a voluntary contribution to the anonymity of journals

In response to Berit's post on whether journal refereeing is really anonymous, I offered a tentative suggestion that I'm here posting as a separate thread.

It began with Jonathan Birch posting the following: 

"One type of problem arises when a referee identifies a paper as being by an unknown author and (knowingly or unknowingly) counts that against it. A second type of problem arises when a referee identifies a paper as being by a big-name author and (knowingly or unknowingly) counts this in its favour. The second type of problem gets less attention than the first, but I imagine it must be at least as serious. Big-name authors often do post drafts on their websites. Even when they don't, they are more likely to have shared drafts with (or given talks in front of) a lot of potential referees. One might reply, 'Who cares if big-name authors get into journals more easily? Haven't they earned that privilege?' but I think we should care. Every time a big-name author gets published, someone else doesn't, and it's important that the decision is based on merit."

I replied with this:
"Jonathan's 16 is worth emphasizing. There is no way to prevent us from often knowing that a paper is buy a famous person. They will be commenting on previous positions they have defended and you will know those positions. (That the reference is taken out is pretty much irrelevant.) If anyone could review a paper by, say, John McDowell, and not know it is by John McDowell, they are incompetent. And, as Jonathan says, there are a fixed number of slots in journals, so this is a zero sum game.

I don't really know what to do about this. I'll toss out what may be a controversial possibility: I tend to think that this is a very good reason for people at some cut-off of fame - I have no idea how to draw the line - to stop publishing in peer-reviewed journals. The peer-review process is mainly valuable for assessing people pre-tenure. (I am far less star-struck with the system than most who post here, but that's another matter.) Once one is, say, John McDowell, one's status in the profession is set. Everyone has a view, and no one is going to change that on the basis of the fact that something got published after peer review. No one who wants to read the latest paper by John is going to decide not to bother because it is in a collection rather than Phil Studies. And no one who has decided not to read John's latest is going to change their mind because two Phil Studies referees said it was publishable. So folks at the lofty heights, and perhaps everyone who is tenured, or somewhere in between, seem to me to have a good reason to publish in other venues, leaving the review system for others."

Bruce Gabrana endorsed the idea and suggested the separate post, as this is likely to be controversial.

Mark Van Roojen offered this worry:

"FWIW, in response to Mark Lance's idea that well known authors no longer submit to refereed journals I think of David Lewis, who relatively rarely did anything besides submit papers to journals. (At least that is what it looked like to me based on where his papers wound up.) I never got a chance to ask him about it, but my sense was it was his policy not to let himself write without the feedback and challenge one gets by getting published in refereed journals. It is one of the many things about him I admire.

I also think that such papers in relatively accessible venues make important work more accessible and journals themselves more worth reading. I'm not sure I'd want to give that up."

And I replied:

"You would be unlikely to to me on admiration for David, but if that was his thought, I suspect he was just wrong. He talked about all his ideas with all the top people in the field. Most papers had been presented at multiple top departments before publication. Others had been hashed out with Kripke and the like. I just can't find any credibility in the suggestion that he got more substantive feedback and challenge from the typical journal refereeing process. Now it is certainly possible for famous people to get lazy and publish re-hashed crap. (One thing I do think is so admirable in David is that he did not.) But does the journal process help? I doubt it. I just typed a rather famous example of a philosopher who published tons of articles late in his career in refereed journals that had not a hint of a new idea in them, but let's leave it anonymous so as to avoid a digression. I bet everyone can add their own example."

Discuss - if you want.