Lack of Author/Referee Communication
I read with interest Michael Cowling's article "Scripta Manent: The
future of mathematical publishing" and in particular his comments about
refereeing being a thankless task. I have been that referee reading
various iterations of the same paper, submitted to different journals,
seemingly with the author(s) barely reading my reports.
However,
as an author I have also received acceptance reports which were two
lines long. I have received rejections which were purely subjective
with no actual corrections to the mathematics. In one case where,
fortunately, a coauthor dealt with submission, on our third attempt the
referee complained bitterly that we were ignoring his/her previous
reports. However, the journals we had previously submitted to had
failed to send us feedback!
When I write a report, I am
writing for both the author and the journal. However, I think in every
case I have no real knowledge of what the author gets to see. The
anecdotes above suggest that a lot of "editing" by the journal can
occur. Furthermore, in all but a few cases, as a referee I never learn
the ultimate outcome–was the paper accepted or not? Journals could do a
lot more to facilitate communication between author and referee.
– Matthew Daws
School of Mathematics
University of
Leeds, UK
matthew.daws@gmail.com (Received March 26, 2012)