The Philosophers' Cocoon

This year, I have reviewed 12 papers (and more if you include revise and resubmits) for various journals. As I was reflecting on my work as a reviewer (for my end-of-year report of teaching, service, and research), I saw this interesting question on Twitter. Gui Sanches de Oliveira asked: 

Is it always bad to ID oneself as reviewer? I like the paper! BUT it overlooks discussion about X that's crucial for their argument on Y. I dealt with X in detail, so I'll bring up my paper, but it's hard to pretend I didn't write it. What can go wrong if I'm open about who I am?

Is it OK to reveal one's identity to an author as a reviewer to their paper?

I am inclined to say "no," especially if one does not habitually sign one's name to papers, but I think no in most cases. 

I don't deny there aren't goods to be obtained from more transparency in review. Reviewing is something of a collaborative venture, with often significant input from reviewers in the final product, and knowing identities mutually could further help to build fruitful collaborations. Moreover, it can be heartening to hear someone say they liked your paper if one is early-career. I recall as a grad student when I had my first paper accepted to a journal (this was not a philosophy paper, but a theoretical cognitive science paper), I was at a conference about a year after, and one of the founding people in evolutionary psychology told me they had reviewed my paper and really liked it. It felt so wonderful to hear this endorsement of my work at this stage. 

But I think on the whole the negatives outweigh the positives. In the case of the question on Twitter, I think it's perfectly fine to write "Discussion of topic X by Author Y (date) is crucial for this part of the argument" without specifying that you are Author Y. In fact, I often recommend that authors look into papers by other people and in some cases one might think the reviewer was one of those people. One cannot just assume that if a reviewer recommends to look into the literature to a specific paper, that that paper is written by the person who authored the referee report. 

My biggest problem with outing oneself as the author of a referee report is power relations.  Journal publications are high-stakes zero-sum games particularly for early-career people for whom it can make the difference to get a tenure track job, a postdoc, or tenure. In some cases, there is a large disparity in seniority between the author and reviewer. The author might be a grad student, the reviewer a tenured professor, or vice versa. In both of those situations knowing identities (mutually or one-way) creates peculiar dynamics that I don't think help to make the review process better. A more senior author might feel resentful about some suggestions for changes made by someone with less experience. Or a more junior author might feel more deferential, less willing to push back against some suggestions, if it turns out the reviewer is someone really eminent or someone she admires. I'm not saying these sorts of dynamics are common or exhaustive, they are just examples where I think the veil of mutual ignorance is really better for both parties. 

A second worry I have is that signing one's name to a review report makes it hard to be honest. As a reviewer, I try my best to be respectful and constructive. I do not think it is my job to be a quiet co-author, so my reports tend to be brief and tend to focus on what I think the biggest issues are. Obviously, authors won't always agree with my judgments (particularly if the Editor's final verdict is rejection), but they might be unhappy or begrudge those well-meaning criticisms. Sometimes, a paper is really terrible and I think a reviewer's comments should convey that the reviewer thought the paper was weak (without being snarky or horrible) and specifying why it is weak.  I am just not sure if I could be that forthright if I signed my name to reviews. I know some people have no problem doing this, but if signing one's name to referee reports became the norm then people who would not like to risk grudges and ires would simply stop reviewing. 

Suppose I would only sign my name to positive referee reports. Would that be better? I don't think so. Revealing one's identity  can create an undesirable sense of indebtedness. Suppose, for instance, I see a really wonderful paper appear in print that I remember reviewing earlier and I write to the author "I loved your paper! I was the reviewer who recommended accept". What motivation could one have for writing this and not just "I read your paper on XX that just came out in Journal Y and I really loved it" when it appears in print? Recommending Accept or Minor/Major Revisions (or even Reject but with useful feedback) is helpful for the author, but one does not do the author a favor by recommending Accept! One only does the author a favor insofar as reviewing is an act of altruism. Reviewing is an altruistic endeavor (that for-profit journals take advantage of) that we engage in to make sure that journal publishing as an institution can survive. We do our fair part in the process, trying to be fair, impartial, and dispassionate, judging papers on merit and how much they would be of interest to readers in the relevant subject area. That institution requires the veil of anonymity to work well (I am still very enthusiastic about anonymous reviewing, though this is a separate issue from the topic at hand here). Any sort of attempt to build connection with the author of a paper you reviewed by letting them know you're the author does not benefit that institution.

I am all for more collaboration, more interaction, more engagement. But there are better ways of doing this than to out oneself as a reviewer. I think it's great, for instance, to contact people about their work and to engage in conversation about it but it doesn't need to be at the review stage. We can do this connection building earlier, for instance, when we send a paper to some friends, colleagues and other peers for friendly feedback before we send it to a journal. Or we can do it later, once the paper is in print. But I think the review process itself is best done unencumbered by knowing identities, both as a reviewer and as an author.