Motivating the Best Referees

Moderator: Lynne Honigmann

Scribe: Dennis Shasha

Preliminaries

• Great journals (e.g. Lancet) have little problem getting best referees, because of prestige.

• Less good journals may have problems.

Metrics on Referees

• Percentage of requests to review that referee takes.

• Time to review.• Number of papers reviewed per

year.• Subject area for the referees.

Seniority vs. Quality

• Senior scholar: “This paper says something that has never been seen.”

• Junior scholar can give much more detail on specifics of paper.

• Want both.

Incentives

• Publish a list of the referees once per year.

• (Definition: referee here is someone who is not on the editorial board.)

• Thank the referees by phone.

Incentives 2

• CDs of best papers go to reviewers who have done lots of reviews.

• Elsevier-published book.

• Give access to Science Direct for the most active reviewers (suggestion for Elsevier).

Incentives 3

• Desk rejection by editor-in-chief or a board member. Then the referees get only good papers.

• Good referees appreciate this.

Incentives 4

• Send paper cold to a referee and request response in X weeks. Very impolite.

• Better to send abstract + link. Only get link if you agree.

Incentives 5

• Invite the best referees to the editorial board.

• Year’s subscription.

Recruitment Database

• Any accepted author has his/her name associated with keywords of his article, so can be used as a referee in the future.

• Could Elsevier maintains such a database?

Editorial Board Structure/Use

• Editor-in-chiefs + undifferentiated editorial board. Editorial board member can either review themselves or pass it on to referees.

• Editor-in-chief(s) + Area Editors + Editorial Advisory board (known referees) + unknown referees.

Interaction with Editorial Board

• For the editors (area or board), one can be more direct but then if out of editor’s area, allow editor to pass it on.