[Comment on “Anonymous reviews: Self‐serving, counterproductive, and unacceptable”] from R.E. Criss and A.M. Hofmeister

We share many of the experiences and most of the sentiments relayed by Myrl Beck in his 1 July contribution to the Eos Forum, as well as those of a similar nature expressed by Alexander McBirney in his March 2003 commentary in GSA Today. We are in fact delighted that senior scientists are speaking up about the unsatisfactory nature of anonymous reviews. However, we believe they understate the problems, partly because the situation is worsening with time. Moreover, the brunt of such problems is disproportionately felt not by emeritus professors but by young scientists, women, and minorities, and this is the crux of the issue.This year, we have, like Beck, received rejections based on comments by two anonymous reviewers and an anonymous associate editor. We have also received rejections from anonymous associate editors based on a single constructive review requesting minor revision, along with an anonymous hostile “review” that could have been written about any manuscript on any topic by any author. More common than these are rejections from identified associate editors based on one or two anonymous reviews, which more often than not err on most of the points made, and in two cases dispute work that resulted in Nobel Prizes. We have examples this year of each type where the senior authors are recent Ph.D.s, whose vulnerabilities underscore the reprehensible nature of this “process.”