[AISWorld] Journal Reveiw Cycle Times/response and expansion

[mmora at securenym.net]

Dear Professor Stafford,
Thanks for your comments for the sake of our research discipline. I would
like to add/comment on some of them:


#1 I have the clear sense that editorial service is not
> widely prized for tenure and promotion purposes in comparison to the
> superb value that is put upon accepted publications in top tier journals.

This is the paradox: judges for accepting a paper are the reviewers, and
they are not valued.

#2 > Yet, despite an inherent operational expertise even the best planning
> runs into the cycle time corollary to Murphy's Law: work expands to fill
> the available time

It is a truth that a peer-based review process is a free service (but
besides of the highly valued contribution for quality control, the time
frames for it are not suitable in the new concept of service). To be
honest, the effective time for review a paper (from experts in top tier
journals) can be estimated on 2-3 hrs in 2-3 iterations, so the problem is
the scheduling of the paper assigned by the reviewer, so it is very likely
that the paper is in stand by for months. This is the process review
problem. None of us can believe that the review process lasted several
months because reviewers read the paper all of this time.


#4 The fastest review cycles I know of are at the A+ Finance journals.

Well, the highest impact factor journals listed by ISI Thompson (over
50.0) are in the Biology, Chemistry, Medicine, and other relevant
disciplines, and their review-acceptance/rejection time frames are about
4-6 months, and they have zero fee costs for publishing (once accepted the
papers). They are of high quality so, are their reviewers better organized
than us in IS/IT?

#3 Fast, cheap or good; pick any two.

The main purpose of my initial email is challenging the current status quo
and creating awareness that in other disciplines, the high quality of the
accepted papers are preserved with acceptable time frames for the
review/acceptance-rejection cycle, without need to be pay for paper,
neither to be paid for reviewing them.

Finally, I again share the extreme advance on the systematic research
process conducted in these disciplines. Please see the following papers:

1.	King, Ross D., Jem Rowland, Stephen G. Oliver, Michael Young, Wayne
Aubrey,
 Emma Byrne, Maria Liakata et al. "The automation of science." *Science*
 324, no. 5923 (2009): 85-89.

2.	 King, R. D., Whelan, K. E., Jones, F. M., Reiser, P. G., Bryant, C. H.,
 Muggleton, S. H., ... & Oliver, S. G. (2004). Functional genomic hypothesis
generation and experimentation by a robot scientist. *Nature*,
*427*(6971), 247-252.

Thanks, Dr. Mora



On Mon, March 30, 2015 11:08 am, Thomas Stafford (tstaffor) wrote:
> ACM Senior Member Manuel Mora recently posted in these pages a heartfelt
> lament on the perceived extensive time to acceptance for juried
> manuscripts in our field, commenting about, "... the damage that we cause
> in our discipline for an excessive review period on an average of 8 to 18
> months, where in other disciplines, the
> submission-review-acceptance/rejection cycle is about 2-3 months."
>
> As an Editor for one of the prominent business publications I respond to
> his posting not to critique nor refute, but to sympathize.
>
> I face the same issue each day: the time it takes to intake, assign,
> jury, and decide the fate of important scholarly research is surprisingly
> long, given the superb planning, excellent intentions and tireless
> service of the numerous parties involved in running a journal. We have
> good people, working hard; why does the outcome seem so slow to arrive?
>
> My own journal is operationally sensitive to cycle time, it being at the
> historical core of our traditional expertise in operations and channels
> (though I hasten to add, we welcome a broad and interdisciplinary body of
> researcher under our new strategic vision).
>
> Yet, despite an inherent operational expertise even the best planning
> runs into the cycle time corollary to Murphy's Law: work expands to fill
> the available time.
>
> I do not mean to make light of the review cycle time issue. I have been
> thinking hard about it lately, while wondering why my editorial work has
> also been expanding to fill my available time :-)
>
> What I have realized is this: the compensation for doing review work is
> vague and intrinsic. I have the clear sense that editorial service is not
> widely prized for tenure and promotion purposes in comparison to the
> superb value that is put upon accepted publications in top tier journals.
>
>
> And that, really, is the issue. Those who review do it for the love of
> science, since pragmatically speaking it is not work likely to figure
> prominently in gaining tenure or rank, while those who submit work to
> these vaguely rewarded editors and reviewers absolutely need it for
> career advancement and success, and need it as soon as possible.
>
> You see the conundrum I hope: the need for quickly accepted articles is
> orders of magnitude greater than the compensation and motivation to do
> lots of reviewing or editing.
>
> I don't know that there is a solution that meets each of these
> diametrically opposed needs/motives. And it is important to remember a
> few cheeky business maxims when tempted to be disgruntled at the speed
> with which your paper is handled at a major journal.
>
> First; you get what you pay for.
>
>
> The fastest review cycles I know of are at the A+ Finance journals.
> There, authors pay a hefty submission fee when they send in a paper, and
> pay another submission fee when they return a revision, too. But, you get
> results in a few weeks instead of a few months. And, guess what? The
> reviewers get paid.
>
> Second; every person wants three things in any business situation. They
> want it fast, they want it cheap, and they want it good. But, they only
> get to have 2 out of those three. The question is: are you willing to
> sacrifice quality for speed, or for price?
>
> Well, since our custom hereabouts is generally not to charge submission
> fees, but at the same time to definitely expect good review work when we
> submit our papers, the 2 out of 3 tradeoff in our field generally eschews
> speed in favor of having good reviews for free, I'm thinking.
>
> That is my view from the Editor's suite. I don't get paid either, by the
> way.
>
> And my Senior Editors and Associate Editors, and the reviewers they
> assign? Working for free, as well. In fact, the best of them (and who
> would not want the best handling their paper?) are doing that free work
> for more than 1 important journal, and so they are working very hard
> indeed...for free.
>
> I'm not sure what the answer is to the points Prof. Mora raises about the
> inexpeditious review process in our field, but that does not stop me from
> thinking about it. All editors do; after all, the most frequent question
> we get is "how long will it take?"
>
> Fast, cheap or good; pick any two.
>
>
> Humbly,
>
>
> Tom Stafford,
> Editor, Decision Sciences
>
>
>
> *******************
>
>
> Thomas F. Stafford, Ph.D.
> Editor, Decision Sciences Journal
> University of Memphis
> Memphis, TN  38152
> DeSciEditor at gmail.com
> tstaffor at memphis.edu
>
> *******************
>
>
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