Review This!

One of the hidden parts of the academic business is that of referee.  Academics tend only to value publications that make it through a review process, but who are the reviewers?  We are.*  That is, academics review the work of other academics.  The process varies, but the standard one for most respected journals in Political Science is double-blind refereeing.**  The reviewer does not know who the author is or authors are, and the author(s) does not know who the reviewers are.  I have had several people guess that I was their reviewer for much of their work, but they were wrong.  Guess the reviewer game is fun but tends not to be very successful.  Usually, there are two or three reviewers who provide their assessments to the editors of the journal, and the editors weight the various reviews and make a decision (sometimes they take forever to decide): accept, accept with minor revisions, revise and resubmit, or reject. Revise and resubmit (R&R) is often the best one can hope for, as reviewers and editors are often very picky, especially for the most visible and selective journals.

 *  This is one of the many big differences between normal academic journals and law reviews.  For law reviews, the law students do the reviewing.
** Increasingly (apparently), editors are "desk-rejecting" which means that they reject the piece before sending it out for review as the piece does not fit the journal or is obviously unworthy for the journal.  Reviewing books is usually blind in only one direction--that the book author does not know who is doing the reviewing, but it is relatively impossible to hide the identity of the author of a book length work.

So, for every one article submitted, there are a few academics who must agree to review it.  What do reviewers get paid?  Nada.  Why do they do it?  Because it is a professional obligation and because people think that editors will ultimately treat nicely the folks who are reliable reviewers and not treat nicely those who are not.  Whether the second motivation has any basis in reality, I don't know.  I have been on editorial boards but not an editor, so I cannot say how these folks respond to the unreliable. I do know that the reliable folks do get a certain kind of treatment--more reviews.

I have thought of myself as a reliable reviewer--meeting most deadlines and usually saying yes when asked.  I used to only say no if the piece was outside of my expertise or if it would be inappropriate for me to do the review.  What would make me an inappropriate reviewer?  Mostly if I had already reviewed that piece or similar work by the same author (I don't want to be the sole reviewer blocking a person's career).  How can I tell that if the process is blind?  Well, blind but not stupid.  Over the course of time, one gets asked often to review work that is close to one's own, but then one is familiar with the work in that area, so, ta da! not so blind.  Google also can make things less blind, although I never google to find the authors of a piece until after I have written the review and sent it off, and mostly not even then.

I am writing about reviews because today seems to be post about refereeing day.  See here for a good piece discussing rules of refereeing by Marc Bellemare.  Some very good suggestions that I will try to follow in the future.  I have been violating one of the rules lately--saying no.  Why?  Because I have said yes a lot recently,*** and am backed up.  As a result, I cannot credibly commit to doing the review in a timely fashion.  So, I say no.  I am also less willing these days to review stuff that is outside of my comfort zone, as I have realized that I cannot provide good reviews.  Given the ample opportunities to review stuff (especially after summers and winter holidays when folks finish stuff and send it off to journals)

***  I have said yes to a variety of writing commitments, journal reviews, and tenure reviews.  For the last, it requires one to read not just one article or book but many articles and perhaps more than one book.  Takes a lot of time with heaps of stakes involved--a person's career.

Phil Arena has a post on how not to be a good reviewer.  Such as rejecting stuff because it does not cite you or asking the person to not simplify.  For the former, it is a dick move.  I have recommended to folks to cite my work if it really is central to their work and only if my piece is published some place visible and even then only rarely and never as a reason to reject a piece.  For the latter, articles have word limits, so you cannot ask someone to add two more cases or explicate something that is not central to their argument.  A big difference between a book and an article is the latter is always going to be a snapshot and not a completed research agenda.

Young scholars cannot wait to get in the reviewer game.  Kind of like being eager to start shaving. Sure, it makes you feel like an adult, but once you get started, you are going to be doing it again and again and again for the rest of your career/life.  So, don't be so eager.  It will happen if you publish.

A Good Reason to Send Your Kids ot Private School

 “Anyone who reads this document can see that it promotes acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle,” one mother said at a six-hour school board meeting in late September.NYT

If you find being tolerant of homosexuals to be anathema, send your kids to a religious private school.  Sending your kids to public schools means having to deal with public policy, like how to create an environment that recognizes the reality that there are gay people and that we ought not drive them to suicide. 

“Of course we’re all against bullying,” Mr. DeMato, one of numerous pastors who opposed the plan, said in an interview. “But the Bible says very clearly that homosexuality is wrong, and Christians don’t want the schools to teach subjects that are repulsive to their values.”

The Bible also endorses slavery as part of the spoils of war.  So, if you want to pick some hunk of religious doctrine, go ahead, but don't expect the PUBLIC schools to endorse or protect your viewpoints. 

In Alameda, Calif., officials started to introduce new tolerance lessons after teachers noticed grade-schoolers using gay slurs and teasing children with gay or lesbian parents. A group of parents went to court seeking the right to remove their children from lessons that included reading “And Tango Makes Three,” a book in which two male penguins bond and raise a child.
The parents lost the suit, and the school superintendent, Kirsten Vital, said the district was not giving ground. “Everyone in our community needs to feel safe and visible and included,” Ms. Vital said.

Geek Squared! Star Trek and Public Goods

I have a modest spoiler so don't read below if you care about the content of the curriculum at Vulcan Junior High.





Ok, not to give anything away in the movie, but in an early sequence where the various Vulcan kids are being tested on all kinds of knowledge--math, biology, physics, etc--there was one clear social science reference--non-rivalry & non-excludability. These are the defining characteristics of Public Goods, and are central concepts in Mancur Olson's classic Logic of Collective Action. Olson famously (famous enough to make it into the 23rd century and all the way to Vulcan) argues that it will be difficult to cooperate to provide Public Goods--when one's usage of a good does not reduce its availability for others and where non-contributors cannot be excluded. In such cases, free-riding is not only likely but the logical course of action.

Olson's insights here, while often contested, have shaped how we think about political mobilization, the need for government/coercion, and especially the environment. Why recycle? If I do it and no one else does, my effort is wasted. If everyone does it but I do not, then the planet is clean and my marginal waste is irrelevant.

It is especially ironic that Public Goods appears in the new (and rockin') Star Trek because the logic of collective action largely produces a pessimistic, cynical outlook towards human nature and the possibility of cooperation but ST is all about an optimistic vision of the future. Perhaps the new writers of ST mythology, JJ Abrams and the gang, are trying to square the geek circle--that we can overcome the collective action problem and that we will so that we get this amazing future of the Federation of Planets, in which Starfleet is explicitly referred as a force for humanitarian efforts and peacekeeping. Indeed, for a minute, it sounded like the conventional perception of the mission of the Canadian Forces before Operation Medusa in Afghanistan in 2006 (first major combat for Canada since the Korean War).

Of course, Olson and his successors provide a variety of ways out of the collective action problem: small groups can mobilize as their members perceive their contributions as mattering; individual entrepreneurs can see it in their interests to facilitate and even underwrite cooperation; and the like.

To sum up, it was just a fun movie that made a very interesting and deliberate reference that is far more intriguing to me than the volume of a cylinder--another example in that sequence in the movie. This is not the first time that Star Trek has overlapped with social science, and it will almost certainly not be the last, given the box office success it is having. Live long and prosper, indeed.