Monday, January 15, 2007

Frequent-reviewer points

I spent part of this afternoon going through a pile of old papers that I have reviewed for journals. (Most academic journals are peer-reviewed, so they send submitted papers to others in the area to be evaluated). I was struck by how many papers I've reviewed in the past several years (and I know that others review many more).

This leads me to a simple proposal. We should get frequent-reviewer points for every paper we review, and then we can use those points for various goodies in the field.

For example, if 1 paper = 1 point, then perhaps:
- 2 points earn a snazzy ASA (American Sociological Association) water bottle
- 5 points earn a guaranteed presentation at a conference
- 12 points earn an accepted paper at a second-tier journal
- 20 points earn an accepted paper at a first-tier journal

Other things we should be able to use these points for?

2 comments:

David Weakliem said...

I spent four years as deputy editor of the American Sociological Review, which involved doing a total of maybe 50 reviews. At the end of that time, the American Sociological Association sent me the following ASA gear: a baseball cap, a lanyard, and a little digital clock. What made the gift especially memorable is that the clock never never kept even remotely correct time. That must have some symbolic meaning, although I'm not quite sure what it is.

Bad Runner said...

My record for reviewing papers in one year is 46 (I had six months in there in which I was on two editorial boards at the same time--not recommended!). Therefore, I fully endorse Brad's system as that one year gets me two ASR's!