dear asr: stop it, please just stop it

Update: Olderwoman reminds me that she did not single out the ASR in her original post. I have revised this post to reflect that. Regardless, we agree that journal norms are broken, especially at our beloved flagship journal.

This morning, I read olderwoman’s blog post about problems with journals that request too many revisions, or that invite revisions too easily (“inflated R&Rs”). This issue has arisen with respect to the American Sociological Review, the flagship journal of the American Sociological Association. The ASR has been giving R&R’s to many submitted articles, much more than average, and they are soliciting many reviews per article. It has also been sending articles through multiple rounds of revisions, leading to articles being held at the journal for years. Since they seem to accept to same number of articles per year (about 40), that implies that the multiple rounds of revision do not lead to publication for many authors. Here is my response to that post:

I am asking the American Sociological Review to curtail this practice. In writing this, I have no personal stake in this matter. I do not have any papers under review, nor has the ASR accepted my previous submissions. I only write as a member of the profession, senior faculty at a top 20 program, a former managing editor of an ASA journal (Sociological Methodology), former associate editor of the American Journal of Sociology, occasional board member for various journals, author, and reviewer.

The inflated R&R policy is damaging sociology in a few ways. First, by continually R&R’ing papers that have little chance of publication, the ASR is “trapping” papers that may be perfectly suitable for specialty journals or other outlets. Thus, inflated R&Rs keep good research out of the public eye for years. You are suppressing science.

Second, inflated R&Rs damage the reputation of the ASR itself. The goal of a flagship journal is to be very picky. When people hear that a paper has been invited for revision, they believe that the editors think that the paper is of great merit and wide relevance. Inflated R&Rs undermine that perception.

Third, you are damaging people’s careers. By trapping papers, you preventing papers from being resubmitted to other journals that can help their careers. Also, R&R invitations are often seen as signs of intellectual progress, especially for doctoral students and junior faculty. By lumping together strong and weak papers, you are debasing the “currency” of the R&R. When people see “R&R at American Sociological Review,” they no longer know what to think and that pollutes the junior level job market.

Fourth, you are wasting precious time. Reviewers are usually full time faculty who teach, mentor graduate and undergraduate students, do administrative work, conduct research, and have full family lives. Thus, when you ask for a fourth reviewer, or a invite a paper for a third round of R&R, you are taking up many, many scarce resources.

If a typical professor earns $50/hour, and it takes about 3 hours to read and write comments, then three rounds of R&R with four reviewers each, creates a cost of $50 * 3 * 4 *3 = $1800 for each paper . By doing that for hundreds of papers, you’ve burned up almost a half-million dollars in faculty time. I did not to mention the ill feeling generated when reviewers see yet another request for a review.

So, please, implement policies then ensure an efficient, reliable, and highly selective e review process. It’s the right thing to do.

Sincerely,

Fabio