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Are grad students obligated to review for journals they’ve published in?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Are graduate students morally obligated to accept reviewer requests if they have published with the journal?

If the answer is no, a follow-up: Is it nonetheless prudential for them to accept these requests?

Fair questions. I guess I'm inclined to think that academics are obligated to do their fair share of reviewing, where this involves reviewing accepting at least as many reviewer requests as papers one submits (not publishes). As for considerations of prudence, I don't know whether journal editors keep track of who accepts or declines reviews, or whether declining review requests has any impact on how a journal will treat submissions from an author. But again, I think the answer to the first question is a qualified "yes" (in the sense that a grad student who has submitted to a journal should review for them, provided they are asked to review a paper they are competent to review).

What do you all think?

Posted in ,

15 responses to “Are grad students obligated to review for journals they’ve published in?”

  1. the hyper-referee

    Like Marcus, I think one is obliged to review for journals one submits to (so, clearly one is obliged to referee for journals one publishes in). If one’s status as a graduate student excuses one, then perhaps (by a similar line of argument) it should also forbid you from submitting. In reality, the status as graduate student is irrelevant. The relevant status group is publishing philosophers, and these people do have obligations to referee.
    (I’m the guy who has refereed 200+ papers, mostly for phil sci journals).

    Reply
  2. Juan

    The way I think about it is: for every paper I submit, normally three people spend time on it (the editor and two reviewers). So, I feel like I owe the profession refereeing three papers for every submission I make (or equivalent work, e.g. organizing/vetting work for a conference). Anything more is supererogatory, and anything less is freeloading. And one shouldn’t do the latter.
    This principle also entails that the more you submit the more refereeing you owe.
    That said, I also think grad students get to pay on credit, as it were. Your central goal at the stage at which you’re sending stuff out is to get a job, so you can wait until you do so to pay back by taking on more refereeing work later.
    The last thing I’d say is that despite being time-consuming, I generally find that refereeing work in my area is fun and a way of keeping updated on cutting-edge work. And, for a grad student, it may be a good learning experience seeing how work strikes you from the other side.

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  3. anon

    I second Marcus’ response to the first question above. In fact, the answer seems to be pretty obviously “yes,” the the degree that I’m curious what the case would be for it NOT being morally obligatory. Journal reviewing is entirely voluntary, and when you submit an article for consideration you are relying on the goodwill and unpaid labor of your fellow academics. Tbh it seems a big strange to my ears to question whether one is morally permitted to make free use of such a system without making any contribution themselves. As Marcus notes, the only qualification would be if a grad student didn’t feel qualified yet to evaluate certain papers. In that case, I could understand the case for waiting until you are more of an expert in the area and then “paying back” by doing reviews at a later time in your career

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  4. academic migrant

    Agreeing with the comments above, as a matter of fairness, and as a matter of getting a glimpse into the newest research.
    Just want to add, looking back I was more in a “trying to see whether I can come up with objections” mentality; but now it is more a “can I help to improve the paper to a publishable standards.” I’ve heard that many grad students, like me, started with the former mind set, which isn’t always a good thing.

    Reply
  5. Bill V.

    All things in moderation, as they say. Ultimately it is a Tragedy of the Commons problem: If everyone freeloads, the whole system collapses. But that does not create an obligation on any one person to keep the system afloat by overworking, and especially not a junior person.
    I don’t think it is imprudent to reject requests to review while in grad school. No one is tracking these things, I suspect, and there is certainly no professional punishment for not refereeing. Turn down requests too often and they might stop asking you, which is not good in the long run.
    I’d say, if you are in a particularly busy period (chapter due soon, final edits due, defense coming up), by all means protect your priority interests, i.e., producing a good dissertation in a timely manner. But if you do turn requests down, perhaps say something like, “I’d be happy to do more in six months, when my dissertation is submitted.” I like the idea that grad students can owe refereeing “on credit”. All that said, if you can take on some refereeing without it impeding your graduation, it is a useful kind of professionalization, makes you feel part of the club, and can teach you a lot about what to/not do in your own papers submitted for publication.
    (FWIW 200+ referee assignments for one person is way too many IMHO, perhaps harmful to the profession, although I suppose it depends on the time period. Even 3-to-1 seems a little over the top. Before tenure, 1-to-1 is a respectable minimum, plus a little more for the good of the profession, and quite a bit more after tenure.)

    Reply
  6. OP

    Thanks all for your responses!
    I asked this question because I’ve heard some say graduate students should reject requests like these because they’re already too busy (not that they’ve got more things going on than permanent faculty, but perhaps given their competency and skill level, they really are more busy than those faculty) and don’t have anything near the long-term career security that permanent faculty have who should primarily be doing the reviewing.
    (I’m not saying this is a good argument; just testing the waters to see if there is some general consensus in our profession about it).

    Reply
  7. OP

    Addendum: I understand publishing is in one sense entirely voluntary; nobody is forcing graduate students to submit papers. But on the other hand, there is a sense in which it’s not voluntary. With a highly competitive job market, many graduate students are publishing to earn a living. If the market weren’t so competitive, and if committees didn’t have such high research expectations for their applicants, they would likely wait until they got into a less precarious position as a permanent faculty member.

    Reply
  8. reviewing

    As with many other facets of this profession, I think it can be helpful to start getting into a rhythm of doing them while still in grad school. I don’t think a grad student should be accepting a lot of reviewer requests given the time and energy that is needed to finish the diss and go on the market. However, doing one or two can be a helpful introduction to something that you’ll probably end up doing more frequently down the line. So, why not go for it? It’s a line on the old cv, and it can also help contribute to one’s understanding of the contemporary literature (assuming the paper is halfway decent). I guess I wouldn’t go so far as to say a grad student is morally obligated to do it. But, assuming you’re not swamped with more important things, I’d say it’s prob worth accepting.

    Reply
  9. R

    I’ll just voice my disagreement for the sake of showing that what appears to be the consensus so far is not universally shared.
    My position is closer to Juan’s on the issue of moral obligation: if one acquires an ongoing job in the profession, one should aim in the long run to ensure that they have refereed two (maybe three) times as many papers as they have submitted, including submissions while they were still a graduate student. But I don’t think graduate students owe such service in any moral or professional sense. As Bill says, the burden of keeping the system running is first and foremost on those with tenure, and definitely not on graduate students. Not least because graduate students are unlikely to get enough referee requests to meet this obligation or make much of a difference to the overall running of the system. (To put it somewhat over-dramatically: I think it would be tragic if an overly cautious graduate student came away from this thread thinking they should wait for three referee requests before they’re allowed to submit their first paper!)
    That said, pragmatically I would recommend accepting referee requests you receive as a graduate student, assuming they’re on a vaguely relevant topic, up to a maximum of two or three a year. If you stay in the profession, doing these well and somewhat efficiently is a skill you’ll need to learn, so might as well start practicing it now. And as someone above alluded to, seeing the publishing process from the refereeing side may provide additional insight on what editors and referees are looking for that helps your own publishing.

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  10. Chris

    I agree with R. I have a permanent job, of which 20% of my time is supposed to be devoted to “service” – advising majors, serving on university committees, organizing the occasional conference and yes, refereeing papers. So I think of it as work that is paid for by part of my salary. But graduate students are not in the same position – and many are struggling to make ends meet financially. So I like Juan’s idea that graduate students get to pay “on credit”. Of course, as other commentators mentioned, refereeing a bit (one or two papers) can be a good experience.

    Reply
  11. anon

    As a recent graduate student myself, I’m very sympathetic to issues of time constraints and job precarity. However, several of the comments on this thread are suggesting that reviews are a much more serious time commitment than I think they are (e.g., Chris’ comment that many grad students are struggling to make ends meet). Does struggling to make ends meet mean grad students cant spare an afternoon to review a paper every now and then? The original question and resulting discussion seems to be a fair amount of hand wringing over what amounts to a very small difference of time in the grand scheme of things. Grad students are not going to be hit with a large number of requests, generally speaking. I published three articles while in grad school and was asked to review maybe five times over the course of several years, resulting in a grand total of maybe 2-3 extra days of work.

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  12. Chris

    anon: of course, it isn’t much time in the grand scheme of things; but my point is that I’m actually getting paid to do such things – it isn’t clear if this is true for graduate students, who often are paid either for TA work or fellowships for doing their research. Sure, you could do it for fun or unpaid, but what I’m really pushing back are those who do have full time employment but who think of refereeing work as “volunteer” or “unpaid”.

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  13. associate professor

    Is anyone actually only spending 20, or 30, or whatever percent of 40 hours a week of work it says in their contract, on service? For what it’s worth, I’m spending way more than that, just on service to my university, that I can’t really choose not to do. So by my calculation I am not being paid to referee either. (And nor are most of my colleagues.) I’d be getting overtime checks if I were.

    Reply
  14. Michel

    I don’t think anyone in a precarious professional position has any sort of obligation to referee, no. But if you make it out of the precariat, then I do think you should do what you can when you can. So: basically the deferred obligation/credit model Juan mentioned upthread.

    Reply
  15. Anonymous

    Looking back at this old post, does anyone have advice for how a graduate student (PhD candidate at a smaller school) can publicize themselves more, in order to receive requests for reviews?

    I have published a small amount in mid+ journals in my field niche and maintain a presence online at academic sites. I have also begun to be more active in my favorite academic groups. While it may just be a matter of time now, over the next year or so, is there anything else I should be doing?

    Thank you!

    Reply

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