How do you folks deal with random invitations to #review for #journals you never heard of?
I usually just delete the email and not engage as usually these are random topics I have zero expertise in... today, however, I received a paper about something (kind of) related to some work I've done in the past. Reading the abstract I can already see very major issues with it so... should I put time and effort to prevent obviously bad work to be published? Or is this a battle not worth fighting?
@elduvelle well, it's unknown to me, as it's a small journal focussing on something I generally don't look at. However looking at the website it seems legit.
I've had emails in the past from really random, probably predatory journals asking for review, though (say an engineering journal asking for a review given my expertise in building cars or something :/ )
@nicolaromano tl;dr I delete them.
Longer answer: I came up with some criteria a while back to help me to decide what peer reviews I will agree to do. I found this reduces the overhead on the task. I know that I do more than my fair share, so this also reduces any guilt I might feel about turning stuff down.
@nicolaromano If the journal looks legitimate and the request is "appropriate" (ie they didn't pick me randomly), I'll respond (either agree or decline.) Otherwise, it goes into the spam bin.
I want to avoid getting on to even more random junk mail lists, hence being reluctant to engage.
@nicolaromano if the abstract is really horrible already I will just send back a quick review based on those problems and say that I’d be happy to review the paper if the problems are fixed first.
I’ve never really had the “completely unknown journal” issue though 🤷 but I would google it or ask about it on here to see if it’s a real thing