From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2014 00:39:44 -0600

I'm not sure what journals Ari has submitted his articles to--he
openly mentions one by name--but his description doesn't match the
experience of authors who submitted articles to the dozen journals in
the humanities that we published at Penn State University Press while
I was director there. One must be careful in condemning an entire
system og journal publishing based on the experience of just one
author like Ari.

Sandy Thatcher

*****

From: Ari Belenkiy <[log in to unmask]>

Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2014 14:55:55 -0800

Well, let me share my story as well.  Trying to publish with
humanities journals for almost 10 years, I observed that there exist a
formal process behind which is emptiness.

You wait for 3-4 months, getting thereafter a refusal either on
general grounds, such as style of references or appropriateness for
this journal, or because you don't quote some "important" secondary
literature. The (low) quality of referees' 2-3 brief remarks don't
warrant for such a long wait! (I can share some reviews - quite a fun
to read. Actually, I have received only one serious (though negative)
assessment of my work - from Vigilae Christianae - on 14 pages).

Though the originality of the paper is often stated inter alia, the
editor lurks behind any negative remark done by a referee - of course
as a pretext to reject the paper.  In fact, these remarks are key
words, signals that a referee sends to the editor as a sign that s/he
does not want this paper be published.

I have never seen that the editor looked deeply in the matter
afterwards.  The editor never goes back to access the quality of
referee (the well- recognized practice in exact sciences), which I
believe is a malfunction detrimental to the humanities.

In humanities, publishers and editors have no initiative to publish
something unusual and original. The goal is to put through the journal
pipe as many papers of their PhD candidates as journal pages permit.

Instead of OA hysteria, its proponents should rather address the
quality of the referees' duties in humanities.

Academia is about the quality and originality of published materials,
not about OA.

Ari Belenkiy


SFU
Canada



On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 11:50 AM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2014 09:28:58 +0000

Dear Zac

I was talking mainly about the past. In my experience over forty years
is that publishers work much harder now to make sure that the
editorial structure is doing its job of peer review and that they are
much more concerned with the mechanisms of peer review including
quality. I really meant to instance online editorial systems is that
they enable an insight for publishers into how long reviewing is
taking, how many reviewers are used etc. When I started in this
business editors were appointed and were then left to their own
devices. There was no proper contract outlining roles and
responsibilities and the editors could go on until they were very out
of touch and very old. The assumption was that every academic knew how
to ensure good and timely peer review. Now there is much more ongoing
interaction between publishers and editors over standards and
processes.  Then journal publishing was seen as a mechanical process.
I can think of a very major journal edited by a long dead Nobel
Laureate. The peer review process for him was that his secretary went
to a very top international laboratory on a weekly basis and went
round the labs throwing a selection on the desks of younger
researchers.

I do not know what happened then but I suspect that there was very
little control from on top or any sort of proper instruction.

Anthony

-----Original Message-----

From: Zac Rolnik <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2014 22:26:25 -0500


Anthony,

I agree that it is hard for the publisher to really know the quality
of articles we publish since we are usually not academics in those
areas, but I think we have a sense when the quality is there and when
it is not.  The idea that the publisher relies on the editor who
relies on the guest editor seems like we are distancing ourselves from
our responsibility as publishers.  Furthermore, I don't see how online
editorial systems necessarily improve quality control and I might even
argue the peer review is declining as the number of articles increase
beyond the available pool of high quality reviewers.  This was not
just bad science, but "computer generated gibberish".  Unfortunately,
I happen to believe that there is a lot of human-generated gibberish
also getting published.

Zac Rolnik
now publishers