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The DialogueQuestion:
Faculty members at four-year colleges and universities must publish in scholarly journals to retain their jobs. That is a fact of academic life, even at institutions where faculty teach four courses per semester. Untenured faculty, especially, need to get their scholarship into print as quickly as possible as they pursue tenure. Given that situation, editors of scholarly journals should strive to streamline the publication process. That means allowing, even encouraging, multiple submissions. Most journals require several months to review a submission; then several more months pass before that submission appears in print if the article is accepted. Say an untenured assistant professor of English drafts an article on Henry David Thoreau. She submits the article to Nineteenth-Century Literature, which, according to the MLA Directory of Periodicals, reports on submissions in three months. The article is rejected (not surprising, because that journal publishes only 16 to 20 of the 300 articles submitted each year). The author then submits the article to Nineteenth-Century Prose, which reports on submission in six months. After another rejection, our determined assistant professor tries Nineteenth-Century Studies. In three months, she receives notice of acceptance. A year later, the article appears in print---two years after her original submission. This time frame could have been reduced by several months if our young scholar could have submitted her article to all three journals simultaneously. Editors owe their younger colleagues the opportunity to get their work into publication as quickly as possible. * James Tackach, a professor of English, is immediate past president of the Roger Williams University Faculty Association in Bristol, Rhode Island.
As a journal founder who serves on several editorial boards, I demystify the system so faculty can maximize their acceptances. My advice: Never send multiple submissions. Let's peek behind the editorial review process curtains to see why. Editors decide if the submission is appropriate for their journal. They screen to avoid wasting the time and talents of their reviewers, who are not being paid. Appropriate submissions must be processed, which means screening again for blind judging, preparing cover letters and rating forms, selecting reviewers, and so on. Editors try to identify three reviewers familiar with the topic. Some reviewers are slow; some are on sabbatical. Of my journal's 40 editorial board reviewers, 25 were mostly reliable, so they got most of the work. Reviewers want submissions that will be published if accepted; otherwise, their time spent evaluating is useless to the journal. When the reviews are in, the editor must resolve differences of opinion and write instructions for submissions that need revision, which most do. The process includes complex logistics and lots of time. In my years as journal editor, I had one clear multiple submission. After we invested all the work, this author withdrew the submission because it was being published elsewhere. I rejected every future article that author submitted, and added multiple submission warnings to my reply letters. What happened on the two occasions an author acknowledged multiple submission in the cover letter? I considered my editorial board members, and I sent it back. * Gerald Stone, professor of journalism and graduate studies, is director for the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Take a stand! Post your comments on the dialog discussion board. |
