In the past few years, increasing numbers of journals have adopted the policy of requesting a "quick opinion" from established mathematicians as a prerequisite to proceeding with a full referee process. What once was limited to journals such as the Annals of Mathematics or the Duke Mathematical Journal has now become common amongst dozens of middle as well as high-ranking journals. While this model avoids sending papers into refereeing processes in which there is little hope of ultimate acceptance, with outcomes only after 6 months, or 12 months, or even longer, this widespread adoption has become part of the problem in the journal publication business, not part of the cure.
I write in June of 2018, having dealt with no fewer than 65 requests for review this academic year, and having another 8 in my mailbox awaiting action. This represents a precipitous rise over the situation from only 2 or 3 years ago, and a situation that is wholly unmanageable. Why, you may ask, are we experiencing such growth? All too many journals now send out for 3 or more quick opinions where previously one serious referee report would have been used. This proliferation has led to lower and lower response rates, increasing the number of quick opinions that must be sought, exacerbating the problem further. Many of these requests are from editors who could easily have made the decision to not referee themselves, as would have been done in the past. How should we handle this development? Reduce our thinking and response time on quick opinions from 30-60 minutes to 5 minutes? This pushes us further and further into a scenario far too close to an "old boys club" and away from objectivity for me to be comfortable. I see little difference between this scenario and editors making off-the-cuff decisions. Certainly 65 (which might easily turn out by September to be 100) is unmanageable. For all of these reasons, I am making the decision henceforth to decline future "quick opinion" requests and instead focus on serious refereeing requests only. If you are an editor directed to this website, please understand the reasons for this decision. Also, please consider being brave and making that "quick decision" yourself. Let us hope that this, along with other crises in the journal publication business, find sensible solutions shortly. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------