Peer review of research is a key mechanism for quality control used in science. Unfortunately, some reviewers (or referees) perform their task in a hard and heartless way.

Back in 2002 I published a poem about this in a refereed journal article. I’m pretty pleased with this – you don’t see many poems in refereed journals. This week, somebody told me that my poem had been included (with praise such as, “a beautiful piece of work”) on a web page of econometric poetry. I then did a search and, apart from finding the original paper, I found it reproduced on three other pages (here, here, here), and referred to on several more. Isn’t the web marvelous?

In case you haven’t seen it, here it is.

I’m The Referee
David J. Pannell

You’ve posted in your paper
To a journal of repute
And you’re hoping that the referees
Won’t send you down the chute

You’d better not build up a sense of
False security
I’ve just received your manuscript and
I’m the referee

This power’s a revelation
I’m so glad it’s come to me
I can be a total bastard with
Complete impunity

I used to be a psychopath
But never more will be
I can deal with my frustrations now that
I’m a referee

The poem is therapeutic, as was the paper it was published in (Pannell, 2002), so if you’ve suffered at the hands of referees, you might want to read that too.

Further reading

Pannell, D.J. (2002). Prose, psychopaths and persistence: personal perspectives on publishing. Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics 50(2), 101–116. Here