On every burner

Aside from the outcome, one of the interesting things about my recent journal submission, was the amount of time spent on the paper before submission.  A coauthor and I worked on this paper with varying degrees of intensity for over five years.  To put this in context, between the paper’s inception and its completion, we both took our comprehensive exams and started and completed our dissertations.  In the years between, our paper spent time on every burner.

It seems that the most frequently-discussed burner is the back burner, but I would characterize the early stages of our project as time spent on the side burner.  During this time, we made some progress on the paper every week or two.  This also describes the time immediately after our data collection was complete.  During data collection, there were times when our paper was on the front burner and received our undivided attention.  Following data collection and the completion of complete drafts, however, our paper was frequently moved to the back burner while things like the aforementioned comprehensive exams and dissertations occupied our time.  During this time our paper also periodically spent a day or two on the front burner when one of us became motivated to make some progress.  The summer was also a period in which our paper was on the front burner as we prepared it for submission.

While I would not recommend allowing your projects to spend so much time on the back burner (especially if you work at a research institution!), there are some ways that these long delays may have contributed to our paper’s eventual acceptance.  Putting the paper away for long periods of time necessitated that when we did work on the paper we had to familiarize ourselves with it once again.  Looking at the paper with fresh eyes allowed us to recognize the weaknesses in our paper.  My work this summer, for example, started with the idea that I would make some minor adjustments before publication and ended with a nearly complete reorganization of the introduction and literature review.

It is possible (and perhaps even likely) that our paper would have been accepted and published by now (even if rejections had preceded this publication) if we had submitted it in a lesser form several years ago.  Regardless, the fact that our longer-than-ideal time frame may have worked to our advantage suggests that others who have potential publications simmering on the back burner should move them to the front burner and send them out.

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Painless publication

A while ago I “wrote” to a journal editor who had spurned a paper that I wrote and, despite the fact that the paper was later published and received some media attention, the publication process was painful.  Even before first R&R, the paper was rejected at multiple venues.  While the final product was arguably a better paper, I wouldn’t have minded an acceptance at a much earlier stage.

Publication, it turns out, is not always so painful.  Over the summer I submitted a paper for review and there were several notable differences from my earlier experience.  First, I received the editor’s decision within a month.  The dear journal editor in my previously mentioned situation, by comparison, took three months to inform me that he was rejecting my revised and resubmitted paper without review.  The largest difference, however, was in the outcome.  Based on the quick turnaround, I was apprehensive about opening the e-mail and pleasantly surprised to see that the paper had received a conditional acceptance, the holy grail of review outcomes.

If publication was always this painless I may have been content at an R1 institution.  They have small class sizes and value teaching, right?

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