Communications of the ACM
How to Tell Whether You're the Victim of a Bad Peer Review
Most peer review is productive, polite, and necessary. But sometimes one of the reviewers is just a teensy bit . . . horrible.
Kvetching about rotten peer reviews has spawned Twitter accounts and even academic studies about the harm these unprofessional criticisms cause to both science and scientists. Sometimes a reviewer's comment seems so misplaced that you have to wonder if it ended up attached to your manuscript by mistake. It's like one of those Amazon reviews for a wheelbarrow that reads, "I would never wash my hair with this again."
It's OK for reviewers to criticize your work, and it's certainly valid for them to tell you so. But sometimes you just know they're dancing with delight in their own head about how deliciously they cut down your paper. Big surprise, sometimes scientists can be self-obsessed jerks who are so pleased with their own snarky phrasing that they prioritize the sharpness of the zinger over the feelings of the zinged. They don't mean it. For them, this is socializing.
From Science
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