Thursday, 21 June 2018

Are the referees of a journal allowed to reveal the title of the papers they review after the review process?


I am wondering if a referee can reveal the title of the papers he/she has refereed for a journal (either by talking about it in the pub, posting it on facebook or another mean) after the decision has been made.


The reason for my question is that I have seen some people revealing titles of the papers they referee but I have not found an authoritative reference for judging this behaviour.



Answer



Don't do that.



Everything related to reviewing is confidential.


You will certainly upset some editors if you reveal your identity to the authors without the editor's permission. (Remember that the authors usually know who was the editor. Perhaps the editors did not want the authors to know that they asked you to review the paper?)


More generally, there is nothing to gain by doing this, and everything (= your reputation) to lose. You do not want to do anything that someone might interpret as a violation of the confidentiality of the peer-review process. (Even if you had both the authors' and the editor's permission to publish this information, others might not know that.)


No comments:

Post a Comment

evolution - Are there any multicellular forms of life which exist without consuming other forms of life in some manner?

The title is the question. If additional specificity is needed I will add clarification here. Are there any multicellular forms of life whic...