Important advice from an editor for responding to reviewers

Occasionally as an editor I see an author respond to a reviewer, let’s say Reviewer 1, in the following manner. “Response to Reviewer 1’s comment that we should rerun the model: Reviewer 2 didn’t see a problem with our method, so we choose not to rerun the model.” It may well be that Reviewer 2 […]

Where to publish case studies in meteorology

Dr. Alexander Keul of Salzburg University asked me whether any journals were publishing case studies in meteorology. What was interesting was that I had received another question or two along these lines recently. Seemed like an opportunity to blog. I would argue that there are two extremes of what one might call “case studies.” On […]

If a tree falls in the forest…

This month’s issue of the Annals of Improbable Research answers the question of whether a tree falling in the forest will make a sound if no one is around to hear it. The answer is yes (Melchior 2010). Moreover, the bigger the tree, the louder the sound. What I like about this article is that […]

Positive and negative feedback in science: Scientists as social animals

At a recent meeting at the University of Manchester, the keynote speaker was Prof. Helen Gleeson OBE. She gave an informative and interesting history of her career and the lessons she has learned. One thing she said resonated with me (paraphrasing): “As a scientist, you get lots of rejections, but not a lot of supportive […]

Publishing the Same Work in Two Languages

In one of the workshops I was teaching, I was asked whether it was acceptable to publish the same article twice in two different languages. I was a bit stumped as to what to say. Keith Seitter, the Executive Director of the American Meteorological Society, was able to provide a great answer to this question. […]

Should reviews be anonymous?

Probably ever since peer review started, authors have complained about it. If the process were started today, would it take on the same form? Probably not, but what form would it take? Would reviewers continue to be anonymous? As my career has developed, a greater percentage of my reviews over time have been nonanonymous, but […]

Scott Adams on criticism

This quote could be applied to the review process… “If there is one thing you should always seek in a job, it’s the opportunity to criticize people who are more skilled than you are. This kind of work is both satisfying and easy.” —Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Dilbert

The range of reviewer recommendations from crocs to pigeons

Explains the evolutionary line of Rejectosaurus. From the A(frican) Blog of Ecology by Raf Aerts: “I’ve just spotted a Revisosaurus major on one of my manuscripts, even though the field characteristics were very close to those of a Rejectosaurus resubmittens (see Fig. 1, blue line).”

Me and Archimedes

Last month, Russ Schumacher, John Knox, and I submitted to Monthly Weather Review a paper on a case of banded precipitation in Colorado. Yesterday, we got the reviews back. Two things impressed me about the reviews. 1) Reviewer C was very knowledgeable on the topics we were writing about: banded precipitation, symmetric instability, and inertial […]

“Redefining the peer-review literature”

Amid all the public commentary over the stolen University of East Anglia emails, what hasn’t been as widely discussed is that ever since the internet became a tool for mass communication, scientists have been redefining what the peer-review literature is.

« Previous Page — Next Page »