Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Wiley's Manuscript submission system

Am I the only one who hates the manuscript management systems used by the big publishers? I asked this once before, in a rant about the Elsevier system, but I received no response. Now I've had a similarly unpleasant experience with what I think is Wiley's system, although in this case I was simply trying to submit a peer-review of an article.

First I found through trial and error that I had to change not one but two of my browser settings just to get the site to work. Then I had to change my password because they revamped the website and my old password, which was difficult to find, wouldn't work. Then they tried to force me to create a profile. Then I closed my browser and gave up. That's just far too much crap to go through for the privilege of reviewing an article. I thought nothing could be worse than Elsevier's website, but  I may have been wrong.

This probably all sounds petulant and querulous, but how much hassle should I put up with for the privilege of doing free work for a huge multinational corporation?

Peer review is a form of unpaid community service upon which these journals rely, so I am frankly astonished that the highly paid executives running these companies would make it harder for scholars to perform it.

It's crazy enough that I donate my time so that these corporations can get richer. I'm not inclined to jump through a bunch of hoops to do it. I'm happy to contribute to the advancement of science if the journal is published by a scientific society, but doing it for commercial publishers is just getting silly.





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