As part of Peer Review Week (September 19-25), Rory McVeigh, co-editor of ASA’s flagship journal, the American Sociological Review, writes on developmental peer review for ASA’s Speak for Sociology blog.
Frustration with the peer review process among both authors and reviewers has led some sociologists to propose that academic journals should move to an evaluative, rather than developmental, peer review. In an evaluative review, the reviewer’s primary role is to assess the quality of the work and to make a recommendation as to whether it is strong enough for publication. In a developmental review, the reviewer not only evaluates the quality of the work but also offers guidance on how the paper might be improved through revision. At American Sociological Review, we are committed to maintaining the developmental review model, while recognizing that there is room for both models in the discipline, given the broad range of publishing outlets available to scholars. Below, I briefly discuss the benefits of the developmental review and also clear up some common misconceptions that, if resolved, could make writing a developmental review more attractive and less burdensome, and could make reviews more beneficial to authors and to journal editors.
Benefits of Developmental Review
Perhaps, most obviously, a developmental review offers benefits for authors. Perhaps especially for young scholars, going through a developmental review process provides a type of feedback that often cannot be easily acquired from peers and mentors who are willing to read a paper prior to submission. A journal’s reviewers can help authors to assess where the bar is set in terms of standards required for publication in aspirational journals. More importantly, the developmental peer review process allows authors to transcend their local environment, giving them access to a broader range of expertise and insight than might be available in their own departments or in their own networks. To the extent that homophily drives our selection of mentors and departmental colleagues, a journal’s reviewers can provide a perspective that draws attention to problems that our well-intentioned mentors and colleagues may miss.
Read more at Speak4Sociology.org.
