Authoring a PhD
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BOLALAR UCHUN INGLIZ TILI @ASILBEK MUSTAFOQULOV, Ingliz tili grammatikasi
| Refereeing systems. Peer group review is the central quality-assurance process in the academic world, and how well it is handled is crucial fora journal’s standing. A top-rank journal will send your paper to four diverse and well-qualified referees, 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 profession 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 goon two positives. It may not be able to attract the same quality of people to look at prospective articles, bearing in mind that referees are not paid for their efforts. Lower down in the hierarchy inmost professions are those journals which do not run proper independent refereeing. Instead they may serve mainly as a vehicle fora referencing circle around a particular clique in the profession. Similarly, more ‘ideological’ journals may single-mindedly plug a particular viewpoint, 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 2 AUTHORING AP H D PUBLISHING YOUR RESEARCH 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 humanities, arts and social science disciplines there are still quite prestigious journals with large circulations, which nonetheless 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 referee 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 journal 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 supposed 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 referees write, and to prevent any automatic taking sides by referees. 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 workout who authors are. Equally, sheltering behind the cloak of anonymity, unaccountable referees maybe 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. |