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Econ agonistes: navigating and surviving the publishing process.

Article Excerpt
INTRODUCTION

Let me begin this article with a brief summary of my qualifications. During my career, I have refereed nearly 300 articles for professional journals and as a journal editor have made decisions on more than 1000 papers. I have edited several symposia and special issues for economics journals and for refereed journals in other disciplines. Since 1989 I have served as Associate Editor and Book Review Editor of the Eastern Economic Journal, and since 1995 have served as co-editor of the Review of Political Economy.

Part of the reason for my success is that when I was just beginning my professional career, I was extremely fortunate to have Ingrid Rima (1) as my mentor. I first met Ingrid at the annual meetings of the Eastern Economic Association in the early 1980s. At the time I was a graduate student working on my doctoral dissertation, and Ingrid was Editor of the Eastern Economic Journal. After we met, Ingrid sent me a few articles to referee; when she saw I had a knack for doing them quickly and for doing them well, she sent me many more articles. By critically evaluating the work of others, I learned the sorts of things that referees look for, and figured out the simple things that authors can do to minimize the probability of having their paper rejected. Finally, as I began publishing my own work, and began accumulating referee reports rejecting my papers, I learned more about how to avoid rejections. Moreover, I learned not only what to say in a referee report to help authors improve the quality of their paper, but also how to say things so that authors did not feel alienated, thus making them more likely to listen to my comments and suggestions.

As a reward for my hard work, Ingrid appointed me to the Editorial Board of the Eastern Economic Journal. Shortly thereafter she made me Book Review Editor and Associate Editor of the journal. These promotions enabled Ingrid to send me even more articles to referee without having to feel too guilty about all the work she was giving me.

In the 1980s I also met John Pheby at an international conference. John wanted to start a new political economy journal and wanted a young, energetic US economist with some editorial experience on his team. I seemed to fit the bill, and helped John convince a publisher to take a chance on a new journal. Like Ingrid, John put me on the Editorial Board and relied on me for lots of refereeing. When John decided to relinquish the job as Editor of the Review of Political Economy, I became one of his replacements.

CRAPSHOOTS AND TRIAGE

My extensive service over the years both as a referee and a journal editor has been first and foremost a learning experience. Perhaps the most important lesson I have learned, and the one I wish to stress here, is how the entire process is one part crapshoot and one part triage. These are reasonably good metaphors for what goes on when making decisions about submitted papers. Crapshoot emphasizes the somewhat arbitrary nature of getting a paper accepted for publication and the fact that getting a paper accepted depends on "the luck of the draw" regarding referees. Triage indicates the role that human judgment (mainly by editors) plays in determining which papers get "saved" and how many get saved.

Getting published is a crapshoot because even if you write a decent paper, the chances are good that a large fraction of scholars in the field will not see it that way. To make this point concretely, think about the large number of papers you have read (or started to read, making it through just a few paragraphs or pages), all the while wondering how this paper ever made it through the review process. The answer to this question is that some referees found something of value in these papers. This lesson of this exercise is that opinions will be split on many papers--some people will find something of value in it, while others will think it is boring, riddled with errors, etc.

Keeping things simple, let's define a decent paper as one for which somewhere around 40% the people who might be asked to referee it will see it in this light, something not far from the truth. (2) Under this assumption, getting a decent paper published becomes a crapshoot because it depends on who you get as a referee. To get your paper accepted, you need two referees favorably disposed to it, and the odds are against you. Looking only at probabilities, there is a greater than 80% chance that either or both referees will recommend rejecting your paper. On the other hand, there is around...

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