All the Things I Never Expected as a Reviews Editor
When I first became reviews editor for Fafnir, there were a number of things I never anticipated. Late reviews, for one thing -- we give people three months for their review, but I still have to chase up over half of our volunteers, which is a colossal waste of my time, as well as simply being unprofessional. Also surprising are all the reviews -- a majority of them, in fact -- that require moderate to heavy revision. Maybe that shouldn't shock me, but it does. And then, of course, there was the case of the experienced Big Name academic who sent us a review both incompetent and unpublishable, and got huffy when politely asked for a re-write.**
The weirdest case, though, is what happened to me yesterday -- I was sent a review that clearly plagiarized a previously published review.
The catch? The review they were plagiarizing was my own.
Not even joking. The reviewer was smart enough to have written all the words themselves (typos included). But the ideas, specific analysis and evaluation, and even the structure of entire paragraphs were lifted directly from my own review.
Clearly, this is a case of a very youthful academic still lacking the self-confidence to put their own ideas out there. So, a teachable moment. Man oh man, though. Even with being nervous with one's first foray into academic discourse, how can any advanced doctoral student not know better?
And now they've written me back, denying that they "looked at any other reviews," which I respect less than if they had simply admitted the plagiarism. Still, they're promising to "immediately re-write" the review.
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** In fact, when I first read what this person submitted, I thought it was a revenge review -- you know, Academic X getting back at Academic Y for something that happened years ago. Now I'm more inclined to suspect the reviewer simply had a chip on their shoulder about the subject matter, which involved religion and science fiction.
The weirdest case, though, is what happened to me yesterday -- I was sent a review that clearly plagiarized a previously published review.
The catch? The review they were plagiarizing was my own.
Not even joking. The reviewer was smart enough to have written all the words themselves (typos included). But the ideas, specific analysis and evaluation, and even the structure of entire paragraphs were lifted directly from my own review.
Clearly, this is a case of a very youthful academic still lacking the self-confidence to put their own ideas out there. So, a teachable moment. Man oh man, though. Even with being nervous with one's first foray into academic discourse, how can any advanced doctoral student not know better?
And now they've written me back, denying that they "looked at any other reviews," which I respect less than if they had simply admitted the plagiarism. Still, they're promising to "immediately re-write" the review.
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** In fact, when I first read what this person submitted, I thought it was a revenge review -- you know, Academic X getting back at Academic Y for something that happened years ago. Now I'm more inclined to suspect the reviewer simply had a chip on their shoulder about the subject matter, which involved religion and science fiction.
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