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)