Personal repercussions for those who actively ignore review requests?

Question

A colleague recently submitted an article to a reputable journal. The article went to 6 reviewers, one of which completed the review and the other 5 of which completely ignored the request. The ignored requests were not declined, they were ignored such that 3 weeks passed and the requests finally timed out in the system before new review requests were sent out by the editor.

To me, it seems unethical to ignore a request rather than to decline to review. Under a decline, the article can immediately go to new reviewers. Under an ignore, it must time out.

I realize that it is possible that all 5 ignores were passive ignores, where the ignoring person never even saw the request for whatever reason. However, let's assume that the requests were actively ignored. That is, each person saw the request and chose to ignore it.

This anecdote brings up the following hypothetical questions:

1. Putting aside the important fact that peer review is what keeps the scientific community running, are there any short term repercussions for those that ignore requests? For instance, if one of the reviewers who ignored my colleague's request were to submit an article today to the same journal and it were put on the same editor's desk, would there typically be any bias against it? Should there be?
2. If there are repercussions, will they depend on how well established the ignoring person is in their field?
3. What fraction of ignores are active ignores?

Answer 1

It seems this editor has a problem with their workflow of inviting reviewers, a very common problem:

• The editor is recruiting reviewers via "opt-out" when "opt-in" would be more appropriate.

If the reviewers were asked to indicate willingness to perform a review prior to actually doing the review, then the editor could detect "ignores" of both types and find willing reviewers much more quickly. Consequences for agreeing to perform a review and then not submitting a timely report would be appropriate.

But there is nothing unethical about ignoring a review request. The potential reviewer is under no obligation to take any action at the behest of the editor -- it is fully reasonable to treat unsolicited requests as spam. And it would be unethical for the editor to take any negative action against the unresponsive potential reviewer who has never accepted the task in the first place.

Of course, the story is different for reviewers who have agreed in advance to performing a certain number of reviews. But the workflow should still be based on positive acknowledgement that the materials for review are received. The only difference is the editor's action subsequent to not hearing back -- in case the reviewer has previously committed to accepting a certain number of review tasks per year, then the editor can try a different contact method instead of assigning a different reviewer.

The bottom line is that opt-out sucks.

Answer 2

I would presume that there is not much difference between active and passive ignore, it is probably a mix of both (e.g., the reviewer received the request but forgot to followup). For this reason, there are usually very few ramifications for such a lack of followup.

However, it is quite common that review systems maintain statistics regarding each reviewer (such as number of reviewing assignments accepted/declined/unanswered, as well as average review time). In such a situation, not answering requests will make it less likely that a reviewer will be asked to review in the future. Apart from this, I do not believe that there are any negative consequences. Furthermore, reviews and review requests are usually blind, such that only the editor of a paper knows which reviewer declined to answer a request.

Answer 3

Actually, there can be some detrimental effects for faculty who actively refuse to participate in peer review processes. For instance, the documentation for promotion and tenure at some universities requires you to list your reviewing activities. If you don't have any, that means your documentation will have an unexpected blank space in the "service" activities. This isn't normally enough to deny someone promotion or tenure, but it is enough to warrant comment from the typical review committee. ("The rest of us are doing this—why aren't you?")

Answer 4

For instance, if one of the reviewers who ignored my colleague's request were to submit an article today to the same journal and it were put on the same editor's desk, would there typically be any bias against it? Should there be?

The question asks about what should be done, so I'll argue from an ethical perspective what I think should be done, and how I try to handle things myself. The result is that yes, there should be bias, and it stems from the idea to give people back what they gave you.

As an editor, you can distinguish reviewers based on two dimensions: How timely they respond to requests and complete their reviews, and how much detail and constructive comments their review contains. Let's consider the situation when an author submits a paper to be sent for peer review, and the author has acted as peer reviewer before. If the author has a positive record as a peer reviewer, I think the editor will have the moral obligation to also find peer reviewers with similar qualities. So if the author usually responds timely to review requests and finishes reviews in time, the editor should invite reviewers who are expected to handle things timely. If the author usually gives detailed, constructive comments on a manuscript, the editor should make an effort to also get reviews with similarly detailed and/or constructive comments.

Note that this does not take any bias towards the scientific quality of the manuscript, and of course should not affect the decision for acceptance or rejection.