Asked to Referee a Paper a Second Time?

Sometimes there is a very clear referee for a paper. Maybe the author of the seminal paper on a (very particular, narrowly defined) topic. Maybe one of the few researchers who have used a certain data set extensively. Maybe something else. Anyway, when this happens, the same person will often be asked to referee the same paper multiple times. Actually, now that I think of it, I've even been asked to referee papers multiple times in cases with no overly obvious link to my research. What to do when you're asked to referee a paper a second time? I have always thought that there was a clear answer to this: Just tell the journal editor you have already refereed the paper for a different journal. In my experience, editors will still want to hear your thoughts on the paper, but maybe they will try to find additional referees as well. 

I never thought this was particularly controversial, but apparently it is! See this twitter thread for the controversy and this very thoughtful discussion of the issues written by Tatyana Deryugina.

The big take-aways: 

1. If an editor (knowingly) asks you to referee a paper a second time, then the first step is to check if the authors have changed the paper. Super convenient way to do this recommended by Tatyana: draftable.com.
2. If you are an author of a paper that was just rejected, please read the referee reports carefully and consider making any changes that will improve the paper--especially the low cost changes. At the very least, please fix typos! I spend a lot of time on referee reports. When I see that authors don't bother even fixing the typos, well, it feels..insulting. I try not to take this personally and just assume that the authors are in a time crunch, but this is probably not an ideal situation for anyone. I've also refereed papers that have changed quite dramatically (for the better!) after being a rejected at a different journal. Yes, this probably makes me look favorably at that particular submission, but perhaps even more importantly, the author gains my admiration in general. 

But speaking of peer review, have a look at what the wise folks at xkcd have come up with: