Classical & Quantum Gravity: 2016 Reviewer Awards
Reviewer of the Year: Dr Bernard Kelly, University of Maryland, Baltimore County & NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, United States
Classical and Quantum Gravity complements Dr Bernard Kelly’s line of work—computational gravity. As such, he enjoys going into the nitty-gritty details of a paper he might otherwise have only looked at superficially. He also finds it rewarding to see a second draft come back significantly cleaner than the original.
The majority of papers Dr Kelly reviews contain a good amount of ‘honest physics work’, he says, but if the authors cannot be clear about what they did, and why they did it, then the manuscript will need significant revision. In his experience, papers written by committees tend to be unfocused, containing more inconsistencies in style and notation from section to section.
Dr Kelly encourages first-time reviewers to be confident in their grasp of the material. If there is an unsupported statement, then they should point it out and not assume that it is due to their lack of knowledge. Very often, the authors have left out vital steps/references or made a minor mathematical mistake. More rarely, it is a sign of a real problem with their data or analysis.
Peer review is time-intensive and Dr Kelly is pleased that reviewers are being recognized for their efforts. To speed up the process, he suggests that the journal or authors’ home institution conducts a ‘zeroth pass’ review to check for basic comprehensibility. Marking up a collaborative version of a paper online would also make it easier for time-strapped researchers.
Outstanding Reviewers:
- Professor Emanuele Berti, University of Mississippi, United States
- Dr Daniel Blaschke, Los Alamos National Laboratory, United States
- Dr Norbert Bodendorfer, LMU Munich, Germany
- Professor Yuri Bonder, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico
- Professor David Bruschi, University of York, UK
- Professor James Cline, McGill University, Canada
- Dr Michael Coughlin, Harvard University, United States
- Dr Lisa Glaser, Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands
- Dr David Kastor, University of Massachusetts, United States
- Professor David Matravers, University of Portsmouth, UK
- Dr Olivier Minazzoli, Nice University – Sophia Antipolis, France
- Dr Morteza Mohseni, Payame Noor University, Iran
- Dr Alejandro Satz, University of Maryland, United States
- Dr Hans-Jurgen Schmidt, Universitat Potsdam, Germany
- Dr David Sloan, University of Cambridge, UK
- Dr Daniele Steer, Universite Paris 7 – Denis Diderot, France
- Professor Paul Townsend, University of Cambridge, UK