I have handled more than 5000 papers while with the BJPS. Not all were sent out for review, but very many were, to a min. of two people. That’s a lot of referee reports, and I’ve carefully read every one of them. As a result, I have many opinions. Here are some. 1/?

A thing scientists tend to do that philosophers don’t (but should): Avoid mentioning the author.
(a) Quicker! (‘In Section 5, the author argues…’ vs ‘Section 5 argues…’)
(b) Simpler! (‘He/she argues …’ vs ‘It argues…’)

(c) Justified by the evidence! (‘The author is ignorant of…’ vs ‘The paper needed to engage with…’)
(d) Kinder! (Always kinder to write about the paper’s failings rather than the author’s, no matter how kindly you couch the latter.)

A stupid number of referees still assume the author is male and write their reports accordingly.

Broad generalization: On the whole, ECRs are the most diligent referees, but often the harshest too. I assume because they are more used to the shiny finished product rather than the messiness behind the scenes (and the early versions of even the best papers can be a mess).

OTOH, late career referees tend to be much gentler. (Not sure if it’s ‘I’ve seen such terrible, terrible things; this is nothing by comparison!’ or ‘I’m just happy people still care about this stuff. The kids are all right! Woo!’.)

An annotated pdf is not a good review. Before a review can help an author, it must help the editor make a decision, and a collection of comments in a pdf are not very helpful. (PDFs are usually rife with identifying metadata that the eds will have to faff around with, too.)

If at all possible, don’t send your review as a pdf. We regularly receive reports that contravene our rules---self-identification, assumptions about gender, tone---and we’re happy to fix these things ourselves rather than burden the refs. But this is hard to do with a pdf!

I’ve learned a ridiculous amount about philosophy, and about how to do philosophy well, just from reading the reports of generous, insightful referees. I really love this bit of my job.

Authors, thank your referees! Even if all they did was help you foolproof the paper, these are mistakes your readers aren’t going to make. And while you may never know who the ref is, they’ll know who you are once the paper is published. Do your really need (more) secret enemies?

If you send your rejected paper to another journal without taking on board referee comments, not only is there a chance the same referee will be invited to look at your paper (the pool of experts is small!), but the referee may let the editors know the score.

Again, do you really need (more) secret enemies?

Finally, a request: There’s lots of work out there on science journals as sites of knowledge production. If similar work exists for philosophy journals, please let me know! TYVM! /fin