To be honest, the title of the last post was not really accurate. I guess I got carried away with the idea of making an engaging, even grabby headline! But it is probably accurate to say that most challenges have to do with the two identified categories - those being authors and reviewers/editors. I was complaining about peer review one time with some co-presenters, just before a virtual conference session began. Professor Sally Campbell Galman, the brilliant author of the graphic research comic: Shane the Lone Ethnographer, used the terms "actionable" and "not actionable" for what I was calling with less concision "comments you don't know what to do about."
In my little graphic above, I have included a classic non actionable comment from a peer reviewer: "Your paper is too long!" In fact, my graphic shows a couple of non actionable comments and then some (admittedly wordy - but this is my style as a reviewer or editor) versions that provide some additional guidance. There are, as with most things, pluses and minuses associated with providing detailed comments.
0 Comments
In a virtual or physical room full of qualitative researchers, a frequent topic of conversation is the difficulty of publishing qualitative research reports. Although there are many types or sources of difficulty, I think most can be allocated to one of two categories - problems associated with authors and problems associated with peer reviewers. (Problems associated with editors may only be solved by waiting for a new journal editor to take over.)
Over the next few weeks, I aim to post some of my thoughts about specific challenges associated with authors and/or peer reviewers. I'll start with one of each today. No matter how much care and thought went into a research project, authors often have a tendency to assume reviewers are correct. Another version of this is the belief that it doesn't matter if reviewers are correct or not - authors still need to follow their guidance. Sometimes when a reviewer may offers advice based on preference rather than scholarly or methodological guidelines, and the thing in question is relatively minor, it may not be worth an argument. I have put things in tables when my preference was not to do so, and duplicated information in tables and text, again, when my preference was not to do so. In my opinion, things like this do not substantially change my report. But if a reviewer provides guidance or makes a demand that is unsupported and/or inconsistent with the method, I believe authors are within their rights to decline (politely, with an explanation) to make a change to their work. One common reviewer trap - that may impact newer reviewers, including graduate students, more so than reviewers with extensive experience - is to assume it is necessary to criticize something in every manuscript. |
AuthorI am Sheryl L. Chatfield, Ph.D, C.T.R.S. I am a member of the faculty in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. I also Co-coordinate the Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research and I am a member of the Design Innovation Team at Kent State. Archives
February 2024
Categories
|