When Peer Review Turns Frustrated Authors Into Hilarious Editorialists

The last thing you would expect in a science journal is a hilarious letter, sent by a bunch of disgruntled authors, which caricaturizes peer review. But this is exactly what you'll find if you flip through the Journal of Systems and Software, volume 54, issue 1. (Full pdf here.)

The opening paragraph of the letter is gold and grips the reader. Start reading and you know the following paragraphs are going to be totally awesome:

Dear Sir, Madame, or Other:

Enclosed is our latest version of Ms. #1996-02-22-RRRRR, that is the re-re-re-revised revision of our paper. Choke on it. We have again rewritten the entire manuscript from start to finish. We even changed the g-d-running head! Hopefully, we have su€ffered enough now to satisfy even you and the bloodthirsty reviewers.

Clearly, the authors went through hell and back during peer review. And they're really hating the reviewers. Especially Reviewer C, who was probably very, shall we say, meticulous:

Still, from this batch of reviewers, C was clearly the most hostile, and we request that you not ask him to review this revision. Indeed, we have mailed letter bombs to four or five people we suspected of being reviewer C, so if you send the manuscript back to them, the review process could be unduly delayed.

The letter does end on a somewhat more classic-albeit mischievous-tone:

We hope you will be pleased with this revision and will finally recognize how urgently deserving of publication this work is. If not, then you are an unscrupulous, depraved monster with no shred of human decency. You ought to be in a cage. [...] If you do accept it, however,we wish to thank you for your patience and wisdom throughout this process, and to express our appreciation for your scholarly insights. To repay you, we would be happy to review some manuscripts for you; please send us the next manuscript that any of these reviewers submits to this journal.

The letter, conveniently anonymized clearly struck the right chords of the journal's editor. (Kudos to you sir!) In the editor's note preceding the actual letter, he "pays tribute to the persistent authors who make a journal like this [...] possible." He also dedicates the letter to all persistent authors, although he neglects dedicating it to all reviewers. Hmm...

Humor is an efficient magnet. Science, by its intrinsically beautiful premise, can awe people by itself. Couple it with humor though and it can go viral and reach (and educate) loads of people. This letter itself is a perfect example. It's doing the rounds online which is quite a feat considering that it's about peer review and that Journal of Systems and Software, volume 54, issue 1 was published TWELVE years ago!

There are a number of websites online which specialize in mixing science and humor: xkcd, Stripped Science, this Facebook page to name a few. All in all, more please!

(And I wouldn't mind seeing more journals publish more science humor.)

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Image credit: "Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham (www.phdcomics.com)