Tuesday, October 3
Tuesday, October 03, 2006 | 
Posted by
Anonymous
I got a rejection letter today. It's not my first, and it won't be my last.
My main complaint about reviewers continues to be that there are so many who clearly don't read the paper. To make matters worse, I think that the people who are least likely to read the paper are often higher status individuals whose reviews editors weight more heavily (particularly if the editor, who has a lot on their plate, didn't read the paper carefully themselves).
That's not today's gripe, though. I'll save it for another day.
This wasn't my first rejection of this particular paper. In the previous round of reviews (from Journal A in the specialty area of Politics of Primates) I got, "This research is an example of a much larger and more interesting phenomenon, focus on that." So I did when I reframed the paper. This time I got (from Journal B in the same specialty area), "This research claims to be looking at this much larger phenomenon, but what's more interesting is the specific example that it highlights."
Argh. Why couldn't I have had those same reviewers that second time around? Or even better, that second set the first time around? How do you decide whether you cater to those reviewers before you send it out again, or if you just send the same thing out and hope that it doesn't go to the same person? This is a game I haven't learned to play yet.
My main complaint about reviewers continues to be that there are so many who clearly don't read the paper. To make matters worse, I think that the people who are least likely to read the paper are often higher status individuals whose reviews editors weight more heavily (particularly if the editor, who has a lot on their plate, didn't read the paper carefully themselves).
That's not today's gripe, though. I'll save it for another day.
This wasn't my first rejection of this particular paper. In the previous round of reviews (from Journal A in the specialty area of Politics of Primates) I got, "This research is an example of a much larger and more interesting phenomenon, focus on that." So I did when I reframed the paper. This time I got (from Journal B in the same specialty area), "This research claims to be looking at this much larger phenomenon, but what's more interesting is the specific example that it highlights."
Argh. Why couldn't I have had those same reviewers that second time around? Or even better, that second set the first time around? How do you decide whether you cater to those reviewers before you send it out again, or if you just send the same thing out and hope that it doesn't go to the same person? This is a game I haven't learned to play yet.
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