Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Corrected proofs

I managed to finish and submit the corrected proofs for this paper, which has been haunting me since APSA 2001, where it was first presented.

It spent over two years total at this journal. In the first round of reviews, the paper received a very positive review with minor revisions and a one sentence review that said the paper was "wonky and descriptive." The former editor recommended revising on the basis of the first reviewer's suggestions, which I did. I sent it back, and the paper sat for about 10 months before the editorial assistant emailed me to say that they could not find a suitable second reviewer. At that time the editor was changing, and the assistant asked if I would like to give the new editor a chance to find a second reviewer or have the manuscript back. I asked for it back.

I then sent it to this journal in May 2003. When I received the reviews that Fall, one of the reviewers faulted me for not citing an article in this journal that appeared in July of 2003. (Yes, I should have cited an article before it had appeared in a highly specialized journal!) Of course, the article I did not cite (because I had not seen it yet) is an exemplar of the type of work I critique in my article, so it's no surprise the author of the July article reviewer did not like my theoretical approach.

Following that rejection, I sent the article to its proper home at Social Politics in October 2004. I received the conditional acceptance in September 2005. It will appear this fall, 2006.

posted by Michelle @ 8:20 PM,

2 Comments:

At 7/20/2006 7:38 AM,  Greg Weeks said...

Five years is a long time, but also demonstrates something I believe, which is that with work and persistence you can get most of your papers published. I think many papers get put in a drawer because people give up, not because the ms. is unpublishable.

 

At 7/23/2006 3:53 PM,  Michelle said...

Part of the delay was bad journal management and the other part was choosing the wrong journals. The first journal was really inept, though it should have been a good home for the piece. The second journal was not a good fit, and I'm generally bad at figuring out where to publish my pieces. The journal it will ultimately appear in is the correct home for the piece, but they had 3 different editorial assistants in one year, which slowed the reviews down considerably. 11 months is a long time to get 2 reviews back. Luckily, by then it was a conditional accept, with very little to be done in terms of revisions.

 

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