I've been selected as a board member for a journal. My position is to read student article submissions and then accept 4 articles per issue (we accept submissions about every other month). Once we've accepted them, we then put them through an extensive editing process to make them better (hopefully).
Well a few weeks ago we had our first "drop date" and we reviewed a bunch of articles. There were a few that were really well written, others, not so much. A few that I read, that I thought were really great, seemed to have been preempted by the fact that other authors had already written on the subject, or the issue was before a court somewhere (one before the Supreme Court) and we thought that the issue might be resolved by the court and thus, wouldn't be very useful to publish.
In making the decisions, there was one that I really wanted and everyone else wanted this other piece that was preempted. I thought I had convinced everyone that it was probably not a wise choice to publish that one, and to look at the one that I liked instead. I swayed some people, and thought that I was pretty powerful. (Note that I really thought that these four other people were just going to do everything that I said). Then one of the other reviewers brought back into the picture this article that I HATED. I was devastated. And got out voted. Oh the horror!
And on Monday, we sent out offers and then the "rejection letters." I had a great idea to send everyone a form letter that said, if they wanted more feedback they could contact me. I purposely did not put my contact information in the letter (and I'm not the one sending it out) hoping that people would be lazy and not find me.
Well, I was wrong. Again.
And now, I'm in a tight spot because one author is coming to me for feedback and I really just want to say, I don't think your paper is going to get published because of the case before the SC. Even if it doesn't have anything to do with your article, it just seems a little too complicated.
Man. What do I do in this position?
I thought I was a pretty powerful. And now... I wish that I didn't have to tell people something hard. I mean, the paper is really well written and interesting. But what can you do?
1 comment:
Oh my. I hate situations like that! I always have to tell myself, "things will work out. Some day this will all be in the past." It sometimes works. ;) Good luck!
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