: <1991Apr15.030836.21087@athena.mit.edu> Sender: news@athena.mit.edu (News system) Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology References: <16390:Apr1305:56:2091@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <6787:Apr1420:38:3991@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <1991Apr14.232818.15851@athena.mit.edu> <22409@yunexus.YorkU.CA> Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 03:08:36 GMT Lines: 45 In article <22409@yunexus.YorkU.CA>, oz@yunexus.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes: |> Jon, with all due respect, I (and most everybody else) already know at |> least two people who will be reviewers, just by the way they posted to |> this newsgroup. As someone else has pointed out in a recent posting in this newsgroup, in the scientific field you almost always have a good idea of which people a journal might choose to review your paper. In fact, when my sister's first paper was reviewed, her and the guy in charge of her lab managed to figure out who one of the reviewers was, because (according to her) he works in the same field as her in is a bit of an a**hole and panned her paper unfairly so that he would get to publish similar results before she could. There are almost 40 people currently in the queue to be able to review sources for c.s.r. If you submit a package for review, then unless you have a good idea of what kinds of sources each of them has volunteered to review, and of which of them are very busy and therefore unlikely to accept requests to review from the moderator, it is no more likely that you will be able to figure out *which* reviewers have been asked to review your submission than that you would be able to figure out which scientists have been asked to review an academic paper submitted by you to a journal. In fact, you are probably *less* likely to be able to figure it out in the case of c.s.r. The question is not one of complete anonymity; there are obviously a limited number of people who are qualified (and available) to review any particular c.s.r submission or journal submission. The question is one of degrees of anonymity -- how likely are you to be able to figure out who's doing the reviewing? The journal review process assumes that you won't be able to, but in many cases you can (there was a recent article in RISKS about a journal that sent the reviewer's comments to the author, but forgot to cut off the fax banner at the top of each page indicating the lab from which the comments were sent :-). The c.s.r review process will probably be no less successful than that at keeping reviewers anonymous if they want to be; indeed, if (as Dan seems to want) we are supposed to emulate a journal exactly, then we should publish a complete list of exactly what kinds of software each reviewer has signed up to review, so that submitters have a better chance of guessins who is doing their reviewing. -- Jonathan Kamens USnail: MIT Project Athena 11 Ashford Terrace jik@Athena.MIT.EDU Allston, MA 02134 Office: 617-253-8085 Home: 617-782-0710