Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Elsevier Editorial System

Last time I did a review for an Elsevier journal, I was prompted to set up an account on the Elsevier Editorial System, which aggregated all (or most) of earlier reviews I previously did for various Elsevier journals. From now on, it would seem that future reviews for Elsevier journals will get added to a bulging portfolio. While my general understanding is that the main reward for reviewing papers will occur in the afterlife,  there’s something rather satisfying about seeing this collection in one place. (And I never know there were so many Elsevier journals, he adds, naively...).

If there is indeed any value to having a centralised record of (anonymous) reviews, it might provide a new justification for journals to belong to large commercial publishers. On the other hand, review requests lack the personal touch that they used to have until about 10 years ago. And there’s presumably a risk of their database getting hacked, and reviews getting de-anonymised.

On another topic, here is a list of top 30 Computer Science blogs. I am not sure I deserve to be listed there, but anyway, some of the others look interesting, check them out. Here is a similar list that I was notified of at about the same time.

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