Comments on: Why Referee?

By: peter55

peter55 — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:55:11 +0000

"as mainstream rational-actor economicsâ€“where I suspect all our protests to the contrary donâ€t matter much since the question is whether the model works not what the actors say." in a domain where "works" is understood as meaning "has elegant deductive-mathematical properties" rather than (say), "passes pre-specified statistical tests of goodness-of-fit against real-world data" or (say), "exlains some real-world phenomenon previously unexplained".

By: Daniel Rosenblatt

Daniel Rosenblatt — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 13:50:34 +0000

Of course Cowen must really be talking about social capital not cultural capital. And I think the world he is reporting from is not so much Bizarro Academia (alas) as mainstream rational-actor economics–where I suspect all our protests to the contrary don’t matter much since the question is whether the model works not what the actors say.

By: peter55

peter55 — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 08:36:29 +0000

As a computer scientist, another reason for refereeing is to see what is being written in your area. The field moves so quickly, one wants to be up with whatever work is being done by others in the area, and if possible, to do so as the work is written, rather than when it is published. Someone once advised new PhDs to try to become connected to the informal-paper-paper-passing networks that (used to) operate. Refereeing is a way to achieve this state.

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:58:35 +0000

Tim, Ingrid's next post at CT seems close to your specialty. Any thoughts?

By: Cosma

Cosma — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 04:22:05 +0000

Not for the first time, Cowen’s expressing a view so strange to me I wonder if he’s not reporting from Bizarro Academia. In my experience (physics, statistics, machine learning), if people thought you could build up credit with a journal by refereeing for them, that would in and of itself serve to discredit that journal. I’ve heard colleagues justify reviewing by reference to every variation on professional obligation, as well as a general desire to “promote virtue and suppress vice”, but never a suggestion that it was a direct help to getting published oneself.

By: topometropolis

topometropolis — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 22:47:39 +0000

Tim,

I work in mathematics, where journal articles are the only coin of the realm, but my motivations for refereeing are very close to yours. It’s work that needs doing, and I have to do my share, especially since I publish pretty heavily and so generate a lot of refereeing for others to do. Also, refereeing can be a good excuse to carefully read a paper that looks interesting but is just collecting dust on my desk.