From: Fred Jenkins <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2014 21:01:34 -0500

I cannot say that Ari's has been my experience with humanities journals
(and I am nobody important and don't have a lot of connections).  I have
had a number of articles accepted and a couple rejected, always courteously
and with readers' reports of 1-2 pages that gave reasons, whether I agreed
with them or not.  And given the number of peer-reviewed papers retracted
in the "exact sciences," I would not hold them up as a beacon of good
practice.

Fred W. Jenkins, Ph.D.
Professor and Associate Dean for Collections and Operations
University of Dayton Libraries
Dayton, OH 45469-1360
(937) 229-4272



On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 6:23 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> 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
>