Autores, pareceristas e editores: Tripé do processo de revisão de artigos científicos

When interacting with people who are not close to me, or who, although close to me, are not involved in the academic environment, I often hear the following question: “Don’t you work? You just teach, don’t you?” The years have taught me to respond carefully to this apparently confronting question (I say apparently because no one is obliged to know the details of another’s profession). My replies tend not to be pleasant experiences. Either making myself understood is difficult, or, the unpleasantness emerges from my interlocutor’s expression of annoyance in hearing that much of the time when I am not giving classes is spent with activities of little glamour and difficult mental abstraction.