It is a common practice for authors of an academic work to thank the anonymous reviewers at the journal that is publishing it. Allegedly, scholars thank the reviewers because their comments improved the paper and thanking them is a proper way to show gratitude to them. Yet often, a paper that is eventually accepted by one journal is first rejected by other journals, and even though those journals' reviewers also supply comments that improve the quality of the work, those reviewers are not customarily thanked. We contacted prominent scholars in bioethics and philosophy of medicine and asked whether thanking such reviewers would be a welcome trend. Having received responses from 107 scholars, we discuss the suggested proposal in light of both philosophical argument and the results of this survey. We argue that when an author's work is published, the author should thank the reviewers whose comments improved the paper regardless of whether those reviewers' journals rejected or accepted the work. That is because scholars should show gratitude to those who deserve it, and those whose comments improved the paper deserve gratitude. We also consider objections against this practice raised by scholars and show why they are not entirely persuasive.

中文翻译：

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已发表的学术文章中的致谢是否应该包括对为拒绝这些文章的期刊进行审稿的审稿人的感谢？

学术著作的作者通常会感谢出版它的期刊的匿名审稿人。据称，学者感谢审稿人是因为他们的意见改进了论文，感谢他们是对他们表示感谢的适当方式。然而，通常情况下，一篇最终被一个期刊接受的论文首先被其他期刊拒绝，即使这些期刊的审稿人也提供了提高工作质量的意见，但通常不会感谢这些审稿人。我们联系了生物伦理学和医学哲学领域的著名学者，并询问感谢这些审稿人是否是一个受欢迎的趋势。在收到 107 位学者的回复后，我们根据哲学论证和本次调查的结果讨论了建议的提案。我们认为，当作者' 论文发表后，无论审稿人的期刊是拒绝还是接受，作者都应该感谢对论文提出改进意见的审稿人。那是因为学者应该向那些值得感谢的人表示感谢，而那些对论文提出改进意见的人也值得感谢。我们还考虑了学者对这种做法提出的反对意见，并说明了为什么他们不完全具有说服力。