Reviewers, Rag-pickes and Garbage Handlers are “Cleaning Agents”
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Dear Sir, Your editorial was thought provoking.[1] It does throw light on the difficulties of both type of jobs. In improving ones personality it is said to become a gold finder not a ragpicker in an individual. It means that one looks for good qualities in a person filtering out the bad. It is equally true for a ragpicker too. This anecdote is regarding what we look for and look at in an individual or in a situation. When we look for gold we may have to sort the garbage or tons of mud. This is similar to reviewers and editors about the jobs they do. But both are important for betterment of environment and the scientific literature. Reviewers are essential to clean up editorial desk clutter and ragpickers are essential to clean the roads and garbage of the town and city. Both jobs are not enjoyable unless the person has inner motivation or compulsion. City, where the turnover of rags is quite high, will become visibly dirty if ragpickers don’t pick up the rag for even for a day and add additional load to sanitary efforts of civic authorities. This obviously leads to delay in cleansing the city. But their task is of immense help in preventing public health issues. Interestingly these rag pickers, like reviewers are unpaid workers. They make their livelihood by selling rags. Garbage handlers’ situation is no different than rag pickers but their work place is filthier and intensity of difficulty is much higher in collecting the garbage and transporting it the to the garbage depots. Same is equally true for reviewers, whose incentive is only satisfaction in creating a good scientific repository of articles. But these academicians do render this service without any expectation or monetary consideration. However, this also can be a possible cause for lengthening peer review of an article as it will usually not be on high priority task in the “to do” list of reviewer. Incentives will always inspire. Recognition, appreciation, and good words are the attributes which every individual aspires for. So do the reviewers. Awards, monetary incentives, certificates, or some other form of recognition by the publishers will definitely hasten the process of decision making by the editors. Editors desk will be cleaner and manuscripts will be disposed with a decision in shorter period. This will speed up article processing time and enable the authors to submit their work to another journal quickly in case of non-acceptance. Data availability statement Not applicable. Author contribution Concept, content writing, proof check has been done by Manvikar PR. Financial support and sponsorship Nil. Conflicts of interest There are no conflicts of interest.
Author: Purushottam Rao Manvikar
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4408649385