From: landsbur@troi.cc.rochester.edu (Steven E. Landsburg)
Subject: Re:  Peer review
Date: 12 Aug 2000 17:23:04 GMT
Newsgroups: sci.math.research
Summary: [missing]

As with earlier posts in this thread, it's not entirely clear
whether this is appropriate for sci.math.research, and I leave
that judgment in the moderator's hands....

One issue that has arisen is that the refereeing process takes
a lot of time and energy.  Of course this problem is exacerbated
by the fact that once an article has been rejected, it tends to
get submitted elsewhere and refereed all over again.  

A new series of journals in economics has solved this problem 
in a novel and, it seems to me, quite sensible way:  Each
submitted paper is refereed for four journals simultaneously.  The
journals are of substantially different quality, and the referee
can recommend, say, publication in the third-best of the four 
journals.

For example, there are four "QR Journals of Theoretical Economics".
The QRJTE Gold is described as publishing papers that would be
suitable for Econometrica, the QRJTE Silver publishes papers that
would be suitable for the Journal of Economic Thoery, the QRJTE
Bronze publishes papers suitable for the International Economic
Review, and the QRJTE Standard publishes articles that would
be suitable in "an established field journal or respectable
general interest journal".  

Not only does this save the time of referees who are no longer
asked to review papers that have already been rejected three times;
it's also good for authors, who are spared the lengthy process
of multiple submissions.  

This seems to me to be a great idea and one that could easily be
emulated in mathematics and other fields.  The QR Journals homepage
is www.bepress.com.

Steven E. Landsburg
steven@landsburg.com

--