I have been asked to peer-review a manuscript for journal X (field of psychology). I recognised the author name as someone I've reviewed a past paper for last year, in journal Y. The topic of his research is still of interest to me, and before accepting, I wanted to see how their now-published journal Y paper (which I recommended minor revisions for) looked like - and noticed they did not bother to acknowledge the reviewers. I realised I was put off by this: to my mind it is a question of common courtesy to thank your reviewers by at least including a note in the Acknowledgements. I can see that other papers by this author also lack this 'feature'.

I know we all do peer-review without expecting compensation or recognition - however I feel this is contingent on us not forgetting to somehow thank (if even superficially) each other for what is a rather ungrateful albeit necessary work. This is especially necessary when journals (such as Journal Y) do not openly disclose reviewers' names, nor have any schemes whereby reviewers can add their peer-review contributions to an ORCID-linkable profile etc.

To make up for this (as I perceive it) remaining glitch in the peer-review system, I am myself always careful to thank my own reviewers, either directly if they disclose who they are (as I did in my journal Y review), or at the very least in the Acknowledgements, where I try to make the statement less banal by mentioning a specific way in which the reviewers' comments have improved the manuscript.

Am I putting undue weight on this, or am I right to think that, if I'm going to devote an entire day (sometimes two days) to peer-reviewing an unknown colleague's paper, and since I anyway cannot say yes to all the requests I get, I might as well do it for authors who don't appear to take this effort for granted?

I have been asked to peer-review a manuscript for journal X (field of psychology). I recognised the author name as someone I've reviewed a past paper for last year, in journal Y. The topic of his research is still of interest to me, and before accepting, I wanted to see how their now-published journal Y paper (which I recommended minor revisions for, while correcting several mistakes) looked like - and noticed they did not bother to acknowledge the reviewers. I realised I was put off by this: to my mind it is a question of common courtesy to thank your reviewers by at least including a note in the Acknowledgements. I can see that other papers by this author also lack this 'feature'.

I know we all do peer-review without expecting compensation or recognition - however I feel this is contingent on us not forgetting to somehow thank (if even superficially) each other for what is a rather ungrateful albeit necessary work. This is especially necessary when journals (such as Journal Y) do not openly disclose reviewers' names, nor have any schemes whereby reviewers can add their peer-review contributions to an ORCID-linkable profile etc.

To make up for this (as I perceive it) remaining glitch in the peer-review system, I am myself always careful to thank my own reviewers, either directly if they disclose who they are (as I did in my journal Y review), or at the very least in the Acknowledgements, where I try to make the statement less banal by mentioning a specific way in which the reviewers' comments have improved the manuscript.

Am I putting undue weight on this, or am I right to think that, if I'm going to devote an entire day (sometimes two days) to peer-reviewing an unknown colleague's paper, and since I anyway cannot say yes to all the requests I get, I might as well do it for authors who don't appear to take this effort for granted?

I have been asked to peer-review a manuscript for journal X. I recognised the author name as someone I've reviewed a past paper for last year, in journal Y. The topic of his research is still of interest to me, and before accepting, I wanted to see how their now-published journal Y paper (which I recommended minor revisions for) looked like - and noticed they did not bother to acknowledge the reviewers. I realised I was put off by this: to my mind it is a question of common courtesy to thank your reviewers by at least including a note in the Acknowledgements. I can see that other papers by this author also lack this 'feature'.

I know we all do peer-review without expecting compensation or recognition - however I feel this is contingent on us not forgetting to somehow thank (if even superficially) each other for what is a rather ungrateful albeit necessary work. This is especially necessary when journals (such as Journal Y) do not openly disclose reviewers' names, nor have any schemes whereby reviewers can add their peer-review contributions to an ORCID-linkable profile etc.

To make up for this (as I perceive it) remaining glitch in the peer-review system, I am myself always careful to thank my own reviewers, either directly if they disclose who they are (as I did in my journal Y review), or at the very least in the Acknowledgements, where I try to make the statement less banal by mentioning a specific way in which the reviewers' comments have improved the manuscript.

Am I putting undue weight on this, or am I right to think that, if I'm going to devote an entire day (sometimes two days) to peer-reviewing an unknown colleague's paper, and since I anyway cannot say yes to all the requests I get, I might as well do it for authors who don't appear to take this effort for granted?

I have been asked to peer-review a manuscript for journal X (field of psychology). I recognised the author name as someone I've reviewed a past paper for last year, in journal Y. The topic of his research is still of interest to me, and before accepting, I wanted to see how their now-published journal Y paper (which I recommended minor revisions for) looked like - and noticed they did not bother to acknowledge the reviewers. I realised I was put off by this: to my mind it is a question of common courtesy to thank your reviewers by at least including a note in the Acknowledgements. I can see that other papers by this author also lack this 'feature'.

I know we all do peer-review without expecting compensation or recognition - however I feel this is contingent on us not forgetting to somehow thank (if even superficially) each other for what is a rather ungrateful albeit necessary work. This is especially necessary when journals (such as Journal Y) do not openly disclose reviewers' names, nor have any schemes whereby reviewers can add their peer-review contributions to an ORCID-linkable profile etc.

To make up for this (as I perceive it) remaining glitch in the peer-review system, I am myself always careful to thank my own reviewers, either directly if they disclose who they are (as I did in my journal Y review), or at the very least in the Acknowledgements, where I try to make the statement less banal by mentioning a specific way in which the reviewers' comments have improved the manuscript.

Am I putting undue weight on this, or am I right to think that, if I'm going to devote an entire day (sometimes two days) to peer-reviewing an unknown colleague's paper, and since I anyway cannot say yes to all the requests I get, I might as well do it for authors who don't appear to take this effort for granted?