An Alt-Ac's Peer Review Dilemma

Choose your Destiny
Over the past month or so, IHE has published a few opinion pieces about the issues with academic peer reviews; specifically that there is a bit of a dearth of peer reviewers which is holding up the publication of papers.  For lack of a better way of explaining this, it sounds to me that older academics who write these pieces (who had privileges that current-day academics don't) seem to chalk it up to "Darn these young academics! Nobody wants to work anymore!"

I suppose that one take on the current situation, but I think it's a shitty take. I suppose that if I were still an editor at an academic journal, I might be feeling the pressure a bit more, but I am not, so I can ponder some things from a relatively disconnected position. For what it's worth, I think the field™ has done this to themselves by (1) artificially keeping tenure-style jobs low† and (2) increasing the stress, pressure, and sometimes the opaque requirements for obtaining tenure for those few that enter.  In such an environment people will cherry-pick what they volunteer for in order to get (what they perceive to be) the higher yielding outcome.

Anyway, all that stuff is sort of on the side.  We're here to talk about my peer review dilemmas as an Alt-Ac. I've been peer reviewing now for the last 10 years.  When I was first asked to peer review, I did it because it was such an honor to be asked.  As time has elapsed and I find myself on a few journal mailing lists as an expert in certain fields, the requests become more voluminous. I do end up declining a number of invitations due to a lack of time. Sometimes I don't decline right away because there is something in the abstract that catches my eye and makes me curious, so I want to try to make time for it.  As more requests have come in, I catch myself treating peer review as a bit of an early-access bookstore.   If the abstract catches my attention and I am an expert in that area (and I have time), I'll do the review.   Other times, when I catch something that I could technically review due to expertise, but the article looks like it's going to be a trainwreck, I often politely decline and cite lack of time. I suppose that since I am volunteering my time I shouldn't feel bad about declining to read and peer review things for any reason, but I am having a hard time reconciling picking things that seem to be well written and of interest to me (so my reviews are more likely to be shorter and more targetted) rather than peer-reviewing obvious trainwrecks‡  that will get A LOT of feedback and I will end up (most likely) rejecting anyway.

Ultimately, I don't have to peer review, so some reviews are better than nothing, but how much 💩 makes it through when obvious trainwrecks end up getting published and that's now taken as accurate "peer-reviewed" knowledge?🤔


Footnotes:

† - By tenure-style, I don't necessarily mean tenure per se.  I use the term to mean jobs that have a modicum of job protection, like tenure-track jobs, and are paid appropriately, like tenure-track jobs.  It's bonkers to me that someone teaching full time, but it's on the tenure track, gets paid lower and has less job security than someone on the tenure track.  Both positions do teaching and service.  Service isn't often credited for non-tenure folks, and even though they do research, the university can boast about the overall publication and productivity of its faculty without supporting that effort in the case of non-tenure folks.

‡ I suspect that an obvious trainwreck example is needed.  Here is a short example (made up, but from real life): This study examines student eye movement using AR versus using traditional LMS course designs to determine whether a learner is bored. This study concludes that students are often bored with materials in the traditional LMS, and recommends using AR components to simulate in class lecture halls. Additionally, recommendations are made for eye tracking technology use in lecture halls for real time boredom tracking so that lecturers can adjust their teaching style to respond to learners' real-time boredom.

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