From: Ari Belenkiy <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2014 17:06:24 -0800

Sandy, I can mention several "top" Harvard and Oxford journals. For
example, I got a panegyric from HTR's referee - they don't mind
sending the entire referee's report... with an advice to submit the
paper to "more specialized" journal.

Fred, my impression was that editors "of old" put originality
(novelty) before everything else. They would laugh at rejection by a
referee because you are unfamiliar with "secondary" sources, let alone
because of the "wrong" style of references.

I agree, the appropriateness of the paper for this particular journal
(a so-called "readership") might be a good reason to reject a paper
despite its virtues, but in a matter of days - not months!

Ari Belenkiy


On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 2:38 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> 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