In my last post, I argued (ranted?) about how authors should acknowledge the work done by peer reviewers in their manuscript. Being an ecologist, I wanted to quantify this somehow, so I took the most recent issues of Ecology (Vol. 92, no. 12; 2012), the Journal of Animal Ecology (Vol. 82, no. 1; 2013) and Oecologia (Vol. 171, no. 2; 2013). Each issue contained 25-27 research articles (i.e., not an editorial or book review). Here are the numbers:
|
Thanked anonymous reviewers |
||
| Journal |
Yes |
No |
| Ecology |
12 |
13 |
| Journal of Animal Ecology |
14 |
11 |
| Oecologia |
12 |
15 |
| Overall |
38 |
39 |
So just under half of the papers don’t acknowledge the reviewers. A couple of points: some of these papers did acknowledge others who had read the manuscript, and identified them by name; some of these could be reviewers who chose not to remain anonymous. Almost all the papers thanked some funding agency (I think there was one that didn’t).
But why should we thank these anonymous persons who act as gate-keepers? Because without them, there would be no peer-reviewed science. Even if the reader (or authors) don’t know who the reviewers are, I think they should still be included. After all, readers don’t know how much “J.D. Smith” contributed to the lab work (heck, he could’ve been the undergrad hired to wash the glassware). In some cases, I’ve sent an article of interest to a colleague who wrote back to say that they had reviewed it (and usually accompanied with some commentary on whether the authors heeded their suggestions or not). Like it or not, but this does influence my perception of the manuscript.
So, while we might not know who the reviewers are, we know damned well what they do, and the price for which they do it (freely). I think that’s worth 8 words.
The Lab and Field 
I ordinarily acknowledge reviewers and the handling editor, though I’m sure I’ve forgotten on occasion. But once I was told by a journal to remove acknowledgment of the handling editor, on the grounds that it’s assumed that there was a handling editor and that he or she helped to improve the ms. By that same logic, one could argue for not acknowledging the reviewers either.
I think there’s an analogy here to tipping customs. For instance, in the UK you don’t ordinarily tip the bartender for your drink, while in the US and Canada the custom is to do so. Similarly, in Japan you don’t tip in restaurants, while in the UK and North America you do. Not obeying the local custom is rude, certainly. But is one local custom more or less rude than another? I don’t think so.
That’s a good point about cultural norms, which is why I picked out a US (Ecology), UK (Journal of Animal Ecology), and European (Oecologia) journal. I suppose I could also have looked at the country of the lead author, but that moves this beyond procrastination into actual work 🙂
As for being told not to acknowledge a handling (subject/associate/etc) editor, many places print these at the bottom (or top) of an article, so I can see that. And at least the handling editor sees a final submission, and can look at how their suggestions were implemented, whereas many journals I’ve reviewed for don’t send revised manuscripts to reviewers (unless for re-review), so the in-print version is the first chance to see how/if the points in the review was addressed. It can be really annoying to see a paper come out where all the reviewer recommendations (or at least major points) were ignored – I’d love to be able to see at least the rebuttal letter.