The Seven Faces of Anonymity in Academe

I am anonymous. I am ubiquitous. And, not incidentally, I am invisible, the color of country air, the color of mountain water running over rocks. But beware; my transparency is deceptive, as is my appearance of virtue, rectitude, impartiality. You may think you know me, but you don’t. I have many faces—that of the tenured professor, job candidate, competitor, the disembodied voice of institutional history, contingent labor, support personnel, students. I have no face at all. You can write onto this tabula rasa the visage of your best friend, your archrival, your nemesis, your mother. But all that you will see is my mortarboard, slanting forward to cover my eyes, shading my countenance so that all that is visible, the tip of my chin and the occasional flicker of a smile, the smile of equivocation.

Face #1: I am a gatekeeper. As a tenured professor, particularly a full professor, especially when designated by the alias of an endowed chair, I hold the keys to the kingdoms of publication and prestige. By virtue of my expertise—or so it is believed—in your field of inquiry, I judge your work early, and I judge it often. I review article submissions for refereed journals, book prospectuses and manuscripts submitted to university presses, grant proposals and other requests for funding. I am always fair, ever disinterested; my own research, reputation, funding will in no way be affected by your fate. The mantra of my rigor is “Prove it.” I am a demon on originality, knowledge of the field, research method, costs, elegance, and prose style. My commentary is very specific.

Perhaps one in a hundred manuscripts or proposals will electrify me, so fresh, so smart, so well written, so risky—hotshots and daredevils please apply. “Hats off,” I say—the only time I ever remove my chapeau, and that only in private. “Publish this, fund this! Immediately!” If I consider other work meritorious and therefore salvageable, I provide very specific information on what to do to revise and resubmit. If it’s ho-hum, a warmed-over course paper, or a desperate dissertation chapter, I will try to educate you. And you had better Listen Up; this commentary is For Your Own Good.

However, if you as an author nouveau have submitted your Voyage of Great Discovery (even one more sophisticated than “Wow! Shakespeare was a Great Author!”), unless you are a latter-day Darwin, you may expect me to consider your maiden sojourn just another worn path leading Once More to the Lake in which I swim every day. I do not extend a life preserver. I never sign my reviews. This is not a dialogue. I do not want to know your rebuttal, though I am willing to read a thoroughgoing, thoughtful revision. I do not want to know the impact of my review on your life, professional or personal, or on your feelings. I am providing a Service to the Profession, even if that means Keeping You Out.

I review manuscripts for all the major journals and presses in the field. If I reject your submission at the top, odds are that the editors down the line, around the world, will also send the same work to me. Although, in fairness to you, I seek to recuse myself from multiple negative evaluations of the same work, editors always ask why I am doing so, and I tell them. I can envision your paper, your proposal descending into the circles of reviewer hell, bumping up against the barrier of my review time after time after time. It is not a pretty sight, but that is a problem over which I have no control, for I’m the expert and you, alas, are not.

As an anonymous contributor, you are allegedly invisible to me, though on occasion I can discern your visage peeping through your prose. I believe I can tell your gender, and your sexual orientation, occasionally your class or ethnicity. I also believe that I am sufficiently unbiased so that this understanding—even if I am in error—will not influence my decision. However...