Hello,
Recently, a colleague of mine pointed me to a MathSciNet review of one of my papers that is completely off the mark – it is not negative or anything like that, but it grossly misrepresents the contents of the paper (when describing the origins of the techniques and questions in the paper, for instance, as well as the "position" of the results within the current litterature and the meaning of the results themselves).
I'm not sure what I should do – actually, I probably won't do anything because the paper seems pretty inconsequential and the quality of the review most likely does not matter much. Still, the same thing could have happened with a paper I truly care about, and this led me to wondering what the proper behaviour is: should I contact the reviewer and ask him/her to retract his/her review (explaining why, of course)? Should I contact MathSciNet and let them know that I believe the review is incorrect? The first option raises some "diplomatic" problems, while the second one seems to me both to be abrupt and to waste several people's time… I think, if pressed to act, I would choose the first course of action, but I'd be grateful for any suggestions (e.g on how to say "you absolutely mangled that review!" without being rude..)
Final note: I'm asking this question anonymously because I don't have that many papers and it would be easy to identify the reviewer by looking at my MathSciNet profile, and I'm not out to embarass anyone.
Thanks for your help – if the question is inappropriate for this site then please close, of course!
Best Answer
It is in principle possible that reviews are revised/replaced (as I assume you know). However, as far as I know, this is mainly done to replace factual errors. From your description it seems to me that your situation might be at the borderline of factual errors and different interpretation.
You could also check http://www.ams.org/mresubs/guide-reviewers.html (in particular the point 'evaluative reviews' to see whether the review is in line with what is written there). Yet, since you say that the review is not negative, this seems less relevant to your situation.
Now, in case you decide to do anything, in your situation it seems definitely advisible to contact the reviewer directly. As it was not negative it might be a misunderstanding/an honest mistake, and the reviewer might be willing or in some sense even happy to correct the review if made aware of the problem.
I am a fairly frequent reviewer for MathSciNet. My greatest worry doing this is to write something wrong in a review, and by doing so, somehow make a fool out of myself. So, in case an author of a paper I reviewed should ever contact me in a friendly way and point out why my review is not to the point and I then understand that s/he is right, I certainly would try to get this corrected, and be grateful for being made aware of it.
By contrast, I know indirectly (a collegue of a collegue...you get the idea) that if the reviewer does not want to change the review it can be very difficult to get it changed (except there is a direct factual error). So, you need the reviewers consent anyway, and as André Henriques says, there is no way to hide that you were 'behind' the activity; or even if there was a way to do this anonymously, it should be the default assumption that the author of the paper is the one 'complaining'. This seems another reason for directly contacting the reviewer, as it seems rather more likely to get her/his consent by this course of action, then by one going an official way.
How to phrase the communication with the reviewer: a way could be to not directly or mainly critizise the review, but to just sent the reviewer your point of view. In other words, write somehow your own review and share it with the reviewer. Perhaps only pointing out key differences in passing.
In any case, if you do not care deeply I would at most contact the author of the review; perhaps this works out well, but if not rather drop the matter as further activity might be in vain, and not be worth the effort and negative side-effects.