Authoring a PhD

Refereeing systems
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Peer group review is the central 
quality-assurance process in the academic world, and how well
it is handled is crucial for a journal’s standing. A top-rank jour-
nal will send your paper to four diverse and well-qualified ref-
erees, and reach an editors’ decision on the basis of three
verdicts – quite a demanding threshold to surmount. It will be
able to secure the involvement of senior members of the pro-
fession in reviewing papers. In each discipline as you go down
the hierarchy of journals the publication requirements will get
progressively less strict. A somewhat less prestigious journal
may seek views from two or three outside referees and go on
two positives. It may not be able to attract the same quality of
people to look at prospective articles, bearing in mind that ref-
erees are not paid for their efforts.
Lower down in the hierarchy in most professions are those
journals which do not run proper independent refereeing.
Instead they may serve mainly as a vehicle for a ‘referencing cir-
cle’ around a particular clique in the profession. Similarly, more
‘ideological’ journals may single-mindedly plug a particular view-
point, without ever publishing critical work undertaken from
divergent positions. Some journals may referee internally only
amongst an editorial team, or perhaps the editors may somewhat
‘rig’ who gets to write the references, so as to attract positive
responses from their referees for material they want to accept.
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This is especially the case if the journal positively needs copy just
to keep its pages filled, or is struggling to keep alive the apparent
level of interest in their viewpoint or their subfield. However, there
are important exceptions to this general pattern. In many human-
ities, arts and social science disciplines there are still quite presti-
gious journals with large circulations, which none the less do not
operate on the basis of professional-standard peer group refereeing.
In addition to the number of opinions that editors seek, there
are also important differences in the conditions under which
refereeing takes place. The best journals tend to use a ‘double-
blind’ system of refereeing. Here anything that would identify
the author is removed before the paper goes to referees. The ref-
eree then writes an anonymous comment, which normally
comes back to you. (To comply with this approach, you usually
need to have two title pages on a paper you submit. The first
shows all the author names, their university affiliations and any
other identifying elements, such as a note of thanks. The jour-
nal removes this page before sending the paper out to referees.
The second page is retained and shows only the article title
without any author-identifying elements.) This system is sup-
posed to protect new authors from being rejected just because
they are unknown. It is meant to put them more on an even
plane with established authors. It is also supposed to prevent
rivalries between academic personalities colouring what refer-
ees write, and to prevent any automatic ‘taking sides’ by refer-
ees. At the same time referees’ anonymity ensures that they can
be frank and say what they really think, without worrying that
adverse professional consequences might attach to them in
future if they comment unfavourably. Some journals now use
‘single-blind’ refereeing, where referees know who authors are
but can still comment anonymously. The final option is an
‘open’ approach where referees know who authors are and
authors know who has commented on their work. Some editors
feel that double-blind refereeing is fake, because experienced
referees can usually scan the literature references and work
out who authors are. Equally, sheltering behind the cloak of
anonymity, unaccountable referees may be overly critical or
negative in their reviews. But most professional association
journals still abide by the double-blind system, and in my view
its value for new authors is still considerable.

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