War Stories from the Blind Review Process

2007-01-03T15:37:00.001-05:00

This discussion forum is for authors to share quotes or brief excerpts from funny, outrageous, or just plain awful reviews. Did one of your blind referees obviously forget his/her meds the morning of reading your paper?

Let's hear about the blind review process from people who have survived.

Ask-an-Editor

2006-05-24T15:36:00.000-04:00

Questions about the review process or the role of the journal editor? Post them as comments here.

We invite and encourage current and former journal editors to respond.

What are the Best General Interest Journals in Political Science?

2006-05-24T15:34:00.000-04:00

Comment on Journals for Formal Theory

2006-05-24T15:33:00.009-04:00

Comment on Journals for Law, Courts, and Judicial Process

2006-05-24T15:33:00.006-04:00

Comment on Journals in Political Philosophy

2006-05-24T15:33:00.005-04:00

Comment on Journals for American Politics

2006-05-24T15:32:00.006-04:00

Comment on Journals for International Relations

2006-05-24T15:32:00.005-04:00

Comment on Journals for Comparative Politics

2006-05-24T15:32:00.004-04:00

Comment on APSR

2006-05-24T15:31:00.001-04:00

Welcome to Political Science Journal Monitor

2006-05-24T15:21:00.000-04:00

Are there things you wish you had known before submitting a manuscript or subscribing to a scholarly journal?

Political scientists have started this blog as an outlet for fellow scholars to share their experiences as journal contributors or readers. We invite comments of a negative, positive, or neutral nature regarding the manuscript review and publication process at particular scholarly journals of interest to political scientists. We also welcome comments from political scientists regarding their level of satisfaction with the content of the scholarly journals they read.

This blog aims to improve political scientists' experience with academic journals. In the short term, postings may provide useful guidance to scholars about the type of experience they might expect with particular journals.

Scholars may, for example, decide to avoid submission to journals with reputations for extraordinarly slow decision-making, lengthy waits to publication, or seemingly arbitrary rejection of manuscripts, in favor of journals that provide superior service to authors.

Potential readers and subscribers may also improve their awareness of which journals are publishing cutting-edge content in their subfield, and which journals are stagnating.

Over the long run, postings to this blog might promote more consistent adherence to an ethical code among scholarly journals serving political science, an improved review and publication experience, and a superior product for journal readership. Editors and publishers reading this blog can learn where they are succeeding, where they need to improve, and how.

Please note: Venting about negative experiences with particular journals is most welcome, but please keep expletives and other harsh language to a minimum, and remember that we are all professionals, aiming to assist each other.

A proposed code of editorial ethics follows below; please comment: good idea? bad idea?

Proposed Code of Editorial and Journal Ethics for Political Science

An academic journal in political science should be independent from any particular school of thought, political party, political ideology, religious orientation, creed, or other belief system.

Editors have the responsibility to promote self-correction in science and participate in efforts to improve the practice of scientific investigation by publishing corrections, retractions, and critiques of published articles; and by taking responsibility for improving the level of scientific investigation and writing in the larger community of potential authors and readers.

Within the guidelines indicated here, editors should have full authority over the editorial content of the journal, generally referred to as “editorial independence.”

Editors should establish procedures that guard against the influence of commercial and personal self-interest on editorial decisions.

Authors do not exist to “serve” journals. Authors and editors both have an obligation to readers, through a mutual agreement of trust and commitment to quality.

The social contract between an author and editor is an organizational one which does not change with the person occupying the editorship. Thus, a new editor is bound by the manuscript decisions of her predecessor, and cannot change the standards retroactively or rescind acceptances by the previous editor.

An editorial board should include leaders in the field, reflect gender, race, and partisan diversity and have representatives from a variety of subfields within the journal’s area of specialization.

The editor has the ethical responsibility to choose good reviewers for manuscripts, people who are relatively objective, know the field well, and turn in reviews on time. The board's membership should change often enough to prevent the board becoming a clique, at least every five years.

Editors should establish appropriate programs to monitor journal performance. The editor has the responsibility to collect statistics on manuscript submissions, review times, acceptance rates, and the length of the backlog of manuscripts awaiting publication, and report to the editorial board on these matters on an annual basis.

Reviewers for a journal have the ethical responsibility to turn down review requests in a timely manner, within 10 days of receiving the request, and if they agree to review a manuscript, return it within eight weeks of the request, unless they make other arrangements with the editor.

Editors have the responsibility to read all articles that are approved by two reviewers, all articles for which there is a split vote, and at least scan articles that are rejected by two or more reviewers, exercising their own judgment appropriately.

Offers by the editor to revise-and-resubmit a paper should be given in good faith, with the expectation and stipulation that if the authors respond to any queries or objections the reviewers have raised, doing their best to address any conflicting advice, the paper will be acceptable for publication. Multiple rounds of revision (more than one) may be required to perfect the paper, at the discretion of the editor. However, if the editor has serious doubts about whether a paper is capable of being revised, the ethical responsibility is to save the authors time and effort by rejecting the paper after it is initially reviewed.

Editorial board members are entitled to a free subscription to the journal during their time of service.

Some of these guidelines were borrowed directly or adapted from:

Patricia H. Werhane. “Editing an Academic Journal.” Perspectives on the Professions 14:1: (1994). Website: http://ethics.iit.edu/perspective/pers14_1aug94_4.html

WAME, World Association of Medical Editors. Website: http://www.wame.org/ethics3.htm