What is published in our journals? Complaints
I have just come back from a conference where there was a ‘Meet the Editors' Panel’. At the end of the meeting there was a discussion session, which showed some widespread lack of understanding about the process of getting an author's paper published. This is in spite of my article four years ago that went into the issue quite thoroughly (CitationPaul, 2005). The reader is recommended to visit this article if it has not been read yet. I have also experienced some fairly robust comments from rejected authors, which give me the impression that talking about getting a paper published would be worthwhile. Hence this editorial.
First though, an unhelpful view of publishing is to distinguish editors and their teams from authors. It is as if the former came down from Mars, and as alien life forms were making life difficult for the latter. In reality, we are all part of the same community, from which some of us have been selected, or volunteered, or through some other democratic selection process, have taken on these review roles. So, if we as a community do not like anything about what is published in our subject, then it is up to all of us to do something about it, not just editors. For example:
Complaint: it takes too long to get a paper into print, sometimes three or more years.
Responses:
Don't submit to a journal that habitually takes three or more years to publish. It is worth observing that journals with such a turnaround time usually spend several iterations reviewing papers, with many editorial and referee proposals for change. By the end of the process, the published paper bears little resemblance to the one submitted, the length of the reviews in total exceeds the length of the paper and, who are the authors now? Surely they are the original authors plus all the reviewers, not just the original authors? So what is the purpose of this style of publishing? Apart from academic promotion ambitions, it seems to me that this could be considered any of the following:
Is it a right of passage?
Is it an initiation test?
Is it indoctrination?
When papers take too long, it is because one or more referees have taken too long or even not done the review at all, requiring then a new start reviewer. Who are the reviewers? Why, us of course! So we need to adopt a professional ethos as a community that places emphasis on professional reviewing.
I looked at some turn around times in issue 16:6, published in December 2007. Of the 12 papers published in that issue, nine were submitted earlier that year. Admittedly, six of these were in a special section on healthcare where the submission date was in February. So of the six general papers, three were submitted earlier that year: one was submitted in 2006 (requiring two revisions) and the other two were submitted in 2004 and 2003. The latter two look bad until you see that each had required four revisions. I do not know about these two in particular, but often revisions take a long time to come back. But folklore will tell you that the papers took four and five years.
Complaint: the quality of refereeing is poor.
Responses:
We are all the referees. So we should look to ourselves. To repeat the sentence above: ‘So we need to adopt a professional ethos as a community that places emphasis on professional reviewing’.
Maybe the quality of the reviewing is a function of the quality of the submitted papers. If we all pay more attention to the latter, maybe the complaint would be less common.
We are contemplating changing our review system away from just a review, and towards a ‘what does the paper need to make it publishable’ approach. The advantage of this latter approach is that a poor paper with some good research content might get a revision published by this positive reviewing, whereas current reviewing would just end up rejecting it. The Editors will consider this further, and if we agree that it might be a good idea, put the ideas out to our Associate Editors for discussion. Watch this space.
Complaints (by me at least): We do not publish the right material:
Little that is published is actually of any practical use.
Very few papers are to do with the real world around us, and yet in the real world, information systems are a major problem.
IS has little or no identity outside itself, so how would anyone know to come to us for help?
By quality and rigour we mean in our closed research world with its acceptable research methods – not the real world.
How can we use research methods that are slower to use in elapsed time than the rate of change of the phenomena being researched?
Very rarely if ever is the Hawthorne effect taken into account, and yet it is rarely if ever not present in our research activities.
Response: we can only publish from among what is submitted.
And now, something completely different, complaints by the Editors!
Editorial Complaints:
What not to submit to an IS journal (see CitationPaul (2005) for a full description)
Papers not written properly in the language of the journal. It is not the job of the reviewers to write your paper for you.
Papers in Computer Science or some subject that is not IS.
Research-free papers (although EJIS does publish well-argued opinion papers identified as such).
Thoughtless application of statistical packages to dubious data.
Castle confections built on sand (a suspect idea published some time ago, enriched by a series of improving modifications reported in a string of follow-up papers, leading to a dazzling edifice of little practical consequence).
Authors who claim, ‘A rejected paper has not been considered properly for the true worth of its content, which is …’. Yet when checking the paper, none of this worthy content is mentioned in the abstract. In fact the latter can be so anodyne the paper is rejected on the basis that the abstract tells you there is nothing in the paper worth considering. If you think the paper should be investigated beyond the abstract, then you have completely misunderstood the purpose of an abstract!
Authors who amend a paper based on the referees' comments without thinking about how to ensure that the changes maintain the coherence of the paper is worthy of a reject.
Authors who become rude about reviewers, editors, or the process. This just validates the quality of the review decision.
Overly long papers are an issue. We want clearly written, concise, interesting papers. Short papers can fail this test. Our instructions to authors put the matter succinctly as:
Authors are encouraged to communicate their works simply and clearly which should mean that the paper keeps the reader's attention however long it is – if not, it is too long. As a guide to less experienced authors, papers should not normally exceed 8000 words, or they must be compelling so that the reader fails to notice how much time the paper is taking to read!
How to get published in our journals
There can be no certainties about a paper being published, but I have never seen a paper rejected that answers the four questions below with their obvious answers being fulfilled. In fact, very few published papers meet all four questions obviously. But they would be better papers if they did.
Assuming the paper is an appropriate paper for the journal being submitted to, then:
What story are you trying to tell the reader?
• One story, note, not many. There may be two or three major points to the story, but much more than that confuses readers. A story written for the reader can be understood in 10 years time by the author if they need to revisit the paper. A story written for the writer (the majority published) will leave the authors as perplexed in 10 years time as readers are now.
What will the reader know after reading your story that they did not know before reading the story?
• The whole point of the paper one presumes
Why should anyone believe you?
• The downfall of many papers, but if not believable, then end of paper
Why should anyone care about the story being told?
• What value will the reader attach to the point of the story? If none, you will find that reviewers tend to disguise this problem under the rubric ‘significance of the contribution’.
What is the essence of your paper in one sentence?
• I know I said four questions, but this fifth question has nothing to do with whether your paper is published or not. Answering this question readily enables readers to attach the idea to you the author, and hence is likely to push your citation index up and enhance your reputation.
So it should be clear from the above that if we would like what is published in our journals to change, then we the research community have to change how we go about our business. There is no one else to do it. I look forward to a flood of well-written publishable papers in the near future.
In this issue
There are six papers in this issue, whose titles and abstracts do sufficient justice to them not to require repeating here. Two of the papers were submitted in 2008 and required two revisions and one revision, respectively.
The other four papers in this issue were submitted in 2007, mostly towards the end of the year (two in November both requiring three revisions, and one in December requiring two revisions). The last paper was submitted in June 2007 and required two revisions. So, anything between one and two years from submission to publication and with all papers requiring two or more revisions. I wonder if the advice given in this editorial, if followed, might reduce the turn around time by reducing the need for revisions. But for this to be tested authors need to read and follow the advice!
And lastly, a thank you to the accepting Associate Editors for all their efforts in progressing the articles in this issue:
Tom Acton
Ben Light
Shridhar Nerur
Frantz Rowe