Peer Review Week 2016 #PeerRvWk16

So apparently it's Peer Review Week 2016, at least on Twitter. I thought I'd take the time to sketch out a few thoughts on the topic.

From my perspective, as someone who has contacted, discussed, and, mainly, negotiated with peer reviewers, they hold a special place in theAdmin's heart. 

To put it bluntly, peer reviewing is what makes the academic world go round. Is it perfect? Of course not. But the reviewers who ensure integrity in what is published, thus helping to create the body of scholarship required for any academic community, are more than just cogs in the great machine of publishing. How should peer reviewers be recognised? This is one of the main questions that pops up when discussing reviewing. For a double blind system to work, recognition is inherently difficult. Open peer review is a different story, but there are inherently difficult issues with both forms. Recognition-wise, is being included in a list at the end of a volume good enough? Is it enough to receive an automated email (however sincere) thanking you for your time and inviting you to submit your own work? 

The answers are, usually, no. Peer reviewers are some of my favourite people. Usually charitable, enthusiastic, innovative, and encouraging scholars who wish for nothing more than to help better their field by helping to create better scholarship. There are of course exceptions, but 9.9/10 who agree, do so with the best interest of the author and the field at heart. I've received countless confidential notes with reviews stating that if this is an ECR instead of a SCR, then they would like to modify the language to be more encouraging....if someone is at the beginning of their scholarly career then there is a massive amount of potential and they'd like to help with development. 

But how do we, as members of academia, recognise this hard work and this development potential? We must, firstly, recognise that what I like to refer to as "Reviewer Fatigue" is a real issue. This is when a good, solid reviewer is asked to review so many times that they either (A) grow tired of it and move on to something else or, more commonly (B) simply cannot complete the number of review requests in the time they have allotted for reviews. Reviewer Fatigue emerges for several reasons, and keeping it at bay was one of my main goals. Editors can quite easily become exasperated with repeated denials to review for whatever reason and so can quite easily begin to rely on a reviewer who repeatedly provides excellent quality - and just as importantly - timely reviews in order to meet the strict copy deadlines. And I don't mean to say that Reviewer Fatigue is generated by editors. The solution is a complicated one - one way theEditor dealt with it was when someone became such an integral part of the journal's processes for this reason, the reviewer was invited to join the editorial board. So, in part, recognition was duly awarded within the constraints of what an academic editor can actually do (keep in mind that who owns the journal and its revenue and who edits/runs the journal are two entirely separate entities, which is a debate for another time).

But I digress. So, what was my main reason for wanting to jot down some thoughts this week? Purely and simply to say one thing: 

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO REVIEWS

Seriously, give yourself a round of applause.......giphy.com

-theAdmin

The Editorial Board

Firstly, apologies for the delay in posting. Since my last post, I've had a trans-continental move and adopted a new office assistant. She’s a border collie mix who has strong feelings about footnotes vs. endnotes and the Oxford comma.

But I digress.

A few months ago, we had the spring editorial board meeting for the journal I'm currently managing. I’m usually enthusiastic about these for one reason – there is always cake. But the more I think about it, the more I thought that it might be something worth explaining. What goes on behind those closed doors? What does a board of editors discuss? Do they talk about specific authors? So, as I usually do, I decided to blog about it.

Clearly a group of embryonic professors engaging in their
first official academic reaction to cake at a meeting. 

So what do we do in those meetings?

Here’s a typical agenda:

 A.) Welcome and Apologies

Yes, this is a ubiquitous part of any meeting. But for a national editorial board, it allows us to talk about the research interests of any new members, chat about any new developments with the expansion/contraction of the editorial board, and reacquaint ourselves with each other’s specialities, positions, and research centres. 

B.) Minutes from the last meeting

Another uniform item. Usually the bit where I realise I’ve forgotten to do something. Oops. Also a great way to see what’s developed since the last time we all met for cake. 

C.) Editor’s Report 

Paperwork from the Editor/Editorial Manager about the journal from an editing perspective.

D.) Publisher’s Report

Paperwork from the Publisher about the journal from a publishing and marketing perspective.

E.) Events, Seminars, Conferences, Award, etc. 

Pretty much just anything else project-wise the journal has going 

F.) Any other Business 

More ubiquitous meeting jargon. Though this can get interesting with a group of academics…I’ve seen everything from future meetings to interesting conferences and scholarship ideas to resignations happen in this part of the meeting.

So, basically, paperwork. It seems to be mostly papers.

Actual image of someone preparing for  an editorial board meeting giphy.com

We talk about submission trends and rejection rates. It’s basically a forum for the Main/Executive/Head editor to report to the wider editorial board what’s happening. How is the journal fairing? What does the backlog look like? Where does the journal need to focus its attention? What sort of papers is it receiving? How is the reviewing process going? 

Exactly what answering that random statistic question feels like

This includes looking at statistics of where the authors are from and who they are – is there a significant number of papers coming from a certain country? If so, why? We also try to find problems like a high number of submissions from a country but an extraordinarily high rejection rate for these papers – why are we getting such low quality submissions? What can we do to encourage higher quality papers from this audience? This is one reason why when you submit a paper, you have to provide so much information about your institution and country – the information gets separated from the paper and goes into our reporting. It’s also why you usually have to provide X number of keywords.

Side rant: Don’t get me started on keywords. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL ADMINISTRATORS AND EDITORS EVERYWHERE, follow the instructions on keywords. If it says pick from a list, PICK FROM THE LIST. If it says to type them in, type them in. And use as broad keywords as possible. Why? Well, we use them to match reviewers (the better and more uniform the keyword system, the faster we can find a broader pool of reviewers, which means the faster your paper goes through the system, which means the faster you get a decision and the quicker our turnaround time). We also use keywords to compile listings and reports about what topics are being submitted and what areas are being researched. It’s an important part of the system with which most people just get frustrated. With theEditor, I once trimmed down an inherited system that had thousands of keywords to 125. And then we were able to get the turnaround time down to 21 days. THAT. IS. FAST. (And I might be seriously proud of it).

Seeing your turnaround time work plotted on the publisher's line graph giphy.com

What else do we do at these meetings?

Some smaller, specialist journals rely heavily (or even solely) on their editorial board for reviewing. If that’s the case, then specifics are discussed about papers and whether they should be accepted. If that’s not the case, then the speed and quality of reviews usually comes up. Why? Because one of the single most visible parts of a journal’s reputation is the reviewing experience. [shameless plug alert] Check out this post – and this one! – on what journals face with reviewers. We suggest new reviewers if we have a need for an area, and new board members if we have a significant omission in research interests.

Money. We talk about money too. Not the publisher’s money (that’s another debate for another time), but the trends in royalties, which is a good way to see changes in subscriptions and circulation. Some journals are owned by the publisher, so this is less of a discussion point. Some are owned by societies or institutions, so this forms an important part of the editorial board’s role – allocation of funds to events, awards, scholarships, and other development endeavours. It’s usually a section that varies from paint-dryingly boring to hotly contentious.

Other than the Editor reporting to the editorial board, the meeting serves as a place for the Publisher to report their end of the process. The Production schedules, statistics, queries, and results all come out. We receive a Confidential Publishing Report every meeting with lots of fancy graphs and charts. It lets us know where the journal sits in context to other journals in the field. For example, we might have identified that our submission rates are down, but the Publisher’s Report tells us if it’s a cross-discipline dip or just us. It also compares subscription rates and downloads to our past as well as other journals in their catalogue. This can be really helpful in providing the context behind whether the journal needs to be more proactive in approaching authors or whether the rejection rate is about to jump because we simply don’t have room for all the papers on a given topic. Speaking of rejection rate, we usually breakdown the rejection reasons and have a whole section of statistics that separates papers rejected for non-research based reasons listed here, here, here, and here. It’s hard to evaluate the quality of the papers if we add in ones that get rejected for things like being totally the wrong subject area.

Journals usually also discuss their rankings and impact factor, if relevant to the discipline. These are statistics usually associated with citation rates rather than readership. I’ve always considered them 50% statistics and 50% magic, but they get discussed ad nauseum since every few years, academics and promotion committees seem to be obsessed with journal rankings.

And then we talk about development opportunities – conference attendance, scholarships, awards and prizes, and the like. This can be an interesting brainstorming session for new ideas on how to use these opportunities to develop the journal and reach a broader audience. Would having a graduate/postgraduate conference sponsored by the journal help to reach a new group of early career researchers? Or are we already getting plenty of ECR submissions? What can we do to encourage better papers from ECRs? Could we plan a workshop on the art of reviewing?

And that’s pretty much it. There’s always topics of interest or institutional politics to discuss, but these usually happen over coffee at the end. Some meetings are plain and simply a very boring waste of time. But some are really interesting, and some are highly political and highly contentious. It all depends on what’s going on with the journal, the academics and publishers involved, and the state of affairs in the academic world. But mostly, I go for the cake.

So, when you are invited to be on an editorial board for the first time, it’s safe to say that it probably won’t be exactly as you are expecting. Except for small journals, you rarely discuss individual papers, and it’s more about management. It can really be eye-opening and transform your perspective on academic publishing to see it so bluntly discussed from a management point of view. It can also help with your own submissions to hear a group of editors discussing why they reject papers and what, exactly, they are hoping to find in a submission, especially from ECRs.

Anyway, I hope this helped enlighten the area around editorial boards a bit. If you’re ever asked to join one, make sure you ask exactly what is expected of you because as with everything in journal publishing: each journal is different.

Take care

-theAdmin

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Further thoughts on Choosing the Right Journal

In my last post, I gave a list of things to consider when choosing a journal. After a few conversations, I've decided to expound on this a bit and add in some more thoughts. So this is just an extension of my previous post, really. It can be accessed here: Choosing the Right Journal.

1) Have a look at the articles that you use in your research – in which journals do they appear? How long ago were they published and is that journal still following the same aims & scope? Journal practices change over time, especially with an editor or publisher change. {“my” journal, for example, has changed drastically due to a change in editor}

 Aims & Scope are really, really important. I've mentioned these several times before in previous posts. They are usually only a paragraph or so long, so take the time to read through them. Editors don't write these for fun, and they can spark quite a heated debate at editorial board meetings. The Aims & Scope of a journal will tell you what the editors want to publish and who makes up their audience. You will normally find out how often the journal is published, whether they accept proposals for special issues, and what their review policy is. 

As well as the published Aims & Scope, you should look at the most recent volumes of the journal to see what sort of articles and papers are being published by the current editorial team. Looking at what was published in the early 2000s is often no longer an indication of what is going on with the editorial direction or even the publishing house. Journals can change publisher, which can change several aspects of the way the journal is administered.

2) Really think about your audience. Who is your target? Theorists, practitioners, researchers, policy makers..? Who reads this journal and why?

I go into a bit more detail here about this. Your best chance of getting published is to target a specific journal. This means ensuring your paper is targeted to the journal's specific readership, or submitting to a journal that targets the audience for whom you are writing. You can normally find this information in the Aims & Scope.

3) Who is the editor? Also take a look through the editorial board – are they relevant and active?

You might be surprised how many people neglect to glance at the editor and the editorial board. How relevant are the journal's advisors to the subject area and your field? Some editors have been editing the same journal for eons. Whilst in some cases, this works out well, in other cases, a journal will lose relevance if it doesn't keep up with trends in the field. So just do a bit of research. All this information should be available on a journal's website and in the print copies. 

My personal bit of advice is to look and see if the editor is research active. This has to do with knowledge transfer as research is quite an intangible thing - how can you recognize valuable research if you don't know what research is and endeavor to keep your research methods and practices relevant? 

4) Ask your supervisors, mentors, and peers for their opinions and advice. Supervisors are especially helpful in this area, as are academic mentors for those past the PhD stage.

Somewhat self-explanatory. Supervisors and mentors are meant to have more experience than you. Use it. Mentors are an extremely important resource for early career researchers. Don't have one currently? Find one. I have several who I've picked up along the way.  Not all of them are in my field, but they are equally knowledgeable and have encouraged (and challenged) me in different ways.

What it's like when you find the right mentor (Despicable Me/giphy.com)

5) Look for calls for papers – this will often be around special issues and special topics, so it’s worth keeping an eye out and signing up for announcement emails from publishers.

Calls for papers go out every now and then, usually through publishers and on journal's websites. Conferences are an equally important resource for finding these. If you think your paper might be relevant for a special issue, then submit it!  It might not get in, but you'll have a good chance of getting some very good and specialized feedback from the reviewers.

6) Is the journal international or just regional? Is this important?

There is a misconception that it's "easier" to get accepted in a regional journal. This is not always true. Both international and regional journals, such as The International Historical Review vs. The Small Country Journal of History, will require going through the same processes. It can be the difference between a general and specialist journal, or it can be a matter of volume.

7) Is it peer-reviewed? How long will this take?

Peer review is always going to be a bit of a hot topic. It varies by discipline what the favoured method is at any given point. It's in your best interest to make sure that a journal does undertake peer review though. Again, this should be mentioned in the Aims & Scope. How long will it take? This also varies depending on the number of submissions and the time of year. I've previously done two posts on peer review here and here. You can always ask the administrative contact, but you should expect a few months at least.

8) Who publishes the journal? 

Publisher's policies and practices vary. So do their software and interfaces. It's always good to know who publishes the journal you're submitting to so that you know what to expect after publication regarding marketing, copyright, and embargoes. Also, it'll be much easier to find the open access policies if you know which publisher.

9) What are the Open Access and repository policies? This is why it's important to know who actually publishes the journal.  How does this affect your options (grant requirements, etc.) ?


Open Access is a minefield. I'm putting together a post on some common questions about Open Access that I hope will be of help. You should be aware of the policies for any journal you are considering, especially if you are funded and your funder requires that you publish in an open access journal. Many journals are currently offering a hybrid policy, which is traditional publishing methods unless you opt for open access and pay the fee. Others are purely open access, and some offer no open access. Don't leave it until your paper is accepted and about to be published to find out that you have to pay for open access that is required. Most publishers have their policies posted on their websites and have contact details for queries. To be blunt, it's usually considered the fault of the author not to ask about access until the very last stage.  I get very, very annoyed when published authors badger me for weeks or months about when they can publish in a repository or when they can publish on their own websites when the policy is clearly articulated.

10) Is the journal ranked? Is this important to you? How does your discipline rank journals?


Each year, there are rankings released for journals. These are done by discipline and show where they sit amongst comparable journals and concern citations. Does this matter to you? Some "top" journals are lower ranked than expected because impact factors are an imperfect measurement. Specialist journals tend to have higher rankings. It's important to find out how your discipline ranks journals and then decide if this is important. 

11) Is it available online and/or print? How important is each of these? Some publishing markets still heavily rely on print journals.


Yes, there are specific markets that still heavily rely on print copies of journals over electronic copies. Most will be electronic these days, but some journals don't have the resources to host an archive. Alternatively, some journals are solely online as they don't have the resources to print and distribute hardcopy. Online publishing is becoming the norm and electronic versions of practically all journals are becoming common. Just be aware of how accessible your article is. It will affect the ways in which you can disseminate your research.

12) Impact Factor – does this make a difference?


Another problematic factor. Importantly, not all disciplines use impact factors, which are released every June and compare citations from the preceding two years against the number of total papers published in a journal. That being said, there are clear pro- and anti- Impact Factor camps out there. If you are in a discipline that uses IF, then you need to research and decide if this is important to you and your career. But keep in mind that IF are just statistical comparisons, which can actually be manipulated by the way journals place highly citable papers. 


I'll post something original next time. Promise.

-theAdmin

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Reasons for Rejection (Part III)

Finally, some more reasons for rejection! Again, these have very little to do with the academic content of your paper. In fact reasons 4, 3, and 2 have one thing in common: following the guidelines. I'll do a separate post on the number one reason for rejection because it's a standalone post. 

So, what do I think are three of the top reasons that papers are rejected? It's pretty simple: you haven't followed our guidelines. Every journal posts "Instructions for Authors" of some sort. Follow them. Exactly. We don't write these guidelines for fun. In fact, they are quite carefully constructed and have reasons behind every seemingly bizarre thing we ask. (For example, sometimes we ask that tables be uploaded as separate documents to the main text. Why? Because the system we use imports them differently, and it's much easier for editing and typesetting). 

So, carrying on from Parts I and II, here are three more of the most common reasons for rejection:

4. DOES NOT FOLLOW GUIDELINES: Language Requirements

This specifically refers to grammar, style, punctuation, and academic language. Specifically, I'm referring to academic English, but journals in other languages will require the academic version of that language. Yes, this can be a disadvantage if English is not your first language, but more importantly, not everyone who speaks English has a command of grammar and academic English. Do not assume that you are an expert simply because it is your first language. Use a proofreader. This can be a colleague, a supervisor, or a professional proofreader. Importantly - please please please - make sure your proofreader knows how to proofread. Refer to my point about native speakers not automatically being experts.

For an idea of what is appropriate language, you should look at recent copies of the journal to which you wish to submit your paper. Does yours fit within its style? Is it formal enough language without being riddled with jargon? Some ECRs make the mistake of going too far with formal, academic English and submit papers that are nearly incomprehensible due to the amount of jargon. If you are unsure, have a colleague who is not in your specialty read through your paper. They should be able to follow even without specific subject knowledge (this may differ for science journals - if you are a science editor and wish to do a guest post, get in touch!). And stay away from contractions.

3. DOES NOT FOLLOW GUIDELINES: Word Length

Editors actually have some autonomy here, but stick to the word length as close as possible. Some journals won't even consider a paper that does not fit within their word limit (both the upper AND lower limits). Word lengths are important because they are used as a predictor of length. We have a specific page budget each year that we must meet. We can go a bit under (not advised), but we certainly can't go over. So by limiting the word count, we can predict the page length, keeping in mind that the pages of a Word document do not necessarily correlate to the pages in a journal. Aside from the actual length of papers, it lets us predict how many papers we will be able to publish per issue and per volume, as well as predict the size of our backlog.

It also keeps papers relatively uniform and encourages papers of the right kind. For example, in my discipline, there is a journal specifically dedicated to longer than average papers. If we get a paper that the author insists cannot be condensed (usually not true, but there are some studies where this applies), we recommend The Journal of Longer Papers. The lower limit of a word count helps to weed out things like book reviews, short pieces, opinion pieces, and papers that are not yet fully formed.

I frequently reject papers from my journal for not being within our limits, which is annoying because it's easy to avoid.

2. DOES NOT FOLLOW GUIDELINES: Not Blinded

This ranks as one of my top pet peeves of submitted papers. Make sure you read the policy of peer review. Usually, you will need to remove any identifying information from your paper. This means do not include a title page unless there is a way to upload one separately. Do not include your acknowledgements in the main text (either add these to a revision or the unblinded version you are asked to submit - if in doubt, ask the administrator or the editor). Do not include self-cites, especially if they give you away. It's perfectly acceptable to cite yourself as (Author, 2005), for example. Do not include contact details on the submission. Do not include your institution. If you have a study that you conducted at your institution, anonymise it in the text and edit it at the proofs stage (tip: don't forget what you've anonymised. Keep a non-anonymised version. We require you to submit this as a separate file so that our proofreaders and copy-editors can compare the two).

All of your details will be attached as metadata for the correct people to see when you submit through an online portal. Not all journals operate double blind review, but I'm a fervent believer in it. In fact, I just read a great post on it in the sciences: http://www.nature.com/news/journals-weigh-up-double-blind-peer-review-1.15564.

Follow the guidelines on blinding/anonymisation. Papers are rejected pretty quickly for this in order for you to rectify and resubmit. I've had a few emails over the years that obviously haven't followed my advice on contacting a journal and have been very patronising and rude, saying I should just anonymise their papers for them because it's such a small thing.It is indeed a small thing for the author (who doesn't have dozens of active papers at a single time).

That's all for now - next will be my post on the main reason for rejection: Choosing the wrong journal. And shortly thereafter, I'll have my first guest post.

Questions, comments, and suggestions always welcome. Email,Tweet to @ECRPublishing , or comment below.

-theAdmin

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What To Do When You Are Rejected

(a break from my Reasons for Rejection series, which I'll get around to finishing soon, promise)

Notice I didn’t say “if” you are rejected? It’s just part of academic life, especially at the early  career stage. Yes, there are the few academics out there who have never had anything rejected, but expecting to be one of these academics is a pipe dream. I know that’s harsh, but the “publish or perish” environment means we get an awful lot of submissions despite our number of pages not increasing.

So, what should you do when you are rejected? In my experience, the following should prove useful. Have you found anything particularly useful in dealing with rejection? Let me know. For further reading, Pat Thomson (@ThomsonPat) has some great blog articles available here: https://patthomson.wordpress.com/category/rejection/.

1.) First and foremost – CALM DOWN.

Take a deep breath. It’s very easy to get upset when you receive that email. Let yourself be upset for a little bit, it’s OK. Better to get it out of your system.

Other ECRs are an important support group

 

2.) Accept that the comments and the decision are not personal.

This is not a personal commentary on you or your academic abilities.

3.) Read the comments. Re-read them. Read them again. And when you’re finished, go away for a bit and then read them again later. 

This should be you

Why? Because it’s easy to misconstrue the comments and suggestions. Reviewers, in general, are very constructive. Editors also want to help. Not all comments will be constructive, but it’s quite rare to get nothing helpful back, even on the rare occasion that it's done poorly and harshly.

 

4.) Make sure you understand the comments

WHAT are the reviewers and/or editors trying to tell you about your paper? Have you been rejected because your word count is over, or have you been rejected because you haven’t used a coherent structure?

WHY have they told you this? Usually a reviewer will give justification for modifications.

HOW do they suggest you rectify any issues with your paper?

5.) Remember that reviewer evaluations are honest evaluations.

They tend to be honest. Use them constructively. A reviewer isn’t getting paid to write all those comments about how you can improve your paper. The editor probably isn’t getting paid much (if anything), so if they invest time in your paper to make comments, do them the courtesy of respecting that it’s an honest evaluation. The anonymity of the double-blind system really helps with this. 

That moment when you realise that you agree with the reviewers

 

6.) Consider whether it’s in your best interest to rewrite your paper.

You don’t have to take all the suggestions on board. You are free to disagree with them. Once a decision is made on your paper, it is “released” (see my post on multiple submissions), and you are free to submit to another journal. It might fit better somewhere else. But make sure you’ve addressed any fundamental issues that have been identified, or those issues will affect future submissions.

7.) Last, but certainly not least, LEARN from the process.

Remember that just about all academics will be rejected at some point. It is not unusual, and journals prefer to have a high rejection rate. Learn from the process and from the reviewers’ and editors’ comments in order to better your chances in the future.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Comment below, or keep the emails and tweets coming.

-theAdmin

Reasons for Rejection (Part II)

Apologies for the delay in posting - and for the relative brevity in this post - it's been a busy few weeks. I've had some interesting discussions from my last post; it's been great to hear from other editors and administrators with regard to what they find to be the most common reasons for rejection.

That being said, I'd just like to reiterate that these are simply from my experience and viewpoint, as well as discussions with our publisher from a previous event.

So, without further ado, some more things to think about:

7. Your paper has a very poor theoretical framework, including references to relevant literature.

There’s a thing that most referees and reviewers do when they pick up a new article or book – they flip straight to the bibliography and see what the sources are. If any of the major works are missing, there are audible grumbles. It’s like trying to explain the Mr Men and omitting Mr Happy. It just doesn’t help you.

Your paper should, ideally, place itself within the framework of the literature pretty quickly. This is the so what, who cares? question that you need to be addressing. A journal article is much shorter than a dissertation, thesis, and monograph; therefore, you need to include the relevant literature and build the framework quickly. Don’t dither and leave it to page 8 or you will have lost not only the administrator, but also the editor and any potential referees. Papers where the reader has to do a lot of work are hard to get reviewed so suffer from the things I discuss in this post.

Reviewers will suggest important works that may have been omitted for whatever reason. The point is, pay attention to the pivotal relevant literature. Don’t add references just because, but make sure you are engaging with the existing field.

Publications are part of the ongoing scholarly discussion of academia. Like any discussion worth having, you can’t just say what you want to say in total isolation. It must link to what has already been said and what is likely to be said in the future.

6. You haven’t contextualised your paper and considered your audience.

Just to reiterate a mantra: each journal is different. This includes each journal having a different audience. Some journals are aimed at academics; some are aimed at practitioners. Some are even aimed at postgraduate students, and some are aimed at industry. Know which audience the journal you are submitting to addresses. This is the why are you telling me? part. Don’t submit a paper aimed at academic theorists to a practitioner-targeted journal unless you make an exceptionally well contextualised argument. Even then, the editor is likely to reject your paper and suggest you submit to an academic theory-based journal.

Editors have to look for papers that their readership will not only be interested in reading but also likely to engage with and cite in further papers. Your best chance of success is to be what the editor is looking for.

5. Your paper doesn’t add to the discussion or states the obvious at tedious length

A somewhat obvious biggie. By this, I simply mean you haven’t said anything new; you haven’t added your voice to the scholarly discussion. And yes, even literature reviews must add something new. Don’t submit the worst kind of “literature review” – one that is simply a glorified listing of relevant literature with no analysis. The analysis is the new, and essential, part.

Sometimes though, regardless of whether or not something new is stated, papers are tedious and do nothing but state the obvious. It’s very, very difficult to get a reviewer to look at an exceptionally long paper, especially if it can be summed up in a much shorter paper. To be honest, I’ve seen submissions where I’ve read a few pages and in the back of my mind all I can hear is “Round and round she goes, and where she stops nobody knows” (That’s a line from The Original Amateur Hour for you kiddies out there). 

And that's all for now, folks. I'll have to add the next post when I get a chance. Maybe the Spring/Easter break will afford some time. Maybe not. 

As always, questions/queries/comments/suggestions are always welcome either via Twitter, Email, or below.

-theAdmin 

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Why does Peer Review take so long? (Part II)

Continued from last week's post...

I’ve had some pretty good feedback from the last post, which leads me to want to continue it this week. The more I read other blogs and pieces on peer review, the more I realise that my interpretation of “taking a long time” and that of an author (especially one who is relatively new to publishing) are probably not the same thing. Why? Well, I’m increasingly convinced that there’s not much information out there about the nuts and bolts, as well as the nooks and crannies, of the reviewing process and the things that clog the gears. 

I would say, from my experience in the humanities and social sciences that you shouldn't start getting antsy until the 4-6 month point. And then rather than sending a demanding email, just send a polite email to the contact person (this should  be mentioned in the confirmation of submission email) and ask what the status is. Expect a vague answer. If it's taken this long, at least it means it's probably gone out for review - and that in itself is a victory.

So, again, here are some more reasons why it’s taking so long…

1.) Reviewers are Declining.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Reviewing is a voluntary exercise; the system relies on the good will of academics. That being said, there are times when we have the unfortunate circumstance of having multiple “declines” for a single paper. I’ve seen double digit invitations go out before someone agrees. Does this mean your paper is inherently bad? Probably not. It probably just means that it’s either a busy time of year for academia as a whole or a busy time for your subject. For example, if you are a researcher in linguistics and you submit a paper two weeks before the International Linguistics Conference, then we are likely to get multiple declines as the subject specialists are preparing for the conference. Another issue could be that your abstract and title do a poor job in explaining your paper. Reviewers tend to have to decide whether to review on only a few things:

1.)    The letter/email from the editor

2.)    The reputation of the journal

3.)    The title of the paper

4.)    The abstract of the paper

5.)    The expected turnaround time

You have control of only two of these items, so make them count. Make sure your abstract and title truly reflect the content of your paper and are written well. You need to sell your paper and its significance. We can’t rewrite your abstract to make it more attractive to reviewers; you need to make it concise and full of impact. (I see a post on abstracts and titles in the near future). 

2.)  A Reviewer has Backed Out.

This, for me, is one of the more frustrating things about managing the review process. A reviewer agrees and is given X amount of time (let’s say four weeks) to complete the review. In week 3 (or 4 or 5), the reviewer emails and says that due to workload or time commitments, s/he can no longer complete the review. This means that we have to start again trying to find another reviewer and give that person the same four weeks once s/he has accepted. 

3.) A Reviewer has Asked for an Extension

This one isn’t so frustrating for us. This means that the reviewer knows that the review won’t be completed in the four weeks we gave, but instead of leaving us hanging, s/he has contacted us and asked for an extension on the due date. We update the system. New due date is issued. We may have to do this again – remember in my last post when I mentioned it pays for us to be flexible? This is where that comes in. It’s preferable to know it’s coming, is in the reviewer’s mind, but will be a bit late than to have to start again.

4.) A Reviewer has Left Us Hanging

This is quite possibly the most frustrating reason. In this scenario, a reviewer has accepted, but we never hear from her/him again. This happens quite a bit in book reviewing (another post for another day), but it also happens in manuscript reviewing. If we follow up repeatedly but get no response, we’ll start looking for another reviewer. But then we’ve just wasted the four weeks that we don’t suspect anything is amiss, then the follow-up time, and then we’re back to square one finding a replacement. 

5.) Another Review is Needed

Sometimes, when reviews are returned, they do not agree.  It’s the editor’s job to analyse the two reviews and make the final decision; but it’s not unusual to have one reviewer recommend minor revisions and another recommend rejection.  Unless the paper happens to be in the editor’s specific research area, then it will most likely be sent for another review. Add four more weeks and the risk of all of the above.

 

6.) There’s Something about Your Paper that Needed Amending/Fixing 

Generally, papers come in, and they adhere to our requirements and guidelines (yet another future post and one of my biggest pet peeves). However, there are occasions when something comes in, and I’ve had to do a bit of amending. Whilst this is never to the paper itself, it could be to file formatting or removing identifying details. For example, if you have dutifully taken your name off and taken out your self-citations but left a footnote or an acknowledgement thanking your department and funder, these will need to be checked. Also, it may turn out that when a reviewer finally gets to your paper on week 3, he/she can't access the file for whatever reason. These are normally fixed pretty quickly, but it still adds time.

7.) There is a problem. 

This doesn’t happen very often. By a problem, I mean that a reviewer suspects plagiarism or another ethical issue with the paper and has queried it with the editor. The editor must then investigate, possibly speak to the publisher, and correspond with the reviewer. The author will most likely be told that the paper is under review throughout the duration of these conversations, as papers stay in “Under Review” until a decision is made. 

 

SIDENOTE: Here's a plea for anyone and everyone who peer reviews – want to be a better citizen of the peer reviewing world? Then please, please, please communicate with the administrator or editor.

There are more reasons, which I'll continue to add as future posts, but I'm a bit preoccupied today as a close friend had a baby girl yesterday (hurrah!) and I was able to find a Mr Noisy onesie for my nephew who will be born in April (hurrah!).

As always, Tweet to @ECRPublishing , email, or leave a comment with any questions or ideas for future posts. I've gotten some great ones so far!

-theAdmin

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