In one of our weekly journal paper reading sessions at Hirota/Nomoto Lab, Tokyo Institute of Technology, we looked at the following paper:
Ch. Theoharatos, V.K. Pothos, N.A. Laskaris, G. Economou and S. Fotopoulos, “Multivariate Image Similarity in the Compressed Domain using Statistical Graph Matching”, Pattern Recognition, Special Issue on Similarity-based Pattern Recognition, vol.39, no. 10, pp. 1892-1904, 2006.
The leader of the session did a good job but at the end of the session, one of my colleagues commented on the review period of the paper.He said the review period was too short and rather strange.This paper was received on 8 March 2006 and got accepted on 6 April 2006. As a result, some members started thinking that maybe one of the authors is connected to the editorial team of the Pattern Recognition Journal. To say the truth, I , too, was amazed by the speed with which this paper was accepted for publication in a journal of such quality. But I did not suspect any foul play at all. In my view, it is possible for a paper to be received, reviewed and, if it is good enough, accepted within a week. I say this because a paper does not come out the blue. It builds on the work that has been published already. Therefore, it is very easy for reviewers, who are supposed to be experts in a particular field, to know if the paper is good enough because they are generally aware of most of the referenced works in the paper.
Journal paper reviews, especially for technology research, must not take so long.We must make sure that the speed with papers are reviewed is in line with the pace at which technology changes.I have been a victim of a slow journal paper review process before.I submitted a paper in October 2006. I received the reviewers’ comments in November 2007 and some of the reviewers were blaming me for ignoring some related works which were published several months after I had submitted my paper for review. Here in Japan, I have a friend who has received the reviewers’ comments two years after he submitted his paper and the reviewers are asking him why he did not refer to related works which were actually published a year after he had submitted his paper. This is not fair!!!Last time, I suggested that journal editors must adopt the double blind review process for purposes of fairness. Today, I would like to ask all journal editors to emulate the example demonstrated by the Pattern Recognition Editors. A journal paper review must be swift so that the author should have time to attend to the comments raised while the paper is still fresh.In addition, I would like to suggest that reviewers must be paid for their work and as a result they must be doing their work within specified deadlines.
7 users commented in " Journal paper review:Why does the process take so long? "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackHow to do a critical review of a single journal paper?
do i need to read up on all research relevant to the paper, or do i just critically review the one paper itself
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Usually the process of reviewing is held deliberately for the reviewers to fulfill their own agenda. We may never know for sure, but this is very common in the environment I live in. The “bureaucratic” process may delay a simple approval to as much as a year.
PS: Admin, you have some spelling mistakes in the post. One instance is here:
“…comments in November 2007 and some of the reviewers were blamimg me for….”
Correction: “blamimg” should be “blaming”
Richael Neets last blog post..Preventing yourself from Sabotaging your Goals
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This is a very interesting article, good information and helpful. Thank you
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Definitely… the journal process could use some serious streamlining.
I work as a researcher in bioengineering-related fields, and it’s not uncommon for the journal review process to extend up to a year.
-George
George at Inks Blogs last blog post..Why 4Inkjets Is My Preferred Ink Supplier
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Journal paper reviews are interesting topic. I have tought about why does processing them take so long but on the other hand, its not easy work. You see, there are lots of sources to verify etc.
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A tip on journal paper review is to see if there is a theory in the paper and if the results is meaningful and worthwhile.It is better not to let someone know you review his paper at any time before or after.
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Journal paper review takes so much time because of necessity to study a amounts of information and then structure it
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