Citation and reviewing conventions in philosophy and the sciences: some differences

Being one of the philosophers who have published in and reviewed for both philosophy and science journals, I thought I would say a bit about how I think citation and reviewing conventions differ in philosophy and the sciences and where I think philosophy and the sciences could learn from each other in this regard. I must warn the reader that this is based on my own personal experiences and that I am making a lot generalizations that may not be justified. Also, I will be speaking of reviewing as opposed to refereeing, as the term 'reviewing' is used across the disciplines, whereas 'refereeing' is not. Scientists think 'refereeing' refers to the actions of a judge of a soccer match.

Double- and Triple-Anonymous Reviewing

Let 'double-anonymous reviewing' refer to a reviewing process in which the reviewers do not know the identity of the author, and the author does not know the identity of the reviewers. In a double-anonymous reviewing process the editor knows the identity of both author and reviewers. Let 'triple-anonymous reviewing' refer to a reviewing process in which the reviewers do not know the identity of the author, the author does not know the identity of the reviewers and the editor does not know the identity of the author but does know the identity of the reviewers.  While not all top philosophy journals implement double- or triple-anonymous reviewing, it is fair to say that the majority do. Double-anonymous reviewing is standard. Triple-anonymous reviewing is also used but only in a couple of cases. Science journals, by contrast, do not generally use double- or triple-anonymous reviewing. The author does not know the identity of the reviewers but the reviewers nearly always know the identity of the author. On the face of it, this would seem to leave the process open to biases against minority groups and less experienced authors. I will touch on this question below.

Reviewer Selection
I believe that it is unheard of that a philosophy journal will ask the author for reviewer recommendations. This is very different in the sciences. Most science journals will ask for three reviewer suggestions and some allow the author to mention one reviewer that they would like to exclude. Of course, the editors can ignore those suggestions (and could even abuse the information about the excluded reviewer). However, from talking to editors of science journals it seems to me that editors often use the reviewers suggested by the author.

In my opinion, this is a terrible convention. It is bound to lead to a lot of articles being reviewed by the author's friends. It also makes it much easier for a senior person to publish a less than perfect paper than a junior person, as senior people are bound to have more favorable friends, or at least a better sense of who will be favorable and who won't be. It may also lead more junior people to question their own opinions when reviewing a senior person's paper.

Citation Practices

It is not uncommon for science journals to reject papers merely on the basis of poor citation practices. When a theory, hypothesis or methodology is mentioned, the author is expected to mention just about everyone who has defended or discussed that theory, hypothesis or methodology. There are exceptions. When a theory, hypothesis or methodology has become fairly widely accepted or has been extensively discussed, the author is no longer expected to mention a complete list of scientists who have considered it. That clearly would not be feasible. At this point it is expected that the author will cite the three to four people or research groups that first made the point in print.

In philosophy, poor citation practices are the rule rather than the exception. Philosophers fairly often cite their own or friends' work or the work of salient individuals, and many fail to cite the individuals who originally defended a certain view or methodology. Failing to cite anyone at all after making a substantial point is also something that is fairly common. What's worse, bad citation practices are rarely regarded as a flaw and would rarely lead to the rejection of a paper.

This convention is devastating to individual authors and to the field as a whole. It is clear how it can hurt individual authors. For example, younger, lesser known and minority philosophers may never get the credit they deserve. But it also hurts the profession as a whole. Because philosophy papers don't typically include sufficient citations, philosophy journals will have very low impact factors. Admittedly, philosophy journals might have low impact factors, even if we were to implement better citation practices but I have a feeling that the low impact numbers largely are due to philosophers' bad citation practices. Don't get me wrong. I am not under the impression that, say, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research would have the same impact factor as Nature or even Behavioral and Brain Sciences, if only we adopted better citation conventions. But this kind of journal could perhaps achieve an impact factor comparable to that of journals in specialty areas in the sciences (e.g., the journals Cognition and Cognitive Science).

Philosophers tend to say that they don't care about impact factors (just as they don't care much about H-10 indices, except when they are up for promotion). But perhaps they don't care about them because the impact factors of philosophy journals are so low that it almost makes no sense to measure them. There are some who will say that citation numbers are not the only way to determine the quality of a journal or a published article. I couldn't agree more. Citation numbers may not even be among the most important factors. But it is nonetheless a factor and one that may help philosophers who apply for grants and fellowships achieve their goals.

Publication Biases

I have been talking to a lot of scientists and editors of science journals about publication biases. Most of the folks I have talked to admit that publication decisions may be significantly distorted by the reviewing conventions discussed above. But in spite of the fact that science journals appear to engage in several bad reviewing practices, the people I've talked to don't think publication decisions are significantly distorted by gender or racial biases. Perhaps they are wrong about this. But it could also be that these biases don't affect publication decisions unless they already exist in the profession, and it is exceedingly clear by now that most areas of science have nothing like the minority biases that we find in philosophy.