tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post4492693480670584100..comments2024-03-28T04:04:55.806-07:00Comments on Faculty of Language: Publication BluesNorberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-27610515285067824242012-11-20T12:39:51.414-08:002012-11-20T12:39:51.414-08:00Glad to hear that there is some attempt at rationa...Glad to hear that there is some attempt at rational management. My beef with lingua is the cost. As you no doubt know there is currently a little revolt in academia against Elsevier. I confess to being sympathetic. I believe that the future belongs to open source publication, with a lot of the real "reviewing" taking place by online comment. However, the future is not yet on us and I think that shorter papers with fast turn around times is a very good idea. One obvious way of cutting down size is cutting down on example sentences. All but a couple can be posted online on a dedicated site. However, the real saving would come from realizing that a good paper makes one or two points and we should expect even good ones to have some unresolved issues. Ad hoc verbiage to finesse these does not help and should be actively discouraged. Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-22429996049226393852012-11-20T11:36:30.487-08:002012-11-20T11:36:30.487-08:00The journal Lingua has no page limit, and we striv...The journal Lingua has no page limit, and we strive to do what Norbert proposes, i.e. to make a journal into a forum for circulating ideas, even those we do not agree with, rather than into a stamp-of-approval machine publishing your article 3 years after submission. We may not be the big three, but we are open to what they tend to publish. We publish about 2500 pages a year. Our ranking in ERIH is INT1, in SCImago Q1. Our figures show that authors are quite happy with the way their article was being treated. When authors complain about their reviews, I give them a second chance. The problem is that most authors prefer to tell tall stories of the publishing porn variety rather than to engage constructively with the editor. As an editor, I tend not to take reviews that are basically full fledged replies very seriously.<br /><br />In my (14 years) experience as a Lingua editor, I have found that it is quite hard to make reviewers write a 2 page review. Most are shorter, on average. I sometimes have to beg reviewers to write more than half a page, or ask for an additional review because that half page does not contain anything useful.<br /><br />Editorial boards are difficult to get into active mode. Believe me, I have tried, both at Lingua and at the Linguistic Variation Yearbook. Most icebergs are more nimble. I have also mooted the idea of penalizing late reviewers with fellow editors at other journals, and the reaction was generalized horror: we depend on reviewers, so we cannot chide them in any way. We are now thinking instead of an award for the most active reviewer, funded by Elsevier, the publisher of Lingua. Our goal a Lingua is to reduce turnaround times between submission and decision. The record suggests that we are successful. However, this takes daily vigilance on behalf of the editors, who are not exactly rewarded for any of it.<br /><br />I like the idea of shorter papers. Maybe they could be promoted by promising a shorter decision route for them, with quick, editor-only yes or no decisions. Glad to have your thoughts on thisAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02659974295352713609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-26712330612664921492012-11-12T09:38:50.069-08:002012-11-12T09:38:50.069-08:00As I have spent the past year largely prepping non...As I have spent the past year largely prepping non-linguistic papers I now see that ling is VERY different from the chemistry, chemical engineering, meteorology, and microbiology worlds I've had the chance to be exposed to. First, as we all probably knew already, the manuscripts are on the order of 1-10 journal pages and therefore bite off far smaller chunks of problem. All the detail gets dumped in the Supporting Information, which goes straight to the web. Second, manuscripts are not double-blind reviewed (the authors are known to the reviewers but not vice-versa). This means that for better or for worse, one's reputation goes with the manuscript: if somebody with a well-known lab writes a paper with surprising results, it's far more likely to get published than if it's a relative outsider, who is likely to receive extreme skepticism. Third, reviewers only get about 2-3 weeks of turnaround time (except for Nature and Science, it seems) and the authors are similarly limited in the time they have to re-submit (a month or two). I don't think all of these practices necessarily promote responsible science or responsible reviewing, but some might.Bridget Samuelshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02894455480408955059noreply@blogger.com