Shmuel Leshem was denied tenure at the University of Southern California Law School in 2013, which he has challenged in court on procedural grounds. According to Leshem, as reported in the press, “a law-school tenure reviewer improperly solicited Leshem’s confidential peer-review reports [from academic journals] on false pretenses and distributed them without his knowledge or consent."
If Leshem’s claims are correct, as they appear to be, that was a serious violation of confidentiality and academic integrity. Peer reviews are provided solely for the purpose of evaluating a manuscript for publication at a particular journal, and they are provided in confidence for a reason. A peer review will often identify flaws in a manuscript that can be corrected in a later draft, or it can point out that a manuscript, though publishable, is not suited for the journal in question.
I once recommended against publishing a book manuscript because the author had badly overstated the premise and the draft itself was so poorly organized and badly written as to be, in my opinion, unpublishable. I provided lots of details. On my recommendation, the press rejected the manuscript. To my surprise, the manuscript was later picked up by a different press, with an energetic editor, and rewritten completely. It received a favorable review in the New York Review of Books. My report was accurate when written, but it would have been completely misleading in a later tenure review.
Numerous law and economics professors have signed an open letter in support of Leshem, raising the inappropriateness of using peer review reports in the tenure process. The letter is open for additional signatures here. I have reproduced it in full after the jump.
We are writing as faculty members, legal scholars, journal editors and editorial board members to voice our concerns over the tenure review process of Professor Shmuel Leshem. Appointed as Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law in 2006, Professor Leshem was denied tenure at USC in 2013 following a highly disconcerting tenure review. Our concerns revolve around asserted irregularities in Leshem's tenure review process: improper solicitation, unconsented distribution and adverse use of referee reports and editor letters, particularly in lieu of the outside tenure review letters that had been requested in accordance with the standard tenure review procedures.
As part of the peer-review publication process, journal editors rely on anonymous referee reports to screen draft papers for acceptance, rejection or revision, and to provide authors with feedback for improving their draft paper for a revision or a subsequent submission. Peer-review reports are confidential and often contain critical comments irrespective of the referees' recommendation or the editorial decision. It is common and anticipated for authors to first submit their research to the very best journals only to publish in a lower-ranked journal after a few rounds of submission. During Leshem's first years of teaching, several of his papers were published in leading peer-reviewed journals.
As participants in and beneficiaries of the peer-review publication process, we would like to express unequivocal disapproval of any solicitation, unauthorized distribution and prejudicial use of peer-review reports for tenure review purposes. An unauthorized distribution or exposure of peer-review reports or their contents is not only an abuse of the reports (not contemplated by journal editors or referees) but also a violation of an author's rights to privacy and confidentiality. We strongly object to an unauthorized use of information or inferences obtained from peer-review documents for evaluating scholarship for tenure purposes, which is contrary to prevailing academic norms.
A substitution of peer-review reports and journal rejections for standard tenure review letters not only undermines the tenure review process but also hobbles the peer-review evaluation system. Reluctant to harm deserving promotion prospects, referees and editors would be disinclined to make critical comments on untenured authors' submitted papers. Untenured authors on their part might be hesitant to submit their draft papers to higher quality peer-reviewed journals where comments tend to be more critical but often more helpful. The substitution of peer-review information for standard tenure letters would consequently impair the peer-review process and compromise the overall quality of academic research.
Adherence to standards, procedures and rules and observance of basic norms of decency and civility throughout the tenure review process are vital for providing young scholars with the confidence to carry out innovative research. The success of the academic enterprise indeed depends on the integrity and honesty of the promotion processes. We are calling on the University of Southern California to investigate and rectify Leshem’s tenure-denial case and thereby shore up norms of academic integrity, privacy and fair process, thus safeguarding the promotion process and securing the peer-review system.
I was happy to sign this letter and encourage law school colleagues to do so as well. This event is a threat to the peer review process which is central to the integrity of academic work.
Posted by: Stephen Diamond | February 03, 2020 at 12:25 PM