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Peer review of papers and grant proposals is an important aspect of professional service—perhaps the most important one. Yet it sometimes gets to be too much, in obvious (unpaid extra work!) and less obvious ways.

I really hate to tear apart people’s work, even though I try to do so kindly and politely. A vast majority of papers, even rather crappy ones, represent a huge amount of labor, typically conducted and written up by junior researchers. I wish there were a commonly accepted way to let the authors know that you, as the reviewer, see and recognize the effort even though you have to deliver bad news (that the work isn’t publishable, sometimes in a particular prestigious journal but often even in principle). I try to do this, but worry about coming across as patronizing or, worse, touchy-feely. In my field, reviewers will commonly tear the authors a new a$$hole, leaving comments that are a hair’s breadth from calling the authors ignorant or stupid. Few deliver negative critique with any softeners, so maybe I should be used to the callousness. Maybe it shouldn’t bother me as much as it does. I always edit my reviews for tone, trying for at least matter-of-fact neutrality even when the paper is really bad and should be scrapped. I do sometimes wonder if there’s any point to my hand-wringing over being tactful when so many reviews are not… And what it would take for everyone to become just a little less unkind.

A related reason for why I’m sick and tired of reviewing is that writing up negative reviews takes an emotional toll. Reviewing is not an emotionally neutral activity for me. Having to highlight and summarize bad things about one paper after another ruins my mood and dampens my passion for my own work. Being steeped in negativity—even this perfectly justified negativity necessary for quality peer review—can bring down a reviewer who does it too much. When I catch myself being grouchy and bracing myself for disappointment before I even start reading a paper, it’s time for a reviewing break.

Manuscripts written by people I know tend to be solid and well-written. Sometimes they’re not flashy enough for a prestigious journal, but they’re generally decent. However, I’m occasionally put in an uncomfortable position, where a paper by colleagues I know and like is just plain bad. A recent such paper was not incorrect, just kind of pointless: no real motivation, no clear conclusion, obvious results, untimely. The type of work I might have my students do to test their code on, not something I would send to print. I did my peer reviewer duty as objectively as I could; if the paper had been written by anyone else, the authors would have received the same negative review from me. But despite being factual and tactful, and despite knowing that I hadn’t done anything wrong, I felt crappy, like I’d been disloyal and betrayed my colleagues.

How have your experiences with peer review been, blogosphere?