101 - Peer Review

"A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." -- Max Plank

The paper I prepared more than a year ago on Complexity, Cognitive Bias, and Governance has finally been published via the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Reflecting on the past few years of publishing papers in peer review I realized that I've actually encountered only a small number of anonymous trolls in the peer review process, about one clear-cut troll per 2.5 published papers overall. The trouble is that they were positioned in the 3 worst possible places.

One was on my very first paper, which was unfortunate, delaying any further publishing for 2 years as it appeared to be a waste of time. The first paper is an acutely important one to not allow the trolling of, and peer review venues might consider asking if it is the first time someone is publishing for that reason.

The other two were in journals with the highest general prestige, both of which specifically requested that I submit a paper to them. Not only did they solicit me for the papers, but they both wasted many months of my time due to what amounted to a single clear-cut troll in both cases. To drive the irony of this home even further, both papers discussed cognitive biases, which the respective trolls embodied many forms of. The highest-prestige journals, in my experience, now have prestige that is inversely correlated with competence.

I've personally blacklisted FrontiersIn and Cell Press from ever wasting my time again as a result, since both were guilty of this. FrontiersIn delayed the publishing of the paper listed above thanks to one troll and maximum inconsistency in reviewer feedback, and Cell Press proved even lower in reviewer quality.

Then, there is everywhere else. At least four other venues have never once been unreasonable in their suggested revisions and additions to papers. This appears to embody a sort of "Goldilocks Zone", where delusions like prestige don't degrade the process itself. Ultimately, even for the troll-infested high-prestige venues, it remains a roll of the dice. The dice are just a bit loaded by the statistical differences.