[AISWorld] More on journal cycle times

[Thomas Stafford (tstaffor)]

Prof Mora raises interesting issues in his response to my response to his well-put points on publication queues  :-)

>>> judges for accepting a paper are the reviewers, and they are not valued.>>>

I agree. As long as reviewing is considered unimportant by department chairs, Deans, and tenure and promotion committees, reviewers are going to give first priority to the work that gets them promoted and tenured. Who would not?  Until we find a solution to this, much else that we can do is only a bandaid solution. Incented reviewers are critical to the process. 

There is a pragmatic yet informal quid pro quo at journals:  "those who wish to enjoy the peer review services should contribute to the peer review services as well." It is not actually stated as a requirement, but everybody understands. Not everybody honors it, but it is known. However, that still leaves reviewing, which the Dean does not view with approval at tenure decision time, as a "last in the queue" work activity. 

>>> the effective time for review a paper can be estimated on 2-3 hours 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.>>>

Well, yes and no. For no, see above:  reviewing is a last-in-line activity owing to how it is (not) incented by the bodies who decide rank and tenure. For yes, we have to question the assumption of time to initiation. There is the simple Poisson problem of time to point of processing in waiting queues, but these problems are always analyzed ceteris paribus. Plainly put, we can't easily assume that a reviewer attends immediately to an assignment once received, so even if we can optimize the queue to assignment, the wait time for processing once assigned also depends on myriad factors. Generally, we scholars who regularly review teach our classes and attend our committee meetings before we turn to our outside service work. There is a wait time.

But, in all, I still agree with the Professor:  it only takes a few hours to render a quality evaluation of a paper. The slowdown is in the intake/assignment process, if one puts aside the notion that reviewers should jump immediately to assignments when received. 

>>> Biology, Chemistry, Medicine have faster review-acceptance/rejection time frames and they have zero fee costs for publishing

Stay tuned. This is exactly where I intend to do my own benchmarking. Fortunately, quite fortunately, indeed, I have on my Senior Board a credentialed MD who also holds the Ph.D. in operations. He is a treasure, since we get lots of healthcare papers. He also edits for and publishes in the medical community, and he and I just shared a time on the phone talking about these things. The defining factor I discern in the fast-as-lighting turnaround times at the preeminent medical journals is *professional staff* because publications like JAMA and NEJM are run by a professionals who don't have to teach classes or publish their own research. Nothing gets work done like paying people to do it, I say.   

There is another journal in the Sciences legendary for quick turnaround:  PLOS, the Public Library of Science. However, it is a business, unabashedly. Each accepted article carries a $1300 fee for acceptance, and the revenue stream from that supports an operational staff of 15 who see to it quite effectively that the trains run on time. They do have some technological innovations (amazing what you can do with money, isn't it?), which are things that have been in my mind lately, as well. Searchable database of reviewer expertise and current assignment loads, for example, where you can instantly search out just the right set of credentials for reviewing a given paper and then check to see if that chosen individual is not already over-assigned or not. 

I predict we are at the cusp of a paradigm shift in peer review of scholarly research. Emerging business models are worth considering, and science-as-business is also a notion not to be dismissed. Most of what keeps us alive and healthy in the world of medicine resides in some point on the profit motive of somebody somewhere in the medical food chain. It results in lightning-fast research reviews for publication, though, and that gets my attention. 

On the side of constituent pressure for quicker queues to acceptance for articles, there is the equally important and increasingly popular issue of what I will call "publication bounties." When scholars are paid interestingly large amounts of money as a bonus for successful publication in premier journals -- well, of course they get anxious to find out what has happened with a given submission as quickly as possible. Big money is riding on that decision. Yet, it remains that the folks upon whom they rely and become increasingly impatient with for results are not given bounties for reviewing the work that will be subsequently rewarded when published. This is a business scholarship issue to think about; we appear to be handsomely incentivizing the production of scholarly research, but not its review. Marx would have field day with that economic equation. 

I am so glad folks are noticing this issue. We won't get anywhere on the top-level problem, which is incentivizing reviewers, without widespread awareness of the issue at a general level, I think. 

Humbly submitted for your further consideration, 

Tom Stafford
Editor, Decision Sciences Journal