In a recent special issue on academic publishing in the Chronicle Review (June 12th,
2009), Ellen Baurle (a senior editor
with University of Michigan Press) has an interesting article titled "Women
as Authors: Get Aggressive." She
considers the differences between women and men in academic publishing. Her
argument is that women's disadvantage relates to their participation in the
practices, processes, and social relationships of publishing. In other words,
the practices that surround publishing are as important as the texts we submit
for publication. Though her observations relate to monograph publishing,
I think there are implications for journal articles as well. These are some of the points she observes from her experience in the publishing field:
Women are reluctant to sound off editors on the publishing prospect of their work. Baurle says that women are usually apologetic when they discuss publishing prospects with editors. They feel they are being too pushy or are wasting the editor's time. They don't realize that discussing prospects with editors is very much expected in the field and appreciated by editors.
Women are diffident to show incomplete manuscripts or works in progress in order to gain contracts. They feel that they have to wait till they have a more complete and polished draft for submission. However, Baurle argues "those who wait will probably receive their contracts later than those who were willing and able to send partial manuscripts for refereeing, and that tends to delay promotion at many colleges."
Women are less likely to serve in roles such as reviewers or consultants. They might find it difficult to manage such service with their other commitments, including those to their families. They may also consider such service as too low stakes for institutional credit. However, serving in such roles helps one get an insider perspective on the publishing process. More importantly, it helps one network with others in the field and in publishing circles. These contacts help one considerably in leveraging one's work into print. Baurle also reminds us: "Many editors would suggest that refereeing is a way of adding one's views and experience to the scholarly conversation --a way of getting one's voice heard, even if indirectly."
Related to the above problem, women are more focused on their own field and don't seem to develop a broader perspective on their work and related fields. Because of this narrow outlook, they have a localized network of scholars and professionals. Baurle feels that men have a broader network of connections. The implication is that if one enjoys a broad network, the scholar will be introduced to editors and senior scholars making decisions on publishing. They will also introduce more of their friends and collaborators to the powers that be. Baurle observes: "Those introductions are often the start of fruitful long-term relationships: Some contacts become authors, but just as important, others become referees, series editors, or disciplinary experts. They also have somewhat improved odds of being published, in that closer contact with presses means they will be likelier to know about new publishing opportunities (like new subject areas or series) or closed opportunities (discontinued series, departing editors) no longer worth chasing."
In general, men are more confident, outgoing, and pushy, thus gaining valuable connections and experiences relevant for negotiating their work into print. The moral is obvious: "Both women and men would be well advised to consider knowledge of publishing venues, editors, and series as a standard part of their professional tool kits."
As I read this insightful article, I couldn't help but wonder how other disadvantaged groups in publishing also suffer from similar limitations and attitudes. I am thinking especially of multilingual scholars from the geopolitical periphery. I could see myself as a young scholar from unknown Sri Lanka struggling to publish. I did feel diffident to approach editors or senior scholars to talk about my work. My feeling was that I was too junior and lacked credentials to warrant face time with an editor. I also often thought it was unprofessional to talk to someone about my work. I thought publishing operates in an impersonal fashion, based purely on merit, that talking to an editor about my work will be construed as unethical lobbying.
Periphery authors also suffer from a lack of productive scholarly networks. How can one build friendships and connections when traveling to conferences in North America or Europe is not easy? Air fare, hotel accommodation, and conference registration involve expenses that are simply too high for scholars in many countries. As they are not known widely in the field, they don't get consulted on areas that they are experts on. As a junior scholar, I have seen some senior scholars with connections being invited to contribute articles on language teaching or policy relating to periphery communities. I have seen this happen even in refereed journals which should base publishing decisions on blind review. I particularly remember a call for articles on a special topic issue on language planning in a leading international journal. My article based on painstaking fieldwork in Sri Lanka was rejected. When the issue was eventually published, I found that the authors who made it into print were senior scholars who didn't have anything new to say or didn't have new research to present. I doubt they went through the tedious process of submitting an abstract, making the short list, and then writing multiple drafts for peer review. As a senior scholar now, I see how some journals invite me to send a piece to a special issue, outside the peer review process. Networking has even greater bearing on collected editions or handbooks. Though these collections claim to be definitive of the knowledge in the field, contributions are based on friendships and connections.
As for taking up invitations to serve as referees or peer reviewers, periphery scholars have other constraints. In many countries, the remuneration from their work is not enough to support their families. Therefore, they have to do extra work to earn more money. Periphery universities also expect a lot in terms of teaching and service. In some cases, publishing doesn't matter for promotion or tenure, and no allowance is made for such pursuits. Such conditions prevent periphery scholars from giving time for other areas of service in the publishing process.
More importantly, like others in the academy, periphery scholars focus on writing and ignore networking. We have to educate everyone on the importance of participating in the other practices and processes of publishing. Even in graduate schools and apprenticeship programs, we see what Bruce Horner once called a "textual bias." These programs treat the research article as the focus of publishing and ignore the social practices that surround the scholarly text. Novice authors and minority scholars have to learn how to navigate the social processes and relationships involved in the publishing game. They have to realize the important implications networking and insider knowledge of publishing practices have in gaining a forum for their research and scholarship.
I once worked as an Assistant Editor for a regional weekly in Sri Lanka. I was impressed with the way the seasoned editor of the newspaper worked painstakingly on the layout of each issue. And this was before the digital age. The articles had to be cut and paste manually, using scissors, on large which sheets of paper, to be sent to the press. The editor did this with an eye for aesthetics, ease of reading, and juxtaposition of news stories to ironically comment on each other. The font type and size were also chosen with care to reflect the importance of the story.
I guess it is this background that influenced me to work hard on packaging each issue of TQ carefully when I took over as Editor. I chose articles that spoke to each other--articles that revolved around certain common themes. I even tried to get the section editors to consider choosing articles that commented on the chosen theme for the issue. Research Digest has been most successful in choosing entries related to the full length articles published in each issue. Since I had the luxury of choosing book reviews from an accepted pool of reviews, I also managed to choose reviews that were related to the theme of the issue.
I also worked hard toward writing a good editorial ("In this Issue," as it is called in TQ) that situated all the articles in the broader disciplinary discourse. I tried to point to the ways in which the articles in the issue continued certain strands of important conversation in the field. Whereas the tradition in TQ had been to present a few bulleted items that listed the main issues of each article in the editorial, I tried to write a coherent essay that led the readers gradually into the featured article.
I also chose the lead article carefully. I chose a think piece (or something resembling that if I had to choose only from matter-of-fact reports of empirical findings) so that readers had something a thought provoking essay to start with. I looked for an article that engaged with ideas, challenged our assumptions, and pushed the conversation in new directions. This was the closest I could get to in order to simulate the lead story in the news world.
I even fussed about the color and appearance of the cover. For my first issue in March 2005, we designed a new logo for the journal. We also changed the naming of the series from seasons to months (i.e., rather than Spring 2005, we called the issue March 2005) in order to accommodate countries that didn't follow the seasons in the Northern hemisphere. We chose the four colors for my first issues with care. I am not to be blamed for the color of the third issue, a teal, which didn't resemble the color we had chosen from viewing it on the computer screen. The latest color, yellow, was chosen by the TQ editorial assistant, Tracy Davies, as she felt that color had not been used in the past for the journal.
After all these efforts, I am now confronted with the possibility that packaging doesn't matter anymore for academic journals (and even for newspapers and popular journals). It appears that in the digital age, readers are simply downloading the article they want from diverse journals at will. They don't have a picture of the full issue of a journal from which they are downloading the article they need. Once they download the specific article they want from an issue, they move on to the next article from another journal. They don't have the time or the need to look at the other articles in that issue. And they don't care about the editorial. That is just a waste of time. In many cases, they won't even see the logo or color of each issue.
I wonder now if packaging matters anymore for academic journals? Connected to the technology and media format are other changes in attitudes and perception. Gone are the days when scholars appreciated the tactile feel of the cover and pages, the smell of freshly printed copies, the viewing pleasure of the color, font, and layout of the articles. Gone are the days when scholars read a full issue of a journal to grasp the different strands of conversation being carried out. We have become utilitarian as we ferret out the required information for an article we are writing or class we are teaching, and then move on with our business. Do we lose anything as we benefit from the novel technology and new reading practices?
The Board of Directors of TESOL has announced that TQ will have 8 less pages this year, and 16 less pages next year. There is more bad news in the publishing front for other journals and presses. CCC has also reduced its pages. It continues some of its discussions on previously published articles on the professional website of the Conference of College Composition and Communication. So, you might start a paragraph of a discussion on the printed journal, and will be asked to proceed to an internet address to access the rest of the article. Chronicle of Higher Education has combined its previously two separate sections into a single issue. Utah State University Press is completely folding.
What implications do these changes have for authors?
While the expectations of universities around the world are becoming more demanding, the outlets for academic publishing are shrinking. Even universities in China and Singapore want their young faculty members to publish in top-tier academic journals in the US to get their tenure or promotion these days. We see an increasing number of submissions from around the world in TQ. However, these authors have to compete for publishing space with senior and better-resourced authors in top western universities. Even before the page reduction hit us, TQ's acceptance rate had gone down from around 8 percent in 2005 to around 5 percent in 2007 and 2008.
We also have less space for creative new genres. Journal editors are sticking religiously to the word length they require or are reducing the length of accepted articles. Qualitative studies which employ a narrative approach to research reporting will be constrained by space limitations. An article on the challenges of negotiating a submission that a novice author and I (as editor) co-wrote in a dialogue format with embedded narratives is now longer than the preferred 8500 words in most journals. Even previously flexible journals are now refusing to countenance longer articles.
TQ has also started insisting on its own announced preference for 8500 words in recent times. In previous years, I was willing to go beyond the length if more data or an expanded literature review was important for the article. Now our poor authors have to omit some interesting sets of data, omit some fascinating pedagogical or research implications, or reduce the information on their research procedures. Already, research articles fail to include crucial information pertaining to the research blaming space limitations. At this rate, the authors may have to just give the raw data and highlight the main findings without providing important information required for other scholars to replicate the study or for younger scholars to understand the challenges in the process of conducting research.
At a time when all of us are exploring ways of pluralizing academic publishing by giving access to more non-traditional authors and representing non-traditional genres of writing, the space restrictions and closing of publishing outlets will dampen those efforts.
Authors do take rejection hard. However, there are different kinds of rejection letters. We have to read the letters with more care and detachment if we are not to spoil our own publishing opportunities. This doesn't mean that misinterpreting rejection letters is to be blamed completely on the authors. Editors do word these letters in convoluted ways, in an effort to mitigate the bad news, that it becomes difficult to decipher their actual opinion on the publishability of the article.
I have myself gone through this tragic experience. I had a submitted an article to College English when I was a graduate student. Though both reviewers were enthusiastic, the editor started the letter by saying: "Congratulations on coming so close to getting published in such an early stage of your academic career." I inferred that to mean that he wasn't interested in seeing the article again and/or that I didn't have a chance of getting that article published in that journal. It was months later, when I showed the letter to my dissertation advisor, Lester Faigley, that I learnt that it was actually a revise and resubmit letter. I hadn't paid enough attention to the closing statements in the letter where (apparently) the editor had extended the possibility of seeing a revised version with the suggested changes of the referees.
There are many kinds of rejection letters. TQ has at least six rejection letters. The following are the in-house code words we use for those letters (these terms don't appear in the letter itself): "Reject Not Relevant" for articles that don't fall into the subjects covered by the journal (say, an article on teaching reading in French); "Reject Regional Relevance" for articles that are of more relevance to the local teaching context and don't offer connections or implications for other contexts; "Reject Refer to Another Journal" are genres that fit another journal in the field much better (say, an essay that reflects on an interesting teaching technique that is suitable for a practitioner-focused magazine). These letters are usually sent out before the article go through the review process.
The other three letters come after the review process. "Reject No Hope" is for articles that the referees feel don't have a chance of getting published even after revision (perhaps because the methodology is so flawed that revision won't help); "Reject No Encourage" is for articles whose chances of getting published are not great, but they are not beyond redemption. "Reject Encourage" is for articles we certainly like to see again as we consider them good candidates for publication after revision. There is a difference in the wording of each of these letters. "Reject No Hope" won't mention revision or resubmission. "Reject No Encourage" will say: "If you intend to revise, you have to [mention the types of revisions expected and how the revised mss should be submitted]." "Reject Encourage" will clearly say, "I would advise you to revise the manuscript and resubmit [by making the stated changes]."
It appears that the author mentioned in the opening got a "Reject no Encourage" letter. However, if he was motivated to revise, there was nothing to prevent him from doing so. The decision letter did keep open that possibility, although it didn't explicitly request him to do so.
As they say, it is good to sleep over a rejection letter. Reading it when we are more calm and collected will help us see the good points in the referee comments and detect the doors the editor has left open for resubmission.
Authors always wonder whether it is proper to consult the journal editor before sending an article submission. The requests I have received have always been prefaced by an apology. I too have liked to clarify some issues with editors before I submit an article. In cases where the length is slightly longer, a creative style or genre of writing is employed, or the subject is novel, it is always good to ask a journal editor if the submission is acceptable. After all, having a clear word about this will help the author save time by sending it to a more appropriate journal. However, even I have had a few cases where the editors failed to respond, presumably treating such inquiry as a violation of the impersonal review system.
I have always tried to respond to such queries sent to TQ. But there are different types of queries. Some are constructive, others are not. Here are four types of inquiries I get:
1. An author sends a complete manuscript of a possible submission and wants to know if the article is relevant before submitting it formally. I am able to make a better judgment when I have the whole manuscript in front of me. Of course it is time-consuming to read the whole manuscript, in the midst of evaluating articles that have been submitted formally. However, since only relevance is queried, this doesn't require a close read. Yet, I have to caution authors that they shouldn't take my affirmative reply on relevance as indicating an eventual acceptance of the submission. This is a mistake that is easy to happen. Decisions are made only after expert reviewers have made their recommendations.
2. An author sends the abstract of the article and wants to know the suitability for submission. This is more desirable as it takes less time to read. A good abstract will also make clear the argument and direction of the article. However, I have to always tell authors that only the complete submission will make clear if all our requirements are met. For example, TQ requires authors to spell out their pedagogical implications. An abstract may not always indicate the pedagogical recommendations deriving from the study.
3. An author gives an outline of the article in his/her letter and asks if it is suitable. This approach is even more preferable as the letter provides more space to articulate the argument, implications, significance, and even length and style of the submission, among other details. From the selfish point of view of a busy editor, this is also less time-consuming than reading a complete manuscript.
4. Occasionally, I have had a couple of authors send me their thesis, dissertation, or report for a funding agency or university and asked if they can produce an article out of it for TQ. Such requests are irritating. Apart from the assumption that the editor has the time to read the whole dissertation to advice, there are other problems with such requests. Many articles can be derived from a major project of such nature. Even though the subject may be relevant, it is difficult to say if it will be written with relevance to our guidelines. Moreover, there is a huge gap between a research report and a journal article. Many modifications have to be made before it can be suitable for a journal publication.
In one rare case, we even had an author send us a Masters thesis and give us permission to have it published in TQ. I wasn't sure if the author thought we'll turn it into a journal article outselves or publish it completely!
Now I understand why certain editors don't like to entertain such queries. You never know how far some authors might go!
Readers have asked me why they can't make an electronic submission to TQ. We have accepted it on special occasions when authors had difficulties in printing and mailing an article out to us--especially from remote locations. However, the editorial board preferred to continue the long-established practice of accepting only paper submissions. In our policy meetings, editorial board members mentioned many concerns--
1. There is greater investment in paper submissions. Authors tend to plan more carefully before going through the process of submitting a paper when they have to print their copy and mail it out to a journal. Getting together a finished product in the traditional way forces authors to attend to the publishing requirements more carefully. Electronic submissions tend to be shoddy as authors tend to hit the "send" button too hastily.
2. The ease of electronic submission gives the illusion that anything goes. Sometimes, an article rejected from another journal is sent to us without any revisions or even reformatting to suit our publishing conventions. Sometimes, we have received term papers emailed to us by graduate students.
3. Foreign authors may not have access to electronic resources and will feel disadvantaged if we accept only electronic submissions;
4. Our referees read more closely when they read off the printed version. They prefer to review printed copies only.
However, TQ will soon have three editors in three locations. Diane Belcher and Alan Hirvela will work as Associate Editors in 2009 before they take over the editorship in 2010. It therefore makes sense to adopt a web-based system so that we can collaborate more efficiently from Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Ohio. The new procedure will also help TQ to review the submissions faster and offer decisions sooner. Many authors have complained about the delay involved in the review process currently. Therefore, TESOL has agreed to establish a web-based system next year. From March 2009 we will accept electronic submissions. In order to establish this process in a fair and efficient way, it is good to have some suggestions from readers on potential glitches and problems:
1. Will authors from any particular background feel disadvantaged? Much against the stereotypical view, we have recently found that it is foreign authors who prefer to send manuscripts by email. There are many reasons for this: foreign authors find that they are unable to get quality printouts in their country; they are unable to mail out a bulky package with three copies conveniently; such a package and postage to US are expensive. Besides, email is faster and more reliable than regular mail in some countries.
2. Should we accept both print and electronic submission? What kind of authors will still prefer paper submission? Of course, maintaining both types of submission will be a logistical nightmare for the editorial office.
3. Which web-based interface is most efficient for editorial purposes? (Have our authors found any particular program more desirable in their experience with other journals?)
4. Are any authors concerned about issues of privacy or other ethical and procedural conflicts as we move into electronic submission and review process?
A few days ago, Rod Ellis sent me an article to be reviewed for his journal Language Teaching Research. Though the names of the authors had been taken off, I knew immediately from the title that the article had been submitted to TQ earlier. The referees had, however, recommended that the article be rejected. Though it is perfectly fine to resubmit the article elsewhere, I was concerned that I won't be impartial in my evaluation. Therefore, I wrote back to Rod to say that I had evaluated this manuscript before. I did tell him that the article was more suitable for the section in his journal "Regional Studies" for which it had been submitted.
However, Rod wrote back and asked: "If the author has decided not to resubmit to you but has received reviews I would really like some evidence that he/she has attempted revisions and not just sent the original article to another journal (LTR). Would you be able to check if some revisions have been made?"
I see that more and more editors consider this a fair request and not a violation of the editorial protocol. I did check and found that the manuscript hadn't gone through any changes. I informed Rod about this. I don't know how Rod is proceeding on this matter. If it was me, I would inform the authors about this discovery and yet offer them the possibility of a review if they can do the following: send the review comments of the previous journal, show how they took them on board to revise the article, and send a revised version.
Such a case did happen sometime earlier in TQ. When I asked Gabi Kasper to review an article on pragmatics, she said she had considered it for Applied Linguistics, which she was editing at that time. However, taking a look at the article, she found that it had indeed been revised based on the comments of her referees. We considered the article for publication, sent it out for a fresh review, and did publish it after substantial revision. And, yes, Gabi was one of the reviewers.
The moral of the story? Authors should realize that the publishing world is a small world after all. There's a good chance that their resubmitted article will go to the same reviewers in the new round of review. Though it is perfectly appropriate to have the article considered for publication elsewhere once the review of the original journal is complete, you must make sure that you do all the revisions suggested by the previous reviewers. In some of my own submissions, I have even started mentioning in my cover letter the name of the journal to which I had submitted my article before, the suggestions they had made for improvement, how I had changed the manuscript in response to those suggestions, and the reason I was considering a different journal for publication now. That information might in fact help the editors look for a different set of reviewers, if they wanted.
I guess it's the excessive pressure to get published that is motivating more and more rejected authors to write angry letters to the editor when they are rejected. I don't want to get angry but put on my analytical cap as a discourse analyst and study the different strategies adopted by the authors to fight their way back into publication. I have just started this study. I have identified only two strategies at this point. I hope I'll get more data displaying other strategies before I finish my editorship.
Strategy #1: Cite the other great journals you have published in.
This strategy was adopted when a senior scholar in the field found her article rejected by the referees. When she received the rejection letter, she wrote back an insulting email. She claimed that she had published about 20 articles in refereed journals, some of them more prestigious than TQ. What audacity did the referees and I have to reject her article?
There are many reasons why this is not a winning strategy. It doesn't matter how many articles one has published. Each article is taken on its own merit by referees who don't know the identity of the author. It is not surprising that senior scholars are not sometimes successful in refereed publication. The very attitude that one is sure to get published because he/she has published before is bound to make one careless and complacent in writing. And then, what is the cutoff point for an impressive list of publications? It is not uncommon to find scholars publishing more than twenty articles in their career these days. (The proliferation of academic journals provides ample opportunities for publication.)
Strategy #2: Claim you are the authority on the subject.
To go to the other end of the continuum, this strategy was adopted by a novice author--an American teacher of English who seems to have worked in a foreign country for many years. He wrote an article boldly titled: "The accent myth: A response to attacks against the native speaker model." Though everyone is free to have their opinion, in this case the opinion was not backed up by good evidence or argumentation. My decision letter will show that I tried to offer constructive suggestions to the author:
"Your article raises an important question: What level of English proficiency is optimal? However, it might fruitfully be argued that the preceding question is
incomplete--that a better question for the field of TESOL would be "What
level of English proficiency is optimal for the particular learners in such
and such a particular context?"
For instance, the article seemed to assume that students should be made to
conform to native-speaker norms because their interlocutors will be native
speakers of English from Kachru's "inner circle." In many parts of the
world, however, English is being used as a lingua franca between
individuals who might never actually speak with a native speaker of English
from "inner circle" areas such as North America, Britain, or Australia.
While good reasons for teaching native-speaker norms might still be argued,
your article seems to take insufficient account of the complexity of
English usage in the world today.
Another area that seemed insufficiently developed was the treatment of
research literature. At a number of points, the article relied on anecdotal
evidence to support its arguments. Such evidence is often helpful in adding
interesting narrative examples, but over-reliance can be problematic. In
addition, at some points, the literature seemed to be portrayed in overly
broad strokes, such as in the statement "There is, however, no evidence
supporting the assumption that children actually learn more easily, than
adults." While there may be some evidence against the critical period
hypothesis, there also is an established body of evidence in support of it,
so a more nuanced discussion would seem to be in order.
We hope that these comments are helpful to you, and again we would like to
thank you for sharing your article with us."
The author shot back with this email (there was no salutation or signature):
"If a non-native speaker of English cannot make himself understood by a
native speaker (who has had a lifetime of experience listening to and
understanding English) then how can he make himself understood by a
non-native speaker from another culture? That such a thing can happen goes
beyond common sense and thus carries the onus of proof (as does the notion
that young children learn languages easier than adults). It is not
scientific for people to accept ideas in the absense [sic] of either evidence or
common sense backing them up."
I am not sure I was being accurate in labeling this strategy "claiming authority on the subject." What we find in this case is that the author claims authority based purely on his status as a native speaker. He wasn't claiming authority based on research or scholarship. In effect, his identity was enough to give value to his argument. No proof needed. It also appeared as if the author was being sarcastic toward me, knowing that I was a "nonnative" speaker. Was he asking what right I had to evaluate his argument in the article as I didn't have the background to understand his position?
Perhaps some authors think that they can fight their way into publication. . . !
Some readers have inquired about the reasons for TQ’s low impact-factor. The impact factor is an approximation of the average number of citations in a year, given to those papers in a journal that were published during the two preceding years. Impact factors are calculated each year by Thomson Scientific for those journals which it indexes, and the factors and indices are published in Journal Citation Reports (http://portal.isiknowledge.com/portal.cgi?DestApp=JCR&Func=Frame).
What is intriguing for many about TQ’s low impact factor is that TQ is the flagship journal of the international TESOL organization. It has a sixty year history. It ranks high on the list of journals universities in many countries recommend to their faculty for publication in regards to tenure and promotion. Scholars from China, Turkey, Hong Kong, and UK have told me that TQ ranks highly in the estimation of their universities. TQ’s acceptance rate remains one of the lowest in the field, proving it to be a highly selective and competitive journal. For the past three years, TQ’s acceptance rate has ranged between 8.5 to 7.0 percent (i.e., only 7 or 8 articles out of 100 submissions get accepted for publication). For the above reasons, many scholars expect articles in TQ to be highly cited and to have a higher impact factor. In comparison, very recently established journals that began publishing within the last five to ten years by commercial publishers have a higher impact factor.
To explain this anomaly, we have to first consider TQ’s poor electronic access and visibility. For a long time, TQ was not available in any online data bases, such as JSTOR. It was just three years ago, after much discussions with the TESOL organization, that I managed to get TQ available in JSTOR <www.jstor.org>. Even now, TESOL has opted to adopt a five-year moving wall. This means that our issues are made available five years after publication. Current issues are available in Ingenta <http://www.ingentaconnect.com/>, but one has to purchase the article one wishes to download. Only subscribers to the journal have immediate and free access to our articles. Obviously, TESOL is concerned that open access to the journal will affect its subscription and revenues.
What bearing does open access have on impact factor? More TQ articles will be cited—and more often—if readers all over the world can read them freely and without delay. Since only the thousand or so subscribers to the journal have unrestricted access to TQ currently, not all of whom are active researchers and writers, our articles won’t be cited as much.
Testimony from other editors suggests that providing open access to their journals not only increased their impact factor, it also increased their marketability and subscriptions. Sally Magnan, in her editorial to the 90th anniversary issue of MLJ, recounts how moving to a commercial publisher (Blackwell) in 2000 enabled the journal to grow in leaps and bounds (see “From the Editor: The MLJ Turns 90 in a Digital Age,” MLJ, vol. 90.1, pp.1-5). Here are some developments she observes: “Electronic dissemination of the Journal has spread rapidly, in large part through consortia
agreements with institutions in the United States and internationally. . . . In addition, many readers whose institutions do not have subscriptions or consortia arrangements can access the MLJ through licensed databases to which they belong. As a result of its increased digital availability, online access to the MLJ has grown steadily in recent years, from 3,720 articles downloaded in 2000 to 7,433 in 2001 and 27,899 in 2002 when JSTOR began offering the MLJ . This number grew to 165,145 in 2003 when Blackwell included the Journal in its Synergy database from which articles were accessed an average of 120 times each, and to 119,326 at the most recent 2004 report. Data from Blackwell Publishing reveals that in 2004 the MLJ’s electronic access allowed it to reach over 135,000 scholars around the world. . . . Given the international visibility of today’s MLJ,it is interesting to look at the Journal’s circulation by world region. From 1999 to 2004, there has been a steady growth in the Journal’s international distribution, which changes the proportion of journals going to institutions and individuals in the United States versus those going abroad: from 70% U.S./30% abroad in 1999 to 57% U.S./43% abroad in 2004. . . . As might be expected, growth in international readership has led to a dramatic increase in the number of manuscripts submitted for consideration by international authors. In 1999, 24% of submissions came from outside the United States; by 2004 that number had grown to 38%. . . . Related to the increasing number of submissions, the acceptance rate is declining as shown in Table 2. The 2005 acceptance rate was 11% overall, with 15% for U.S. articles and 8.5% for articles from other countries.. . . In the Thomson Journal Citation Reports Social Science Edition 2004, the MLJ ranked first in the applied linguistics category in the immediacy index (2.348), which considers how quickly articles in a journal are cited. Its impact factor was 0.750, which gives the average number of times articles published in the MLJ in the past 2 years were cited during 2004. The cited half-life was 7.8 years; this figure gives the median age of MLJ articles cited in 2004.”
Apart from open access and superior marketing networks, there are other resources commercial publishers are able to provide. They are able to post online the upcoming articles, long before they are published in paper form. Imagine the advantages for researchers who can read the contents of an article about a year before it appears in print (this is the length of time it often takes these days for an article that has been accepted to appear in print). Timeliness and speed matter in publishing and research. An article that is available earlier will be cited immediately and influence future research and publications.
We also have to consider the nature of TQ as a journal of a practitioner-oriented professional organization. The editorial board is constantly under pressure to accommodate the interests of teachers, who are our primary constituency. At times, it appears to me as if the expectation of TESOL membership is that TQ should serve as a good professional newsletter for the organization rather than a selective research journal. I have been asked to include more reader exchanges (opinions), book reviews, best teaching practices, and reports from the classrooms around the world. I have now included new sections like the Research Digest (to disseminate research information from significant articles in other journals) and symposia (to present opinions of leading scholars in the profession on key professional issues) to focus more on knowledge dissemination. Though these genres of articles will certainly make interesting reading and appeal to the interests of practitioners, they take away valuable space from research articles. Opinions and exchanges are not taken into account in computing the impact factor.
If being a leading research journal is what matters, TQ would focus on many other strategies to improve the chances of its articles being noticed and cited more often. Here are some strategies certain editors adopt to improve the impact factor of their journals:
n Insist on titles that would foreground topical, timely, significant keywords that have greater chances of receiving a “hit” in an online search;
n Insist that articles submitted to the journal cite articles previously published in that journal. That would boost the number of times the journal’s articles have been cited!
n Publish more review articles. It is said that research articles get cited later than review articles. However, review articles have an unclear status in TQ as our guidelines state that full-length articles published in the main section must “merge theory, research, and practice.”
Of course, some of these strategies are ethically questionable. We haven’t had to consider these strategies anyway as we don’t compete in online searches (our articles are available only five years later!) and impact factor doesn’t rank highly in our mission. It is more important for our professional constituency that our titles appeal to teachers and sound reader-friendly rather than attract the attention of researchers in online searches.
I don’t think that the demand that TQ serve the interests of teachers and be a practitioner-friendly journal is unfair. That after all is consistent with the mission of TESOL. However, the competition among journals is so intense and research is becoming so specialized that we can’t be all things to all people. We can’t be both a highly cited research journal and also a practitioner-friendly newsletter. We must define the mission of the journal carefully—and stick to it!
I guess the scholar I wrote about in the last blog didn’t read what I had to say. She didn’t also get the subtle admonition that writing an article to suit the interests of the editor is not always the best way to seek publication.
I received another message from her a few days back. She wrote:
Dear Prof. Canagarajah,
Thank you very much for your instruction, and my paper is finally almost done. But after searching TQ, I seemed to be only able to find one reviewer who is an expert in phonology: Prof. --- of --
Thanks and regards,
Dr. xxx
I wondered: why would she want to know the names of our reviewers who are experts on phonology? I wasn’t sure if this was an innocent question out of sheer curiosity. On the other hand, giving the names of experts on phonology might give the impression that these are the persons who would review her submission. It was clear that the author was looking for our potential referees, not just experts on phonology. Furthermore, we may unwittingly mislead the author because we don’t necessarily use only the scholars from our editorial board to review our articles. More importantly, the information might violate the procedures involved in the blind review.
Therefore, I politely responded:
Dr. xxx,
Our review process is anonymous. Therefore, we don't give out the names of the experts on phonology who review for us. In addition to those on the editorial board, we also get other scholars to review for us.
Best,
Suresh
So that’s strategy number 3 I guess. (Note that in the last entry there were two strategies in one!) The third strategy is related to the first two: i.e., to achieve publishing success, shape your article to suit the interests and tastes of the possible reviewers.
The unrelenting efforts of this author only convey to me how the pressure to publish is driving everyone toward lobbying strategies. Publishing is all about making your research and findings appeal to the potential referees of your submission. It is okay if you have to considerably depart from the findings and claims that derive most directly from your study. Writing in a manner that interests the potential referees and getting published is what counts. Are research and publishing for the good of the human community or for the new knowledge contributed to human inquiry becoming a thing of the past?
