Abstract
For many academics within the information systems discipline, the merits of the current processes we use to review papers to evaluate whether they should be published in journals is a contentious issue. Allegations are often made that reviews are not timely, that their quality is low, that they are not supportive and affirming of authors, and that they reflect the prejudices of an "elite" who control the journals. Whether we believe these allegations have substance will depend on our own experiences with journals and our knowledge of the experiences of colleagues. Based on my own experiences, I believe the allegations have some foundation. Accordingly, in this paper I present a manifesto for changing and hopefully improving the journal review process. My manifesto has four major recommendations: (1) remove the blind review process and make the names of authors, reviewers, and associate editors public; (2) indicate the names of reviewers and editors on the published paper, along with their final recommendations, and the number of review cycles that the paper has undergone; (3) maintain a public Web archive of papers under review to enable colleagues other than the reviewers to comment on papers; (4) maintain a public Web archive of rejected papers along with the reviewers' and editors' reports. My goals are to make the review process more transparent, to make stakeholders more accountable for their actions, to mitigate the effect of biases and prejudices, to make the review process more affirming and supportive, and to reduce the likelihood of high-quality papers being wrongly rejected and low-quality papers being accepted.
DOI
10.17705/1CAIS.00212
Recommended Citation
Weber, R. (1999). The Journal Review Process: A Manifesto for Change. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 2, pp-pp. https://doi.org/10.17705/1CAIS.00212
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