Anonymity may invite a reviewer’s baser biases, but I’ve witnessed no shortage of similar, full-on attacks at conferences and seminars. (I’ve been on the receiving end of those. I’ve seen big-name scholars cry.) Those folks are going to inscribe those biases in reviews whether they sign their names or not.

My larger point was that the same scholars who may receive unfair or hostile reviews are entering and changing the system because their insights and expertise are being tapped–and protected–as well. I have only anecdotal evidence of proving this positive, if only because of the rule of anonymity (all the informal discussions of “a recent journal submission I read”). One could only imagine what may happen if an angry author, knowing the names of the reviewers, thought to retaliate. (I was involved in one case where an author attacked a book reviewer without going through the journal’s letters page. Scary.) We, all the more, should appreciate excellent editors all the more when we realize that they foster scholarship and, through anonymous peer review, bring new perspectives into scholarship. If that isn’t happening, and if there’s a disjuncture between the editor’s vision, the diversity of a given editorial board (usually created with inclusiveness in mind), the profile of reviewers, and what appears on a journal’s pages, then those endowed with the power to shape scholarly discussion must bring to their annual editorial board meetings an agenda to discuss a real ethical dilemma. I have to say that I don’t know of any journal that has taken the time to make such an assessment.

Oh, I sound like a schoolmarm there. Sorry! (Class dismissed.)

I agree with most of what you say except this:

I daresay that another reason why editors began to remind reviewers to behave is because of the entrance into the profession in the U.S. of more women, persons of color, and foreign-born individuals—and with them, new fields and epistemologies. (By the way, any new approach makes it difficult for journal editors to find appropriate readers.) In theory, anonymous review allows both the reviewer and the “reviewee” the luxury of just being scholars discussing ideas. In practice, it has helped persons who may have faced or endured marginalization to enter a discipline’s or field’s discussion.

I think it’s much more complicated than that. Feminist scholarship is still for the most part practiced by women. I have had my work treated nastily and dismissively by antifeminist readers because of its theoretical perspective, and I believe the majority of women’s historians have similar stories of stupid NEH grant reviews and readers’ reports like this. In my experience, the double-blind review process clearly worked so that hostile readers could engage in a$$hattery under the cover on anonymity, and they could be pretty certain that they were engaging in this aggression against a junior woman scholar. I guess what I’m saying is that identity is frequently (although not always) tied to the subjects we choose and the theoretical perspectives we employ, so the marginalization of those perspectives can be enabled by the blind review process, not limited by it.

And, Susan, Buzz, and Indyanna–you all make good points about the usefulness of anonymous peer review. So long as the system isn’t a cover for bad behavior, then it’s fine with me. I take Buzz’s point especially about being a junior person reviewing a senior person’s work–that hadn’t occured to me as a possibility, mostly because I think it’s fairly atypical in history for a junior person to review someone much more senior.

And Prof. Z–your experience with the journal article rejection is exactly what I’m getting at when I say that signing a review allows the author to understand the (unavoidable) biases that all reviewers bring to their work. (You have an “infamous” book? How exciting…!)

I’ve been in the humanities business long enough to know that such lists explicate what was earlier assumed. And that begs the question not only of what critical skills are being taught in graduate school and refined in one’s career, but what is being taught about professional courtesy in a profession increasingly defined as a competitive rather than a mutual enterprise. What has happened in the humanities (or academia, generally) that has required that editors remind reviewers of their scholarly and professional obligations? I work in an interdisciplinary field that is now more multidisciplinary–that is, there are now more fences than gates, and it’s difficult to find a collective willingness to jump those fences or even share in the effort of taking them down. Easier to dismiss perceived competitors or degrade what one doesn’t understand. Those commentators attempting to unmask negative reviewers are falling into the trap caused by competition (insecurity, positioning one’s self against or with someone rather than with a set of ideas or a school of thought, the “academic star” phenomenon). Presumably, the same submission earned support during its production from one’s colleagues, from positive responses when offered at a conference, or from the other journal reviewer. So why (like that lone nasty student evaluation) allow another’s poor etiquette or understanding or enmity toward an interpretation sway one’s opinion of his or her own work?

I daresay that another reason why editors began to remind reviewers to behave is because of the entrance into the profession in the U.S. of more women, persons of color, and foreign-born individuals—and with them, new fields and epistemologies. (By the way, any new approach makes it difficult for journal editors to find appropriate readers.) In theory, anonymous review allows both the reviewer and the “reviewee” the luxury of just being scholars discussing ideas. In practice, it has helped persons who may have faced or endured marginalization to enter a discipline’s or field’s discussion. If I feel I may be useful to an author as s/he revises a work, I tell the editor (if s/he hasn’t asked) to reveal my name if the author wishes to contact me for further discussion. Journal editors are more than judges or arbiters; they facilitate the discussions and scholarship that define fields and disciplines. Nevertheless, many editors have been restricted from having any vision for their respective journals because its community of potential and actual contributors are vying for acceptance—hence, the proliferation of even more journals in the last twenty or thirty years. We haven’t yet achieved that new model of scholarship (and its representation in books and journals, essays and reviews) introduced by the democratization of the academy in the last half of the twentieth century.

I guess my point is that you’re damned if you don’t and damned if you do. Editing a journal is on some levels a thankless task. You get blamed if peer reviewers don’t turn in the reviews on time. You get blamed if every person you ask refuses to review the manuscript so it takes forever to get it reviewed. If you send out nasty reviews authors are angry, if you edit the reviews authors get nervous…Seriously, this is an unpaid job in many cases. Unless you are running the AHR or other topic journal, you are editing the journal in addition to your other work. (And for the record, the editors of the AHR still have to teach at least 1-2 classes a year!)

I had an article rejected from the top journal in my field and the reviewers all signed. That meant I knew their work, etc., and instead of wondering I was able to realize: of course these reviewers would say these things. They are writing from their known points of view.

For my infamous book, the first set of reviewers were anonymous but I could tell who they were. One was very negative and the editor thought he must have a personal animus against me. I said no: he’s read the manuscript seriously, and he has found the problems in it I have with it, it isn’t personal (although he knows me), he’s actually speaking seriously, which is one way of showing true respect. The editor, amazed, thought I was being masochistic or something, but I disagree.

I am an untenured junior faculty member. If providing candid feedback on bad papers could put my career at risk, I wouldn’t do it. Yet the physics community needs people to provide just that feedback, to weed out the rubbish. Anonymity is important to getting the best quality reports.

Lest you get the wrong idea, I do not revel in writing rude negative reports. When papers are borderline, I try very hard to help the authors out. Many errors are potentially fixable, and if I have any ideas how they might be fixed, I supply them. Sadly, they very rarely take such suggestions to heart; the authors are usually too wedded to their erroneous ideas to make more than a half-hearted effort to fix the problems.