Peer-review my ass

Warning: Contains rants.

One of the fundamental goals, or rather THE fundamental goal, for an academic is to get published on peer-reviewed journals. "Publish or perish", they call it.

"Peer-reviewed" basically means that, in order to get published, your paper gets reviewed by 'peers', i.e. other academics who work in your same field and who, therefore, are deemed competent judges of the quality of your work. It is a quite controversial system (read this), to say the least, but it seems to be the only one that can guarantee "academic quality", i.e. that only valuable stuff gets published.



But the peer-review system is not what it seems. It is  a way to allow crazy gatekeepers to keep others out of their league simply because they are criticising them. So, it doesn't matter how much you work, how many rules you set, how many tricks to increase your productivity (pomodoro technique, power naps, butt-in-chair, 750 words) you implement: you will send your paper to a journal, and it will be reviewed by a "peer" who, since you criticise his work, will not accept it. And he will reject it with spite, and despite of the fact that you have actually presented a good criticism.

In the past 6 months, my paper has been rejected twice by "peers" who, in their comments, have basically said "I am not persuaded". But I do not have to persuade you, dear peer: your job is to read my paper, and critically assess it, giving some feedback. You have to show where it fails - and failure to persuade you is not a failure. I do not wake up every morning, and sit at my kneeling chair, like a penitent, trying to put together 10,000 words of soulless writing (because that's academic writing, ladies and gentlemen: if you show human feelings, you're dead) in order to persuade you. I do not care about persuading you, because it is not about persuading you MF, it's about offering a valuable contribution to an academic debate.

I know, I can hear you say "How could something be a valuable contribution if it criticises ME!?"

Fine, go back in your coffin now, you vampire.