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We should have anonymous book manuscript review

July 11, 2014

To my knowledge, full book manuscripts are never reviewed anonymously. Given that the double anonymity of peer review is implemented to decrease biases, and presumably, thereby increase the focus on the quality of the writing, this is puzzling. David Chalmers wrote, in a very helpful comment on how to publish a book "Most book refereeing is not blind, unlike journal refereeing. And when what's being reviewed is a proposal rather than a full manuscript, reputation of the author make a huge difference in reviewers' and editors' confidence that the proposal will be fleshed out well to a book."

While I can see that the reputation or renown of an author can relevantly play a role at the proposal stage in assessing the competence of the prospective author in writing a full manuscript, I don't see why it should play a role when the full manuscript is reviewed. This will inevitably happen when review of full manuscripts is non-anonymous. It would be hard not to be influenced if the author of one's manuscript happened to work at high-ranking institution, is very senior, and already has an excellent track record (I declined to review a book for a major press for this reason), or conversely, if the author is relatively junior, working at a teaching-focused or obscure place.

One could argue that the prestige of an author, or lack thereof, is more important in evaluating book manuscripts compared to article manuscripts because it affects the potential marketability of the book. However, the commissioning editor can take that already into account. It is the reviewers' job to focus on whether the scholarship in the manuscript is sound. They need not worry about marketing.

So I would suggest that while it's reasonable to keep the review of book proposals non-anonymized, full manuscript reviews at academic publishers should ideally be anonymized. Having reviewed several books, I can say it would easy for publishers to make this happen (I would not have been able to guess the authors' identity) and it would increase quality control, as well as taking away an extra hurdle junior scholars face to get their first book out.

Posted in Academic publishing, Helen De Cruz

7 responses to “We should have anonymous book manuscript review”

Rachel

July 11, 2014

Absolutely. I fear that referees are too often inserting themselves into the editor’s role in deciding whether the book will sell well. The referees should be focused on the scholarly quality of the book and how it fits in with the debates. Thoughts about whether and what degree other philosophers, for example, will want to engage with the arguments in the book shouldn’t be on the referee’s mind (particularly because they’re such unreliable judgments).

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Eric Winsberg

July 11, 2014

Well, referees are often explicitly asked questions like whether the book will sell well, whether it is likely to be adopted in classes, etc. I think this is part of their job, And I think its would be a small but substantial handicap to do this without knowledge of the author.
I think the real problem is that we afford too much weight to the fact that x has published with y press on a person’s cv. Really, the mere fact that you have a book with such and such a press should not be much weighed when evaluting someone for hiring or promotion. If a book is well reviewed and cited, that’s something else. But merely getting accepted by a press shouldn’t count as a scholarly credential precisely because monograph manuscript review is not like article manuscript review.i

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Helen De Cruz

July 11, 2014

I refereed for several presses, and have encountered the ‘Will it sell?” question. As academics without knowledge of marketing etc, I think we aren’t in a position to make a good assessment of this. So I’d propose a division of labour here – the acquisitions editor can make an informed judgment about this taking everything in account.
When anonymizing, we can still answer, as referees the following questions: What are the competing books (a question I was also asked)? Do you think the topic of this book is of interest, and who might the potential readers be? All questions that can be answered without knowing the author.

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pessimist-anonstudent

July 11, 2014

For awhile now I’ve thought there should be two groups of reviewers, one blinded and one not. The differences in opinion would illuminate the book’s scholarly quality better than either one alone, plus it’d let the non-blind reviewers give their sense of whether there’s a market demand for such a book. I think academics probably have a better sense of how other academics would receive a book than an editor would, and the author’s ID is relevant to that demand-side matter. But if you had to choose only one, the OP’s right it’d be better to have it be anonymous.

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Helen De Cruz

July 11, 2014

It would certainly be an interesting exercise. The presses I have experience with as author, editor or reviewer typically have 2 or 3 referees so it would be feasible. Nonetheless, while this might be helpful for how much the book would sell I think overall anonymous review would be more effective in increasing the overall quality of published materials.

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Doug Portmore

July 11, 2014

It seems like a great idea to me. However, the blind-review of book manuscripts may be more difficult than the blind-review of journal manuscripts, because book manuscripts more often incorporate work that has already been published or otherwise disseminated. Also, people may be more reluctant to take on the task of reviewing a book manuscript if they don’t know who wrote it and so whether it is likely to be worth reading.

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Neil Levy

July 11, 2014

There is one reason why anonymising sometimes (often?) can’t be done. Many books contain previously published papers, and a competent reviewer likely recognise them. This is a special case of the research program problem: when a paper advances an existing research program, it is often hard to hide author’s identity. But of course that’s no reason not to anonymise when anonymity can be achieved.

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