Back to [Archive] Meta

1
Review Process
The review process is going rather slow. Part of the reason for this, I think, is that reviewers are not assigned to a paper; as such, there is a deferral of responsibility. Maybe instead of having a free for all review process, we should have reviews sign up to review specific papers with an expectation that a particular reviewer is reviewing at least one paper at a given time. Maybe this wouldn't work. Another thing is that more reviewers are needed. Ideally, to expedite the review process we would have group funded editors, whose job was to catch typos etc. -- this way, research reviewers wouldn't have to waste as much time with language issues.
Concerning the "one reviewer can review only one paper at a time" (i.e., no review about another paper until the first is published), I think it's better to trust the reviewers for not doing too much (more than he/she can handle). Personally, when I think I'm reviewing a lot of papers, I ensure that I can remember them. If it's highly complex, I will avoid doing multiple reviews at the same time. For most of Emil's paper, I understand them easily, so it's not difficult to remember what was in it, even after several weeks.

Perhaps this should be made clear by Emil right here or by Duxide right here for the recommendation lists and FAQ, that a reviewer is recommended not to review too many papers if he/she thinks he cannot remember them after a while. But I don't think it needs to be a strict requirement. Just a recommendation.

Finally, I agree that the most problematic thing here is that we don't have enough people. My impression is that any given reviewer will have more incitation and motivation if the submission thread has already started, i.e., someone else has read the entire paper and has commented on it. This way, one can read the comments, remarks, before looking at the entire article. That's a good way of having an impression of what's being written in the article, and get a first impression about the aim of the article.
Admin
Keep in mind that "rather slow" for OP is very fast compared to legacy journals. The average time spent in review for PAID and Intell are about 200 days!

I have asked various people to review, but most of them cite a lack of time (which may be a euphemism for other reasons). I think I managed to get Curtis to review my immigrant GPA paper. He said he is pressed for time due to having to grade lots of student papers.

I think the solution to the current slow-down is to recruit more reviewers. Meng has noted that recruiting more people from the general HBD community makes us a rather inbred collection of reviewers, but what else can we do? There are not so many sensible non-hereditarians we can ask. I already asked Wicherts and Flynn.
Concerning the "one reviewer can review only one paper at a time" (i.e., no review about another paper until the first is published), I think it's better to trust the reviewers for not doing too much (more than he/she can handle). Personally, when I think I'm reviewing a lot of papers, I ensure that I can remember them


I actually said: "with an expectation that a particular reviewer is reviewing at least one paper at a given time"
I think the solution to the current slow-down is to recruit more reviewers. Meng has noted that recruiting more people from the general HBD community makes us a rather inbred collection of reviewers, but what else can we do? There are not so many sensible non-hereditarians we can ask. I already asked Wicherts and Flynn.


Who does the reviewing over at Manking Quarterly?
Admin
Meisenberg and Pearson I think. Maybe more.
Keep in mind that "rather slow" for OP is very fast compared to legacy journals. The average time spent in review for PAID and Intell are about 200 days!

I have asked various people to review, but most of them cite a lack of time (which may be a euphemism for other reasons). I think I managed to get Curtis to review my immigrant GPA paper. He said he is pressed for time due to having to grade lots of student papers.

I think the solution to the current slow-down is to recruit more reviewers. Meng has noted that recruiting more people from the general HBD community makes us a rather inbred collection of reviewers, but what else can we do? There are not so many sensible non-hereditarians we can ask. I already asked Wicherts and Flynn.


Do you actually have contact with the big names of the field like Flynn?
Admin
I wrote to him and asked him to review one paper. I don't talk with him otherwise.

I know Lynn, Meisenberg, Nijenhuis, James Thompson, Woodley, Nyborg, Piffer, and more personally. So I know most of the living big name hereditarians since Rushton and Jensen are both dead. I don't know the non-hereditarians since they did not attend the conference I attended. I have emailed with Wicherts a number of times since we share an interest in open science and reforming science.
I think the solution to the current slow-down is to recruit more reviewers. Meng has noted that recruiting more people from the general HBD community makes us a rather inbred collection of reviewers, but what else can we do? There are not so many sensible non-hereditarians we can ask. I already asked Wicherts and Flynn.


Who does the reviewing over at Manking Quarterly?


Just Meisenberg and Woodley. Pearson is too old to review, he's just editor.
Let's not forget that OP enables authors to appoint an external reviewer, so that will speed up review in cases of lack of reviewers. I think the review system of OP is fine and should stay as it is. I do not want to revert to the traditional top-down system where an autocratic editor picks the reviewers. The bottom-up principle is much better, as doesn't introduce bias from the editor. Of course more reviewers are needed and they shouldn't all be part of the HBD community. Recruiting them is not easy and it will take a considerable amount of time.
The best way to get more reviewers is to improve the impact of the OP journal, or to email people about your work if you think it's a very important one. If you want to get non-hereditarian reviewers, you do the same; email people whose work is related to yours. Of course, if you only publish things about race differences, that will make things a little bit complicated.
Admin
I don't only publish that, but often publish on that. :p

Future projects I have some work on are:
- Admixture in the Americas with John Fuerst
- OkCupid data mining (perhaps with Piffer?) + Using OKCupid data as an intelligence test
- An examination of the CRT and ICAR tests in a Danish student sample with Oliver Nordbjerg
- Stereotype accuracy in Denmark with Julius Bjerrekær

Only the first explicitly concerns racial stuff. The last concerns immigrant groups, but causes are not relevant. The second and third have no race or immigrant or other stuff like that.
1