It is so incredibly hard to do a good job, and when things go well, no one says: well done, editor! (Well, on occasion I’ve had authors thanking me for the swiftness of the process.) When things go bad, however… (For example, as an editor I’ve rejected a paper which then went on to be published elsewhere and win a prestigious prize. My decision was based on careful referee reports, but it still seems to have been some sort of ‘mistake’ on my part.)--Catarina Dutilh Novaes Newapps.
A few years ago, an invited paper got rejected at the Monist. Even though I am very, very used to rejection [recall and here], this one stung (not so much because the paper was invited, but especially) because I thought the special issue editor (whom I respect immensely) should have recognized the incompetence of the referee and not farm out his judgment to somebody obviously less qualified than him. To be clear: ordinarily I tend not to think that the 'reject'-my-paper-referees are incompetent; most hostile referees simply disagree with my interpretations/claims -- that's not surprising because I have a firm preference for exciting over obvious -- or find my writing style very annoying. (Since I blog, I do also get referees that let me know that they find me annoying--so much for masked review.) I have deplored the farming out of judgment to referees before (recall), so I won't harp on it here.
As it happens, that rejected paper found a home in another journal. I have had a quiet (and totally infantile) satisfaction of, while procrastinating on scholar.google, seeing that paper generating more citations than the papers published in the issue of the Monist from which my paper was rejected, bar one (by a very famous philosopher). Vanity is an ugly sentiment, and citations are a terrible guide toward quality; prizes may also be a bad guide--for all I know Catarina was right to reject that paper. The point, which stands without my autobiographical reflections, is that nearly all editorial mistakes generally carry no cost to the editor, while the harms incurred by the profession or particular individuals may be great.
The new Synthese affair is renewing attention to journal practices. Catarina's piece (partially quoted above) correctly reminds us that editing is a thankless job; her piece also resonates with what I noted earlier in the week, that is, the lack of genuine accountability and responsiveness of journal editors (key gatekeepers of the profession). This works, as Catarina notes, in two directions: when things go well journal editors are not really rewarded (I return to this below), and when they screw up it generally flies below the radar of the profession; individuals may notice, but most of us have to accept grudgingly that life is unfair.
Except, of course, that egregious screw-ups (like the current Synthese debacle and also here) remind us of the ugly truths about the system. Editing and refereeing is a human activity and it is, thus, subject to the biases and judgments of fallible agents. Even journals that rely on the very best practices (like Ergo, which I love to praise) still rely on judgments that can be corrupted or mistaken. Even without biases, the existing journal system works decent enough, albeit imperfectly, for some of its purported purposes -- e.g., dissemination knowledge, facilitating decisions for hiring and promotion as well as grant-awarding, generating discussion on valuable topics, etc. --, but its aggregate imperfections are not so hard to discern: it has a status quo bias built into it, generates extremely gender/race (etc.) biased patterns of outcome, and can obviously harm, deserving philosophical careers that do not 'fit' the dominant mold of journal article publication (with an increasing bias toward shorter articles).
As Catarina notes the system is very 'fragile.' Often the really right referees decline to review; other referees are inundated with requests. (I referee so much I now routinely forget to list all my refereeing, tenure reviews, etc. on my CV or my annual performance report--service to the profession is not valued much by free-riding universities that value grants and publications.) Journals respond by desk-rejecting without comment---to rule without giving a public reason is ordinarily taken as a sign of arbitrary, even illegitimate authority. Experiencing such desk rejections is now thought routine in the profession.
Are there no rewards to journal editing? Leaving aside to what degree some editing allows one to obtain either course release or, more rarely, (and often modest) income, editors can shape a field (niche, etc.). Given the significance of publishing to so many people's academic careers, and given the competing research traditions/schools in a zero-sum environment [imagine if Journal of Philosophy and Philosophical Review had been controlled by Continental philosophers mid-twentieth-centuy--it's doubtful that American analytical philosophy would have 'won' in the way it did Stateside], editors decide the ways in which journals are more hospitable to some kind of work, rather than another kind--this shows up in publication patterns (and sometimes in public discussion [recall]). Such power can be rewarding; some people find such shaping rewarding or like it that their vision of philosophy is shared more widely. (Special issues of journals, especially, serve such purposes.] I mention this because I distrust the 'no rewards to editing' line. Obviously, that's compatible with those very same editors, or other editors, -- perhaps the majority [I really have no idea] -- acting from duty as they perceive it and commitment to the profession.
Ideally, the current Synthese debacle will lead to improved practices of review and publication. But the existence of very important structural pressures, to quote Catarina, "the importance we give to publications in philosophy, when it comes to hiring and promotion decisions," in a zero-sum environment with a scarcity of jobs and lots of folk desperate for quality publications, suggests that much optimism is not warranted. I have no solution. (Obviously, blog readership is no better guide to philosophical quality.)
Yet, I close with an observation. After the Monist rejected my paper, it went to a new journal, where two excellent, critical referees gave me stellar comments. The editor could have rejected the paper in light of these; instead she provided me with helpful guidance. I rewrote my paper in light of them, and ended up with a publication that I am very proud of. There are three morals here: we need luck; papers that get multiple refereeing are often improved (this is familiar from science studies literature); comparing citation rates of my paper with the papers in that particular Monist issue it never got into is bad methodology because the rejected paper was clearly inferior to the paper that was ultimately published.
Recent Comments