[AISWorld] On quality of journals and quality of reviews !

[MurphJen at aol.com]

I know this debate has died down some and I'm not really trying to kick it  
up again, but another thought occurred to me:
 
As EiC I try to attend as many conferences as possible where potential  
authors are presenting, primarily to meet them and offer guidance early.  This 
takes time and is expensive.  Due to the past recession and  falling 
academic budgets I'm seeing senior level researchers being more  particular on 
where they attend, perhaps this is also a contributor to weaker  submission 
papers as junior researchers are not getting the early feedback we  need to give 
them.  Everyone focuses on attending ICIS but so few get to  present and 
those that do are usually not that junior and not the ones learning  to 
conduct research.
 
I know my ability to attend smaller conferences with better author  
interaction has diminished, I've heard this from many other colleagues.   I've also 
observed that institutions are reserving travel funds for those  needing to 
get tenure/promotion and having less to senior level travel (I do  
understand the expectation of getting grants and such to support senior level  
travel, but that has been cut down also).
 
Perhaps the review issue is not on the back end of reviewing submissions,  
but rather at the front end of providing input and feedback during the  
early presentation phase of research?  The traditional model is do  research, 
write a conference paper, submit it for review, if accepted present,  get 
feedback during presentation, then do the  journal submission.   This means 
papers have had a review cycle and a feedback session before the  journal 
submission is made.  This means the journal submission is usually  in pretty good 
shape.
 
I also serve as a track chair at HICSS and usually a minitrack chair at  
AMCIS as well as support other conferences as possible.  I understand the  
difficulty of getting reviewers for conferences, especially with the explosion  
in the number of conferences.  I also have a problem with authors who  
submit to a conference but won't agree to review for the conference.  I  
understand there may be some conflict of interest here but authors need to  
understand that the job of improving others work is also their  responsibility.  A 
couple more observations: conferences are becoming less  inclusive as 
acceptance rates need to drop to make sure deans see the  conference as a quality 
conference, and in those conferences that are more  inclusive (like AMCIS) 
session attendance is not very good, sessions are  smaller with less feedback 
as more papers are crammed in with less presentation  time.  
 
A note to authors, you don't have to present all the detail in these  
presentations, getting feedback is more important than presenting the depth  of 
your paper, give us enough to discuss it, your paper will improve.
 
I don't have solutions for all this, just observations that perhaps its  
time we start thinking of the total research process, from inception through  
conference presentation to finally journal submission.  Perhaps we are  
shorting this traditional approach and this is why there are feelings that  
research isn't as good or reviewers aren't as good.  I do think we need to  give 
more earned credit for reviewing, be it at conferences or for journals. It  
is not sufficient to say that is the responsibility of senior researchers 
to do  this.  It is not sufficient to say that we don't want the poor 
reviewers to  not review, this only puts the burden on those that put the effort 
into good  reviews.  
 
Any solutions?....murray e. jennex
 
 
In a message dated 10/15/2013 5:47:52 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
MurphJen at aol.com writes:

I'm not sure what the point of the below is but I'll add my perception as  
a journal editor in chief.  Quite frankly authors are lucky to get  reviews. 
 I have seen a flood of submissions the last 2 years from all  parts of the 
world where before I saw mostly US and European  submissions.  I think this 
is good but, there are a lot of junior level  papers and not enough senior 
level reviewers to go around.  The trend I  do not like is that of authors 
feeling it is their right to get their reviews  quick.  I'm not sure if this 
is an output of the open source journals  that have promised fast 
turnarounds, but to get quality reviews takes time as  there simply aren't enough 
quality reviewers who have the time to be almost  full time reviewers.  My gripe 
(and I admit it is as an EiC) is that it  seems everyone wants/has to 
author papers and few have the desire/time to  review.  Also, unfortunately, new 
authors don't seem to understand the  concept of a thorough literature 
review and seem to have taken the debate on  the ethics of recommending papers 
from the journal being submitted to, or  of previous papers from senior 
reviewers as license to ignore  them. 
 
This leads to my major question: Why should a journal spend limited  
reviewing resources on doing thorough reviews of papers that do not meet the  
basic standard of scholarly research by grounding themselves in the  literature.
 
I am tired of the excuse that the authors do not have access to the  
articles so they ignore them.  I see so much research that authors  consider new 
but is at best a minor extension of something that has been  published but 
the authors did not or could not get the article to know  it.
 
I think we are at a crossroads of scholarly literature.  We argue  about 
plagiarism but I think we are seeing a greater issue of authors not  looking 
at the literature so that they can make the claim "there is little  research" 
or that "this is new" as a justification for their paper.   To give credit 
we have to recognize the research that has been done, to build  a body of 
knowledge we have to build on what has been done, not do it over and  over 
again.
 
If authors want quality reviews they need to show the respect to the  
senior scholars by at least looking at their work and building on it rather  than 
trying to waste their time by making them tell them what literature to  
look at rather than addressing the quality of the paper.
 
Also, I propose that we establish a new ethic: authors can only submit if  
they serve as reviewers.  I am also tired of hearing the cries of needing  
to get published to get tenure or promotion so they don't have time to  
review.  We need all universities to start recognizing the intellectual  
contribution of reviewing as being on equal or near equal par with  authoring.  Do 
this and we will all have quality reviews.
 
sorry to rant but you can see this has touched a nerve that has been  
throbbing for a while.
 
Murray E. Jennex, Professor of MIS, San Diego State University
 
 
In a message dated 10/15/2013 5:05:48 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
mmora at securenym.net writes:

Dear  colleagues,
In past weeks, a strong and relevant debate on the academic  influence
of ISI listed journals was discussed in this forum. Well, on  same ideas
I wonder whether there are studies on the quality of the  reviewers (e.g.
level of seniority, level of expertise in the topic,  level of expertise
on research methods, and in particular on the role  played as peers
seeking to improve the advance of science and suggesting  clear insights
rather some simple elaborations of flaws without any  rational 
justification).
In summary, are we living in a spiral of hard  reviewers and bad 
researchers?
or rather the opposite one is the reality?  I am sure that Senior 
researchers
will have reviewed rare reviews from  people with less expertise and 
seniority
level, so comments on it are  welcome ! Of course, this non ethical practice
should be eliminated. As a  funny real history, a Mexican top researcher
in Education received a  strong critique on the null value of paper that
he wrote, and the  suggestion was to use some papers writen by him in the
past (of course,  the reviewers did know it). I know of other cases similar
cases. Well,  sciences is about truthness but wrong reviews maybe are now a
real  headache ! Cheers !
Manuel Mora
ACM Senior  Member


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