Another young philosopher writes:
I'm at the early stage in my career where I'm just starting to be approached with some regularity to referee journal submissions. So far, I've been asked to referee four papers; I accepted all four invitations, and rejected all four papers. In three cases, the papers struck me as quite bad -- I would have considered them substandard work for a mid-level graduate student. (The fourth appeared to me to be merely seriously mistaken.)
I'm starting to wonder, now, whether I'm judging too harshly. Am I just not very good at recognizing philosophical merit? I know that four isn't a very big sample size, but I'm starting to wonder whether the problem is me. Or are most journal submissions really that bad?
I'd be interested to hear discussion from more experienced philosophers about any of the following questions:
Roughly what proportion of papers you referee are accepted, rejected, or returned for R&R?As a younger, less-established member of the profession, am I likely to receive disproportionately low quality work to referee? (Maybe editors send papers by better-established authors to better-trusted reviewers?)
Is there any good way to calibrate my reviewing process? Any tips about how to make sure I'm treating papers fairly?
What standards do you use for judging papers? Might you recommend acceptance even if you thought there was a decisive objection to the central claim? Under what circumstances?
Do editors keep track of who the good reviewers are? How do they judge them?
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