Reviewers.

I have been a weirdo from the very beginning. I often enjoyed things that most people find annoying, while dodging activities most people find pleasant. As a child, I enjoyed doing my homework the most.

At the same time, I disliked summer vacations because I felt isolated and unnecessary without duties or tasks to fulfill. Sunny weather was the worst. It meant sitting in the garden with toys, instead of staying home to read.

And that was a nightmare to me.

Nothing changed since then: I still enjoy annoying stimuli the most. For instance, research projects involve many stages: planning, assembling a team, doing the actual research, submission, review, production and promotion.

Of all of them, I actually enjoy the review process the most. There are at least three separate reasons for this.

Why Does the Review Process Bring People Together?

The first reason is that in the review process, the team flocks together to battle the reviewers’ comments. In this ‘war mode,’ even people who are usually cold to each other grow eager to help. They support and defend one another’s point of view.

The herd instinct is a very human thing. Nothing bonds people better than fighting side by side on the same battlefield. This is also a good way to end a project on a good note.

Even if something goes wrong on a personal level, a shared battle brings back a good vibe by the end. According to Bastian, Jetten and Ferris (2014), sharing a painful experience with others measurably increases trust and cooperation. It acts as a kind of social glue between them.

Why Does Getting Reviewed Feel Like a Treat?

The second reason is that reading a review always feels like getting a treat. Someone is working on my paper, and the feeling reminds me of visiting a dentist or a hairdresser. Except, this person does it in their free time, without ever meeting me in person, and free of charge.

Some reviewers can be overcritical or biased — that’s actually true. However, reviewers can also be very helpful. Sometimes, I regret that I cannot shake their hand and thank them in person.

They spend so much of their free time sweating over my paper, and nobody pays them or acknowledges their effort.

Why Is Peer Review Like a Game of Werewolf?

The third reason is that the review process forces you into ‘homegrown psychologist’ mode. You often have to guess what answer or attitude the reviewer expects from you. There are as many types of reviewers as there are types of people.

So there is no single winning algorithm for handling a peer review. According to Lee et al. (2013), peer review is vulnerable to several well-documented forms of bias.

What satisfies one reviewer might disgruntle another, and vice versa. According to Peters and Ceci (1982), researchers once quietly resubmitted already-published papers to the same journals under different names.

New reviewers rejected most of them — a classic demonstration of how inconsistent reviewer judgments can be. Among the social activities in my free time, I have always loved playing psychological games such as Werewolf or DiXiT.

In those games, you need to read other people’s intentions. The same is true in peer review. I enjoy reading reviewers’ comments and guessing which answer they would like most.

Also, I believe the review process gets too much bad press. Notably, according to Fanelli (2012), the real distortion lies elsewhere: negative results are quietly disappearing from journals.

My prediction: as globalisation and decentralization reshape social networks, peer review will shift toward a crowd-review model. In that model, reviewers’ comments and names will be public.

Peer review history will then count as much on a CV as supervising students or presenting at conferences. And you, do you like being reviewed?