University of Bristol

Mike Taylor

I was a bit shaken to read this short article, *Submit It Again!
Learning From Rejected Manuscripts* (Campbell et al. 2022), recently
posted on Mastodon by open-access legend Peter Suber.

For example:

> Journals may reject manuscripts because the paper is not in the scope
> of the journal, because they recently published a similar article,
> because the formatting of the article is incorrect, or because the
> paper is not noteworthy. In addition, editors may reject a paper
> expecting authors to make their work more compelling.

Let's pick this apart a bit.

**"Because they recently published a similar article"**? What is this
nonsense. Does the *Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology* reject a paper
on, say, ornithopod ontogeny because "we published something on
ornithopod ontogeny a few months ago"? No, it doesn't because it's a
serious journal.

**"Because the formatting of the article is incorrect"**? What is this
idiocy? If the formatting is incorrect, the job of the publisher is to
correct it. That's literally what they're there for.

**"Expecting authors to make their work more compelling".** This is code
for sexing up the results, maybe dropping that inconvenient outlier,
getting *p* below 0.05 ... in short, fraud. The very last thing we need
more of.

Elsewhere this paper suggests:

> ... adjusting an original research paper to a letter to the editor or
> shifting the focus to make the same content into a commentary or
> narrative essay.

Needless to say, this is putting the cart before the horse. Once we
start prioritising what kind of content a journal would like to have
ahead of what our work actually tells us, we're not scientists any more.

Then there is this:

> Most manuscripts can eventually Ynd a home in a PubMed-indexed journal
> if the authors continually modify the manuscript to the specifications
> of the editors.

I'm not saying this is incorrect. I'm not even saying it's not good
advice. But I worry about the attitude that it communicates --- that
editors are capricious gods whose whims are to be satisfied. Editors
*should* be, and good editors *are*, partners in the process of bringing
a work to publication, not barriers.

Next up:

> Studies confirming something already well known and supported might
> not be suitable for publication, but looking for a different
> perspective or a new angle to make it a new contribution to the
> literature may be useful.

In other words, if you run an experiment, however well you do the work
and however well you write the paper, you should expect to have it
rejected if the result doesn't excite the editor. But if you can twist
it into something that *does* excite the editor, you might be OK. Is
this *really* how we want to encourage researchers to behave?

I've seen studies like this. I have seen projects that set out to
determine how tibia shape correlates with lifestyle in felids, find out
the rather important fact that there is no correlation, and instead
report the Principle Component 1, which explains 4.2% of the
morphological difference, sort of shows a slight grouping if you squint
hard and don't mind all your groups overlapping. (Note: all details
changed to protect the guilty. I know nothing of felid tibiae.) I don't
wish to see more such reporting. I want to know what a study *actually*
showed, not what an editor thought might be exciting.

But here is why I am so unhappy about this paper.

It's that the authors seem so cheerful about all this. That they
serenely accept it as a law of the universe that perfectly good papers
can be rejected for the most spurious of reasons, and that the proper
thing to do is smile broadly and take your ass to the next ass-kicking
station.

It doesn't seem to occur to them that there are other ways of doing
scientific communication: ways that are constructive rather than
adversarial, ways the aim to get at the truth rather than aiming at
being discussed in a Malcolm Gladwell book\[1\], ways that make the best
use of researchers' work instead of discarding what is inconvenient.

Folks, we have to do better. Those of us in senior positions have to
make sure we're not teaching out students that the psychopathic systems
we had to negotiate are a law of the universe.

# References

[Campbell, Kendall M., Judy C. Washington, Donna Baluchi and José E.
Rodríguez. 2022. Submit It Again! Learning From Rejected Manuscripts.
*PRiMER*. **6**:42.
doi:10.22454/PRiMER.2022.715584](https://journals.stfm.org/primer/2022/rodriguez-2022-0066/)

# Notes

1.  I offer the observation that any finding reported and discussed in a
    Malcolm Gladwell book seems to have about an 80% chance of being
    shown to be incorrect some time in the next ten years. In the social
    sciences, particularly, a good heuristic for guessing whether or not
    a given result is going to replicate is to ask: has it been in a
    Gladwell book?

 


I was a bit shaken to read this short article,

 Submit It Again! Learning From Rejected Manuscripts

(Campbell et al. 2022), recently posted on Mastodon by open-access legend Peter Suber. For example: Let’s pick this apart a bit.

 “Because they recently published a similar article”

? What is this nonsense.

Scholarly Stockholm Syndrome in full gallop

Publishers provide certain services (peer-review management,
typesetting, brand badges, sometimes proof-reading or copy-editing,
archiving, indexing) to the scholarly community.

Those services are of greater and lesser value, provided at higher and
lower levels of quality, and cost greater and lesser amounts. Of course,
we in the scholarly community want high-value, high-quality low-cost
services. This is true whether the publisher in question is a
multinational corporation with a multi-billion-dollar turnover, or a
tiny boutique press run on a non-profit basis for the sheer love of the
process.

Since the scholarly community (researchers, authors, peer-reviewers,
academic editors, etc.) is spending money in exchange for publication
services, and since publishers are providing publication services in
exchange for money, it is clear that **the goals of these two groups
cannot be aligned**. Any money that the scholarly community can save on
publication costs is income lost to publishers; and any additional money
that publishers can charge for their services is money lost to the
scholarly community. I hope that so far, this is uncontroversial.

In the same way, if you sell me a second-hand car, then however well you
and I might get on in civilian life --- we might support the same
football team, drink the same beer, discuss the same novelists, watch
the same films --- then for the purposes of that transaction, what is
good for you (a high price) is bad for me; and vice versa. Note that in
saying this I am not condemning or even criticising you. I am just
stating a fact about transactions.

Now, suppose my wife and I sit down and decide that we need to buy a new
car. We consider Hondas, Fords and Fiats. We weigh up various models on
their merits, compare their prices with their features, and reach a
decision on what we want to buy and how much we're prepared to spend. We
*then* approach the various Honda dealers (or, as we may have decided,
Ford dealers or Fiat dealers). We negotiate with them to agree a price
that we are happy with for a model that is in good enough condition.
Different dealers compete with each other to win our custom by offering
good cars at a low price. This is a functioning market.

What we *don't* do is invite all the dealers to come and join us in our
initial conversation. When my wife and I are discussing how important it
is to us that our new car has variable-speed intermittent
windscreen-wipers, we have that discussion in an environment quite free
of car dealers telling us how great Fiat's intermittent-wipe feature is.
How could we possibly reach a coherent decision on what our own
requirements are if we're bombarded by the claims --- some competing,
some in collusion --- of all the car dealers? And how can we think
sensibly about what we're prepared to spend if we're surrounded by the
dealers' defences of the various financing arrangements they offer?

So in the same way, I feel that the scholarly community needs to figure
out what publication services it needs, free of the influence of
publishers who (and again this is not a criticism) have their own
agenda. *Then*, when we know what we want, we can go to the publishers
who offer the kinds of services we're interested in, and invite them
compete for our business on the basis of features and price.

But involving them in the initial what-we-want discussion can only lead
to confusion, and a compromised outcome. Which is what we've seen for
the last 50 years. This was the fatal flaw that led to the [deeply
flawed Finch
Report](http://svpow.com/2012/06/30/belated-thoughts-on-the-finch-report-on-achieving-open-access/) and
to the [erosion of the RCUK's initially very progressive OA
policy](http://svpow.com/2013/06/17/why-did-rcuk-betray-us-to-barrier-based-publishers/).

As a side-note: my wife and I may end up deciding we don't need a car at
all: we might decide we can walk, or cycle, or take public transport.
Car dealers would hate that: they would advocate against such an outcome
with all their might if they were involved in that discussion. Which is
why they can't be.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[**Note.** This post is adapted from [a message to the Open Scholarship
Initiative mailing
list](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/osi2016-25/3QCkHfRmQnc/NlT2llwiAwAJ).]{.small}


Publishers provide certain services (peer-review management, typesetting, brand badges, sometimes proof-reading or copy-editing, archiving, indexing) to the scholarly community. Those services are of greater and lesser value, provided at higher and lower levels of quality, and cost greater and lesser amounts. Of course, we in the scholarly community want high-value, high-quality low-cost services.

Why publishers cannot be around the table when the scholarly community discusses its communication options

I am just about out of patience with academic departments putting up
[endless idiot
arguments](http://openaccess.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2014/05/23/jisc-oaic-webinar-hefces-open-access-requirements-for-ref/)
about open access.

Bottom line: we pay you good money out of the public purse to do a
highly desirable job where you get to work on what you love --- jobs
that have tens or dozens of candidates for every post. That job is:
**make new knowledge for the world.** Not just for you and a few of your
mates: for the world. If you're not prepared to do that, then get the
heck out of the job, and vacate a position for someone who will actually
do what we pay them for.

Sheesh. I try to be understanding, I really do. But all this "Oh, oh,
it's not like it used to be in the old days" whining has worn me down.
No, it's *not* like it was in the old days, when you got paid to play,
with nothing expected in return. Earn your damned keep, or get out of
the road.

(And, yes, this is a toned down version of the comment I originally
composed in my head.)

\[Originally posted as [a comment at *The
Guardian*](http://www.theguardian.com/science/occams-corner/2014/jul/28/open-access-effective-measures-threat#comment-38804680).\]


I am just about out of patience with academic departments putting up endless idiot arguments about open access. Bottom line: we pay you good money out of the public purse to do a highly desirable job where you get to work on what you love — jobs that have tens or dozens of candidates for every post. That job is:

 make new knowledge for the world.

Not just for you and a few of your mates: for the world.

Researchers: do your damned job

Short post today. Go and read this paper: [Academic urban
legends](http://sss.sagepub.com/content/44/4/638.full) (Rekdal 2014).
It's open access, and an easy and fascinating read. It unfolds a tale of
good intentions gone wrong, a chain of failure, illustrating an
important single crucial point of academic behaviour: **read what you
cite.**

# References

[Rekdal, Ole Bjørn. 2014. Academic urban legends. *Social Studies of
Science* **44(4)**:638-654. doi:
10.1177/0306312714535679](http://sss.sagepub.com/content/44/4/638.full)

 


Short post today. Go and read this paper: Academic urban legends (Rekdal 2014). It’s open access, and an easy and fascinating read. It unfolds a tale of good intentions gone wrong, a chain of failure, illustrating an important single crucial point of academic behaviour:

 read what you cite.

References Rekdal, Ole Bjørn.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

Scholarly Stockholm Syndrome in full gallop

Why publishers cannot be around the table when the scholarly community discusses its communication options

Researchers: do your damned job

How untrue “facts” propagate in the scientific literature