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Note: This is a reposting of material that appeared in my primary blog, Evolutionary Psychology, on November 23rd.
Dear Editor,
It has been three months since I did you the honor of submitting my masterpiece paper to your journal. At 9,000 words in length, I calculate you would only have to read 100 words per day (fewer words than appear in Hop on Pop) in order to have read the entire manuscript by now. Can I expect a decision soon?
Yours,
Author
Dear Author,
First, thank you for submitting your work to Journal. Please let me take this opportunity to give you some information about the peer review process at Journal.
After your paper was submitted, a mysterious process was set into motion by Publisher, which results in up to a two week gap between the time you submitted your paper and the moment an Editor's eyes were laid on your monstrosity paper. Publisher, for reasons that defy comprehension, has instituted a first pass phase after submission that entails ensuring that if, for instance, you refer to three Tables in the text, there are three Tables included in submission, though they allow for an error of plus or minus two on the number of Tables and Figures because we feel our authors should be allowed a certain degree of creative license in such matters. (Publisher dictates the route from submission to Action Editor, independent of Editors' views on the matter; this is a downside of a journal published by Publisher, which reminds me of the old tagline in the Saturday Night Live fake ad for Ma Bell: "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company." Where else but the publishing oligopoly industry can a firm make an operating profit of 36% during a recession?)
After Action Editor received your paper, they first had to pore through it to determine whether or not to send it out. Why not send all submissions out, you ask? Well, some authors are a bit confused about the scope of Journal, for instance, and we at Journal are not going to publish an analysis of the change in milk prices in the eighteenth century, no matter how good the scholarship. More broadly, there is a tradeoff that has to be navigated, and reviewers tend to get irked if we send them manuscripts that are either so beyond the scope of the journal or so beyond the reach of sanity that they are obviously never going to be publishable, since they are then losing their time to an ultimately pointless endeavor, like kissing your sister, or voting. So, the herd must be culled, which requires some time, especially when submissions are written language understand difficulty though possible gem idea insides of them. Punctuation;
After reading the paper, Editor has to determine who would be a good referee. You might think this is easy: just take the first authors of the first papers cited in the References section (Sorry Adams, Allen, and Atwood!). Alas, no. Still, I know what you're thinking. All you really need is someone who is an expert in the area but despite being an expert does not have a strong (positive or negative) relationship with the author that might bias the review and has published in the area recently and so has kept up with recent developments and hasn't recently reviewed for Journal because we don't like to over-tax individual reviewers and is sufficiently well known to Editor that Editor can be reasonably sure that the review will be handled competently and is sufficiently senior that they can do the review but not so sufficiently senior that they are comfortable blowing off all requests to review because they are Just So Busy...
Once such a person has been identified, we sent out an invitation email to Potential Reviewer. Roughly, this email says, "Dear Potential Reviewer, would you please take a break from your frivolous activities such as "teaching students" and "doing research" and instead spend your time evaluating this manuscript, in return for which we offer you the generous compensation of absolutely nothing?"
This often has the result that you might expect, which is that Potential Reviewer ignores the email. This leaves Action Editor with a dilemma: after a week has gone by, should Editor A) gently remind Potential Reviewer about the kind invitation to take their time away from their research, or B) take a month long trip to the Bahamas and forget it all try to find a substitute Potential Reviewer. Option A) risks annoying the reviewer, while Option B restarts the clock on finding a Potential Reviewer, potentially delaying the handling of the manuscript further.
After this process has occurred, and Potential Reviewers have become Actual Reviewers, Editor now must wait until the three week deadline has passed, during which it is possible that one or more of the Actual Reviewers has Actually Reviewed the manuscript. At this point, Editor sends out a gentle reminder to Actual Reviewer, followed by one or possibly two additional reminders after more time passes without the review appearing. After a few weeks have gone by , Editor is once again faced with a dilemma. Editor can A) gently remind Actual Reviewer that their review was due a month ago, or B) bang their head against the wall repeatedly until blood flows freely from their forehead try to find a substitute Potential Reviewer. Not to be repetitive, but Option A) risks annoying the reviewer, while Option B restarts the clock on finding a Potential Reviewer, potentially delaying the handling of the manuscript further.
At this point, as Editor is pleading with Reviewer to submit the damn report, it is always a pleasant morning surprise to get an email from Author asking why Editor has not seen fit to act on Author's manuscript. Editor, at this point, is often tempted to remind Author that the last time Editor asked them to review a manuscript, they sat on the email for ten days and then finally declined the invitation, responding in the "suggestion for other reviewers" field with a helpful: "You might try that guy who used to be at that place where I once lost a pair of gloves in the student union. Wait. It might have been my hat."
Eventually, a decision will be made on your manuscript. While Editors bear some responsibility for the delay, we do the best we can. The delays are frequently due to reviewers delaying replying to our emails or turning in reports after the deadline. Editors have few carrots to offer or sticks to brandish, forcing us to rely on the good will of our reviewers. (I hastily add that, as a matter of fact, Journal is blessed with a large number of heroic reviewers who respond rapidly, and submit excellent reviews with all due haste. Editor is deeply grateful to these people.)
After I have read the reviews, I will of course be in a position to evaluate your manuscript. Because our acceptance rate is so low, the odds are that it will be rejected, though whether this is the case or not I hope the feedback generously provided by our reviewers will be of use to you. After this process is complete, I look forward to your email to me indicating that I am stupid/biased/subhuman/ignorant/cowardly/short-sighted/lazy. Makes the job worthwhile.
Yours,
Editor
Copyright Robert Kurzban, 2011. All rights reserved.
