Finding referees

In the past week or so I have been managing the editorial processing of two new papers submitted to MRM. This experience brings home to me the difficulty of finding a good, available team of referees for academic papers in, perhaps, any branch of modern science. On one hand, difficulty comes from ever-narrowing specialization of the academic field. Reviewing, with critical eyes, a new report on a particular subject requires knowing the current status of the research field. For any given researcher, this becomes more and more difficult as new branches are rapidly introduced, while old branches remain, and the number of ways to combine different branches grow exponentially. A consequence is that many active researchers in the field know relatively narrowly, and a knowledgeable peer in the peer review process becomes harder to find. (Or, the only knowledgeable ones may come from the authors' inner circle, therefore being biased.)

My other problem with searching for referees is a practical one. The research community should change the way the authors are identified by their names. For Korean researchers, in particular, I have long thought that the first and the last names should be swapped in academic publications. It is simply ridiculous to ask Korean scholars to conform to the Western naming convention, which is to fully spell out the last name only, while abbreviating the first name by it initial(s). That is unfit as a global way to identify the authors. Any naming degeneracy-- now I see it first-hand-- leads to confusion in the referee selection process, and its natural consequence, sadly, is for the editorial board simply to avoid Korean researchers from the referee pool. As a numeric author ID is not likely to be liked by many, in the long run the journals should allow the authors to designate which name, first or last, should be used as a primary identifier on record.