Posted: Jul 19, 2013 3:28 pm
neilgodfrey wrote:Can someone explain how peer-review for books normally works? It sounds as though Richard Carrier has chosen the people he wants to review is book, or have I misunderstood? With journal article peer review the normal process is that the author does not know who the reviewers are and the reviewers are not told the name of the author of the article they are reviewing.
Neil
In the scientific world we're normally asked to recommend some suggested reviewers for publication in journals. We can sometimes also say if there are people who we don't want to review our work. The final decision is up to the editor but the author usually gets some say (3 reviewers are common, so the editor may use 1-2 of the author's suggestions). After that though it is anonymous - the reviewers will not see the author's names and the the authors will usually not know who the reviewers are. Sometimes the authors are reasonably obvious to a reviewer.