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A comment on Ask HN: What are the best open-access journals for non-academics to submit to?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: What are the best open-access journals for non-ac... by p1esk on Wednesday April 03, 2019 @03:21PM (#19566370)
No it's not. Peer review is often done by people have have no clue about what you're doing. And even if they do, not many are motivated to make effort to provide a good review. Source: I received comments from 4 reviewers for my last paper, and not a single one provided any useful feedback (paper's accepted). Two of them simply copy-pasted sentences from the abstract and called it a day.
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Re:Ask HN: What are the best open-access journals for non-ac... by bumby on Friday April 05, 2019 @04:10PM (#19586531)
I've had a similar experience lately and it's frustrating. Literally 1 of 9 reviewers gave meaningful feedback. The rest either had no comment or such vague comments to be useless. Other published papers had comments that just regurgitated the abstract in an effort (I assume) to demonstrate they read the paper. I really wonder if many reviewers just "check the box" so they can say they review for X Journal
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Re:Ask HN: What are the best open-access journals for non-ac... by chrisseaton on Thursday April 04, 2019 @03:59AM (#19570150)
> Peer review is often done by people have have no clue about what you're doing.

That's not how I have ever seen peer review done by a reputable conference or journal. Why would they be reviewers if they didn't know the topic?

What do you think the word 'peer' means?

In my field the people I'd ask informally for comment are exactly the same people who would peer review my paper.

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Re:Ask HN: What are the best open-access journals for non-ac... by p1esk on Friday April 05, 2019 @01:58AM (#19580085)
The word “peer” means a random name from the references section in my paper, picked by the editors who themselves are very unlikely to be familiar with my area. Out of 50 references, I think only 5-10 are able to review my work.
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