Revise and Resubmit: conversations that should be going on in published literature are instead taking place in private, between authors and reviewers.
Ellison (2002) notes that R&Rs were once used sparingly and were in fact a mark of shame.
One option: eliminate R&Rs entirely.
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Replies
Economics has become the laughingstock of academic publication. Common question asked by scholars in almost any other field: "It takes you *how long* to get a paper published?"
How do we fix it?
Some suggestions...
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Initial review: ratchet up expectations for peer reviewers. It does not take four weeks to read a manuscript and write a report. Conditional on no desk rejection, economics journals take weeks longer to reach a first decision.
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Less radical option: limit referees to one shot at the paper. Set expectations that R&R requests will involve if...then statements making the future transparent:
e.g., "if the results are robust to adding controls for x, y, z, the revision will be accepted."
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Post-acceptance: jettison the anachronisms of the print era. What's the point of having an "online appendix" if ~100% of readers access the article online in the first place? Lag between acceptance and publication should be no more than 2-3 weeks for typesetting/proof review.
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Here's a radical one: allow parallel submission. Journals currently demand monopoly power over a manuscript for as many years as it takes to render a decision. Require authors to disclose multiple submission & to withdraw from one journal as soon as another accepts it.
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Competition is good, right? Incentives matter, right?
Parallel submission is the norm for academic book manuscripts and let's face it, economics articles are looking more like books all the time.
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Some journals require authors to disclose conflicts of interest. That's good.
I've never been asked to disclose conflicts of interest as a reviewer, or as an editor. Journals should ask, and should inform authors if their MS was reviewed by a conflicted referee. Readers too.
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Readers should also be informed when a published manuscript was handled by a non-"arm's length" editor.
In an ideal world, this would never happen.
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Currently
@AEAjournals
allow editorial correspondence to be forwarded from one journal to another. Why not automatically forward rejected manuscripts for immediate consideration, based on initial reports? Acceptance need not be binding on the author.
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@brett_matsumoto
Fair point! A reason to prefer a strict "one-shot" R&R. Make sure the reviewers get all their critiques & suggestions on the table in the first round. If the paper inspires more debate after that, publish it and let the debate occur in subsequent work that cites you.
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@JakeVigdor
Quality open access journals that review for technical competence and not "contribution" or "impact" are an existential threat to the "profession." Much like universal healthcare is to the Republican Party.
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@JakeVigdor
Great thread! I agree with almost all of this, but I don’t think that eliminating R&R altogether would be good (I see you offer a less radical suggestion below). Suppose a referee finds a mistake in otherwise very promising paper, thinks the mistake is fixable, but is unsure.
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