To review or not review, that is the question.
I tweeted about a dilemma earlier this week. It's a familiar tale. In the last few months, I've reviewed 3 papers for the same journal. I am also a co-author of a paper that is under review at the same outlet. To be completely transparent, our paper has been reviewed as far as I can tell, but it has now spent more time on a desk than with reviewers. A colleague emailed politely asking if the paper would be sent out for review in Feb after it sat for a month with no activity. I emailed again asking for an update on our paper earlier this month. The journal office claims to forward emails on, but we receive zero response from any editor. What do you do? The problem with not reviewing is that I am not helping authors who deserve to have their paper reviewed in a timely fashion. On a side note, the very same journal also has a habit of giving reviewers a set number of days to complete a review and then cancelling the review before the due date. And then they wo...