Professionalizing Peer Review: Suggestions for a More Ethical and Pedagogical Review Process

Several major problems with peer review exist in the related humanities disciplines of rhetoric, communication, and composition studies: a preponderance of incompetent reviewers, a lack of constructive criticism and the maintenance of orthodoxy, relative ease in identifying blinded authors, editorial passivity, and long waits to receive reviews. We propose five solutions: training for reviewers and editors, reviewers signing their reviews, payment for reviewers, thirty-day review turnaround, and guidelines for reviewing promoted by collective action. Before such solutions could be implemented, however, the existing problems must be acknowledged.