Please disturb and play nice: Discussing politeness, prigs, and problems in peer-review processes

We want to focus on how we review and disturb each other in academic activities. How do we ensure a critical and productive experience for all involved and what underlying explicit and implicit mechanisms are active? In regular journal review processes, there is a difference between being an expert within a specific field or method as a researcher or clinician and being an expert in giving critical and productive feedback as a peer-reviewer (Haffar et al., 2019). Who has responsibility to ensure that disturbing reviews run ethically in such a small field as music therapy? There are obvious benefits in having blinded reviews but are we conscious about the less obvious disadvantages such as experiencing reviewers as having dictating immunity (Clements, 2020). Similarly, are we conscious about the obvious benefits of open peer-review and should we take the leap? What narratives are we creating and leaning into as authors and reviewers in relation to the review process? During the pandemic and increasing use of SoMe in general, it seems digital dialogues can de-humanize communication which call for an even greater explicit focus on ethical peer-review processes (Cheng et al., 2017). Within the field of music therapy, research on peer-review processes are sparse but as the small field has many areas of expertise, the need is perhaps even greater. The presentation will discuss all these aspects by including engaging examples of review processes described and analyzed from different perspectives with the aim to increase awareness about how we disturb each other in academic review processes.