The Academic Review Process: How Can We Make it More Efficient?

Recently many editors try to reduce the turnaround times of academic journals. Shorter turnaround times, however, will induce many additional submissions of low-quality papers, increasing significantly the workload of editors and referees, and the number of rejections prior to publication. I suggest several ideas how editors can shorten turnaround times and four ideas how they can still avoid frivolous submissions, thus improving the review process efficiency: higher submission fees; requiring authors to review papers in proportion to their submissions; using differential editorial delay – letting low-quality papers wait more; and banning papers from being submitted after a certain number of rejections.Academic publishing, first response times, editorial process, review process, refereeing

The Review Process in Economics: Is it Too Fast?

Rewards for publications in good economics journals are very high, while submission fees and other monetary costs associated with submitting an existing manuscript are low. Consequently, the editorial delay (especially the first response time – the time until the first editorial decision), by postponing monetary rewards to publication, constitutes the major submission cost (from the author’s perspective). Reducing the delay will induce many additional submissions of low-quality papers to good journals, increasing significantly the workload of editors and referees. Moreover, the rejection rate will increase and cause papers to be rejected more times prior to publication, offsetting at least some of the shorter first response times. As a result, the efforts of many editors to reduce the editorial delay, while attracting more submissions to their journals, may have adverse effects from a social perspective, and the optimal delay might be longer than the current average of four months.Review process, refereeing, publishing, academia, research, first response times, academic review process

From Manuscript to Publication : A Brief Guide for Economists

The aim of this paper is to give a short description of the nature of books and journals, their respective editors, and the difficult process and proprieties involved in publishing papers. It describes some of the main features of the publication process, so that readers may be in a better position to make judgements about published work and writers may be, to some extent at least, prepared to face the difficulties that inevitably lie in their path. Emphasis is given to the need to deal with rejections and the often substantial revisions requested by editors. While some of the features of publishing are common to all disciplines, this paper is specifically intended for economists.

"On Hochberg et al.'s, the tragedy of the reviewers commons"

We discuss each of the recommendations made by Hochberg et al. (2009) to prevent the “tragedy of the reviewer commons”. Having scientific journals share a common database of reviewers would be to recreate a bureaucratic organization, where extra-scientific considerations prevailed. Pre-reviewing of papers by colleagues is a widespread practice but raises problems of coordination. Revising manuscripts in line with all reviewers’ recommendations presupposes that recommendations converge, which is acrobatic. Signing an undertaking that authors have taken into accounts all reviewers’ comments is both authoritarian and sterilizing. Sending previous comments with subsequent submissions to other journals amounts to creating a cartel and a single all-encompassing journal, which again is sterilizing. Using young scientists as reviewers is highly risky: they might prove very severe; and if they have not yet published themselves, the recommendation violates the principle of peer review. Asking reviewers to be more severe would only create a crisis in the publishing houses and actually increase reviewers’ workloads. The criticisms of the behavior of authors looking to publish in the best journals are unfair: it is natural for scholars to try to publish in the best journals and not to resign themselves to being second rate. Punishing lazy reviewers would only lower the quality of reports: instead, we favor the idea of paying reviewers “in kind” with, say, complimentary books or papers.Reviewer;Referee;Editor;Publisher;Publishing;Tragedy of the Commons;Hochberg

Discovery and Communication of Important Marketing Findings: Evidence and Proposals

My review of empirical research on scientific publication led to the following conclusions. Three criteria are useful for identifying whether findings are important: replication, validity, and usefulness. A fourth criterion, surprise, applies in some situations. Based on these criteria, important findings resulting from academic research in marketing seem to be rare. To a large extent, this rarity is due to a reward system that is built around subjective peer review. Rather than using peer review as a secret screening process, using an open process likely will improve papers and inform readers. Researchers, journals, business schools, funding agencies, and professional organizations can all contribute to improving the process. For example, researchers should do directed research on papers that contribute to principles. Journals should invite papers that contribute to principles. Business school administrators should reward researchers who make important findings. Funding agencies should base decisions on researchers' prior success in making important findings, and professional organizations should maintain web sites that describe what is known about principles and what research is needed on principles

Rejections and the Importance of First Response Times (Or: How Many Rejections Do Others Receive?)

Previous studies about the academic publishing process consider the publication delay as starting from the submission to the publishing journal. This ignores the potential delay caused by rejections received from previous journals. Knowing how many times papers are submitted prior to publication is essential for evaluating the importance of different publication delays and the refereeing process cost, and can improve our decisions about if and how the review process should be altered, decisions that affect the productivity of economists and other scholars. Using numerical analysis and evidence on acceptance rates of various journals, I estimate that most manuscripts are submitted between three and six times prior to publication. This implies that the first response time (the time between submission and first editorial decision) is much more important than other parts of the publication delay, suggesting important policy implications for editors and referees.academic-publishing-process; turnaround-time; academic- journals; review-process; publication-delay; rejections

Research on Scientific Journals: Implications for Editors and Authors

A review of editorial policies of leading journals and of research relevant to scientific journals revealed conflicts between 'science' and 'scientists.” Owing to these conflicts, papers are often weak on objectivity and replicability. Furthermore, papers often fall short on importance, competence, intelligibility, or efficiency. Suggestions were made for editorial policies such as: (1) structured guidelines for referees, (2) open peer review, (3) blind reviews, and (4) full disclosure of data and method. Of major importance, an author's “Note to Referees” (describing the hypotheses and design, but not the results) was suggested to improve the objectivity of the ratings of importance and competence. Also, recommendations are made to authors for improving contributions to science (such as the use of multiple hypotheses) and for promoting their careers (such as using complex methods and obtuse writing).scientific journals, authors, research, editors

An Auction Market for Journal Articles

Economic articles are published very slowly. We believe this results mainly from the poor incentives referees face. We recommend that an auction market replace the current system for submitting papers and demonstrate a strict Pareto-improvement of equilibrium. Besides the benefits of speed, this mechanism increases the average quality of articles and journals and rewards editors and referees for their effort. In addition, the "academic dollars" for papers sold at auction go to the authors, editors and referees of cited articles. This income indicates academic productivity (facilitating decisions on tenure and promotion); its recirculation to journals further stimulates quality competition.Academic Journals;Academic Productivity;Market Design. JEL codes

Evolution of social norms with heterogeneous preferences: A general model and an application to the academic review process

The article presents a model of social norm evolution, which suggests how the increase in optimal and actual first response times (FRT) of economics journals can be related. When the optimal FRT and the norm about how much time refereeing should take increase, it seems that the existence of a norm increases the average refereeing time. The model suggests the surprising result that this is not necessarily true. I also discuss applications of the model in other contexts, differences in the optimal FRT between disciplines, the effects of the FRT on the tenure process, and strategic behavior of referees.social norms; evolution; first response times; refereeing; academic publishing; turnaround times; journals; review process

An Auction Market for Journal Articles

Economic articles are published very slowly. We believe this results from the poor incentives referees face. We recommend that an auction market replace the current, push system for submitting papers and demonstrate that our proposed market has a stable, Pareto-improving equilibrium. Besides the benefits of speed, this pull mechanism increases the quality of articles and journals and rewards referees for their effort. Although the auction price gives a prior on a paper's future value, its actual value|as a published article|depends on later citations. Since the auction price of later papers goes to the editors, authors and referees of earlier, cited articles, "auction earnings" give a direct measure of the value of articles, journals (the sum of articles) and academics - as authors, editors and reviewers - rewarding good writing, decisions and effort, respectively.Academic Journals;Academic Productivity;Market Design.