A philosopher writes:
I've recently been talking to Journal editors in various fields, who all lament the difficulty of securing quality referee reports. Certainly, authors can often be heard voicing the same complaint, and one wonders if this is implicated in the dearth, alleged in the recent Chronicle article, of Journal submissions by senior academics (who often have "invited" placement options). My impression is that the amount of refereeing people do varies wildly, and it occurs to me that it might be useful to attempt articulating some disciplinary norms in philosophy, to help people determine what would count as "pulling one's weight." To take an arbitrary example, an appropriate workload might be 3 a year for untenured people, and 6 a year for tenured people, with standard administrative workloads. But for all I know the number should be lower, or higher (perhaps the latter is more likely, at least for tenured people).
So: How much refereeing do people *actually* do, and how much do they think people *should* do in a typical year?
Because I have edited a journal since 2000 (Legal Theory until recently, Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Law currently), I probably do less refereeing than some, since I already have a lot of referee work connected to my editorial duties. Still, I probably do 2-3 referee jobs for other journals each year. I have no idea what the norm is. Comments are open; signed comments preferred, but you must at least use a real e-mail address (which will not appear)–if you don't want to sign the name, at least indicate something about your professional position (e.g., 'full professor,' 'assistant professor,' that kind of thing).
Leave a Reply