The Challenge of the Peer Review

Though the peer reviewed text is still the apex of academic endorsement, the ultimate and indeed, sole, beneficiary is the author whose text has passed muster and been accepted as adequate, satisfactory, or outstanding. Paradoxically perhaps, the peer reviewers who have chaperoned said text are invariably uncredited and unrecognized. The author whose text made it through the peer review process successfully can declare this element of their academic worth to friends, colleagues, family, and academic peers. But the people who have facilitated this signifier of academic work, can do no such flexing, and quite literally get nothing.

Ultimately, it falls to the editor-in-chief to identify potential peer reviewers and my editorial assistant, Katherine, then makes the approach on my behalf. A number of those approached don’t get back to us, presumably not seeing the approach as important or choosing to consider a reply as optional. A great many decline our invitation, citing pressure of work. A blessed number respond in the affirmative and it is these people (who are often or always as time pressured as any of us) upon whom Art Journal depends. Though we always seek peer reviewers who are eminently suited to comment on the text we approach them with, some texts are easier to assign than others. On a handful of happy occasions, the first potential reviewers approached respond in the affirmative, but on other, more vexing occasions, it can take multiple attempts to secure the services of the two reviewers who are always needed to determine the merits of every text that is advanced to the peer review stage.

… Many authors, regardless of the verdicts rendered on their submissions, are thankful to the peer reviewers of their texts, but by its nature peer reviewing is pretty much a thankless task. The process of double anonymity (whereby the peer reviewer cannot know the name of the author whose text they are appraising, and the author cannot learn the identity of the peer reviewers) means that peer reviewing is a type of service that cannot generally be widely or formally recognized. In light of all these considerations, the question therefore becomes, can anything be done to expedite the peer review process? Are there ways in which the peer review process can be improved? Certainly, it cannot be monetized. We can well imagine that monetary incentive, however modest, would certainly expedite what can sometimes be a woefully protracted process. But the credibility of the peer review process relies on the ways in which peer reviewers are motivated solely by collegiality and the selfless advancement of other people’s scholarship, albeit the scholarship of unknown and unnamed colleagues. (Taking a cue from my predecessor, Jordana Moore Saggese, I now see to it that when a related text is eventually published, its peer reviewers, at the very least, receive a PDF of the text in question, enabling them to see for themselves the fruits of not only the author’s labor, but their own. That no money changes hands is the central and sacred tenet of the peer review process.

Perhaps within university appraisals, the peer reviewer should rank alongside (and rank as having equal merit) to the author whose peer reviewed text has been published? There is after all, as suggested earlier, something of a symbiotic relationship between the reviewer and the author. If peer reviewers were more adequately recognized for their collegiality and their work, perhaps they too might gain a tangible, material benefit from their labor. After all, peer reviewers themselves who are tenure track, or who wish to advance from associate rank to full, or who are mindful of a third-year review, an annual appraisal, a tenure file, or a promotion file, could have their respective cases or personnel files enhanced by certifiable references to peer reviews they have undertaken. But until academia arrives at a consensus as to how to recognize peer reviewers more substantially, all we can do is extend our boundless gratitude to peer reviewers, past, present, and future.

The above extracts are from Eddie Chambers' “The Challenge of the Peer Review", Art Journal, Spring 2024, 83:1, 5-7