The way it works now is you write a paper then you send it to a journal and they review it and decide whether to publish it. The basic unit is the paper. What if we made the author the basic unit? Instead of inviting submissions, Econometrica invites applications for the position of author. Some number of authors are accepted and they can write whatever they want and have it published in Econometrica. The term would be temporary, maybe 1 year.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to just write the paper you want to write, not the paper that the referees want you to write? The quality of papers would unambiguously increase. After all, your acceptance is a done deal, anything you write will be published, why bother writing anything less than the most interesting idea that is currently on your mind.
Quality control is achieved by rotating in the authors currently writing the most interesting stuff. Once the current slate of authors is chosen, there is no need anymore for referees or editors. But if you want peer review, you can have that too. Anyone wishing to prepare a referee report is invited to do so, they can even do it anonymously if they want and even make it open to the public. The journal might even want to append the reports onto the published paper.
Come to think of it, these journals already exist: blogs…
That’s about the way manga publishing works in Japan.
Yeah, and the Japanese light/serial/genre novel publishing industry works that way as well. It’s very rare for authors to write a story first and then try to sell it, to the extent that Natsuhiko Kyogoku is (in)famous for doing that with Summer of the Ubume. They do write “pilot” scripts though, unless they have an established reputation.
Generally, though, the publishing company assigns an editor to every author, and the editor works pretty closely with the author on the development of the story, making sure it will appeal to the magazine’s target audience (proven/established authors are allowed a bit more leeway, of course). So it’s not really true that “contract” authors can write whatever they want.
I hope I was charitable enough in pointing out why I think this is a horrible idea at the original site.
So you never get invited back to be an author again, nor do you get invited to be an author in another top flight journal. So you’re back to publishing in third rate journals and jobs are back to judging you on the quality of journal you publish in. Gaming the system the way you mention seems to be easy enough to detect and adjust to, if this were to become a common practice.
The downside I see is that there would potentially be far fewer author positions than there are currently papers being published, since it sounds like each author would have the opportunity to publish in every edition of the journal during his tenure.
there is no need anymore for referees or editors.
I’ll agree with referees, but not editors. As an editor for more than 25 years of work written by well educated people (minimum Ph.D. or professional degree), I have yet to see any professional writing that can not be improved by a good editor.
Anyone who believes that their writing can not be improved by at least one additional reader (i.e., editor), is deluding themselves.
In addition to helping with overall organization, fact checking, spelling and grammar, a good editor stands in for and advocates on behalf of the intended audience.
If you have not had any good experiences working with an editor, then I submit that you have not worked with a good editor. In a professional setting, the relationship between an editor and an author may be the most honest and “intimate” professional relationship the author will ever have.
Academic journal “editors” don’t generally work on the text in my experience. They decide what’s in and what’s out based on referees’ reviews. They may suggest that authors get the help of the kind of editor you’re talking about, but in my experience they don’t generally do that kind of work.
I believe the job anon is referring to is called copyeditor.
No, copyediting is only a part of what a good editor of professional work does.
If I may ask, what kind of journal is it that you edit? Or are you not an editor of an academic journal at all? In which case the disagreement between you and the quoted author may hinge on different interpretations of the word “editor”.
Many editors write their own reports. Larry Samuelson and Vince Crawford in particular are very conscientious in providing their own insight to authors in both accepted and rejected papers. But certainly, most journal editors don’t do copy editing.
“, I have yet to see any professional writing that can not be improved by a good editor”
… Heh, indeed.
anon,
Your credibility would be greater if you exhibited correct spelling.
A lack of referees is why so much economics has a poor reputation.
I prefer Ambrose Bierce’s definition of “editor” in The Devil’s Dictionary. YMMV.
EDITOR, n.
A person who combines the judicial functions of Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus, but is placable with an obolus; a severely virtuous censor, but so charitable withal that he tolerates the virtues of others and the vices of himself; who flings about him the splintering lightning and sturdy thunders of admonition till he resembles a bunch of firecrackers petulantly uttering his mind at the tail of a dog; then straightway murmurs a mild, melodious lay, soft as the cooing of a donkey intoning its prayer to the evening star. Master of mysteries and lord of law, high-pinnacled upon the throne of thought, his face suffused with the dim splendors of the Transfiguration, his legs intertwisted and his tongue a-cheek, the editor spills his will along the paper and cuts it off in lengths to suit. And at intervals from behind the veil of the temple is heard the voice of the foreman demanding three inches of wit and six lines of religious meditation, or bidding him turn off the wisdom and whack up some pathos.
O, the Lord of Law on the Throne of Thought,
A gilded impostor is he.
Of shreds and patches his robes are wrought,
His crown is brass,
Himself an ass,
And his power is fiddle-dee-dee.
Prankily, crankily prating of naught,
Silly old quilly old Monarch of Thought.
Public opinion’s camp-follower he,
Thundering, blundering, plundering free.
Affected,
Ungracious,
Suspected,
Mendacious,
Respected contemporaree!
–J.H. Bumbleshook
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/972
http://www.stoppingpoints.com/devils-dictionary/editor.html
http://www.thedevilsdictionary.com/?E
Isn’t this sort of how a lot of literary journals work? Is the quality of those that do unambiguously higher than those that do not?
It certainly works for the New Yorker. But my sense of things is that there is an enormous amount of worthless writing in literary/poetry/criticism journals that practice submissions in a similar way.
The “best of the best” journals will work this way to an extent, although even the New Yorker makes an effort to publish unknowns–quote from their website: “For the past five years or so, anywhere from a fifth to a quarter of the stories published in the magazine have been by writers who hadn’t previously published fiction in The New Yorker.” (for more on the process: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/ask/2008/12/questions-for-treisman.html)
Beyond the top tier magazines/journals, most work on a slush pile system (although I’m sure top drawer writers breeze through the process). Each publication will have a theme or aesthetic aspiration, but beyond that they do not contract out slots to writers and then accept whatever the writer turns in. Literary submissions are a brutal process, you are often one among hundreds each month clamoring to be seen, heard, understood. And that goes for the mid-tier publications, let alone something like The New Yorker.
I agree this sounds terrible, if the goal is to continue producing papers of the same level. For one, diversity of authorship will fall, i.e. concentration will increase. The number of article slots is limited. First-mover advantage. Once you are in, you have an incumbent advantage. If you are not initially chosen, odds are you’ll never publish in a top journal. The modal number of articles in top journals by good (not great) economists will fall from, say, 2 to 0. The share to top economists will greatly increase. Hello 1-percenters… (Unlike in the economy, journal articles are much closer to a zero-sum game.)
True, authors need no longer kowtow to reviewers’ idiosyncrasies, but most papers benefit from reviewer and editor comments. Sure, they are diluted, but otherwise too many papers with errors get through. The role of editors and reviewers is simply moved: rather than evaluate individual papers, they evaluate the whole package ex ante. I don’t see a world of difference, either way.
My suggestion: We need more invited, unreviewed papers. Editor asks a respected researcher to write a paper on a broad topic, and the paper is not subjected to reviewers. We already have a few in the form of Presidential Addresses (AEA, AFA, etc.) and prize lectures (Nobel, Ely…). We could use more.
You present a problem I agree with–”diversity of authorship will fall, i.e. concentration will increase”–yet your solution, of inviting “respected researchers to write”, will still fall into this trap.
You are right; the difference is volume. I would like to see the number of invited papers increase from, say, 1% to 5% of all papers. A sizable increase, but overall most papers would be in the traditional unsolicited manuscript system, reviewed, etc. In contrast, it seems Prof. Ely would like to see most, or all, papers published under this new system.
This being an economics blog, perhaps the best solution would be to experiment and let the market sort it out: let a few journals try out this new system, and we can observe the outcomes. The problem is that in economics it takes a long time for contributions to be clearly good or bad. That’s why econ Nobels are awarded for work done 20-40 years before the award is made.
“Anyone wishing to prepare a referee report is invited to do so, they can even do it anonymously if they want and even make it open to the public. The journal might even want to append the reports onto the published paper.”
The online journal “Economics: The Open-Access, Open Assessment E-Journal” operates something like this (http://www.economics-ejournal.org/). Referee reports and other comments (sometimes anonymous, sometimes not), author responses, and occasionally editor decisions are all appended to contributions that are online as “Discussion Papers.” It does appear that these disappear if and when the paper becomes a “Journal Article.” At that point, however, other comments can be added.
And that journal is so far pretty much of a flop.
Certainly not at the top. But how are you defining “flop”?
That journal is a real shitpile of econophysics and heterodox crap.
Buried in this review is the outline of an excellent response to this proposal:
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7146312/lou-reed-metallica-album
There is an interesting analogy between the “tyranny of editors and referees” and the “tyranny of record labels and fans”:
“As a rule, we’re always supposed to applaud the collapse of the record industry. We are supposed to feel good about the democratization of music and the limitless palette upon which artists can now operate. But that collapse is why Lulu exists. If we still lived in the radio prison of 1992, do you think Metallica would purposefully release an album that no one wants? No way…. The reason Lulu is so terrible is because the people making this music clearly don’t care if anyone else enjoys it. Now, here again — if viewed in a vacuum — that sentiment is admirable and important. But we don’t live in a vacuum. We live on Earth. And that means we have to accept the real-life consequences of a culture in which recorded music no longer has monetary value, and one of those consequences is Lulu.”
Klosterman makes a compelling point, but I’m not sure it applies with respect to Metallica. Those guys have already sold so many records that, even under the old system, they’d be free to release whatever unlistenable crap they wanted to under the guise of “artistic freedom.” It is their prior success, not the current state of the music industry, that gives them that freedom. For example, Santana was following his muse and releasing bizarre and unlistenable albums years before the record industries hit the current crisis. But he sold enough copies of Abraxis and concert tickets that it probably didn’t matter.
I don’t believe the dearth of good papers is a problem that needs much attention. The dearth of time to read all these good papers and make coherent sense of them as an audience is a real problem. There is no attention in Jeff’s cute idea to the economics of the audience’s attention.
This is an insightful comment, thanks! +1
You read such awmsoee books!But my god you participate in a lot of challenges. I'm not quite so brave. . .
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This is how arXiv.org works.
The quality of papers would unambiguously increase
Does tenure also unambiguously increase the quality of teachers?
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences works this way in part. Until recently, academy members could directly contribute papers on the behalf of others. Now, they can are limited to their own research (or at least something they’re listed as an author on). Papers are still peer-reviewed for scientific validity, but not for their subjective impact.
Are there journals like PLoSOne in economics? Every submitted article that’s remotely intelligible is sent out for review… and it’s actually getting a surprisingly high impact factor.
@NAME REDACTED — Is there any gatekeeper for arXiv.org? I don’t know about the rotating list of approved authors bit.
Sort of, but not really:
from wikipedia:
‘”endorsement” system was introduced in January 2004 as part of an effort to ensure content that is relevant and of interest to current research in the specified disciplines. The new system has attracted its own share of criticism for allegedly restricting inquiry. Under the system, an author must first get endorsed. Endorsement comes from either another arXiv author who is an endorser or is automatic, depending on various evolving criteria, which are not publicly spelled out. Endorsers are not asked to review the paper for errors, but to check if the paper is appropriate for the intended subject area. New authors from recognized academic institutions generally receive automatic endorsement, which in practice means that they do not need to deal with the endorsement system at all.’
Also, ArXiv is /the/ big place in physics for a lot of fields.
Yeah; I’m a physicist turned biophysicist so the last/only time I had anything on there was 2005. It’s a good approach to allow for novel approaches that’s probably useful in economics where it seems like, to some extent, you are entitled to your own facts. I think PLoS is a better model for experimental science; mostly because I know first-hand that a tiny fraction of researchers have any clue how to analyze and report data in a statistically rigorous way. Then again, reviewers aren’t always good watchdogs for data integrity.
If I were running the scientific world, I’d have the National Academy host a secure, online database of proposed experiments. Any journals and funding committees that agreed to participate would grant reviewers access to a submitting author’s history of proposed experiments (which could be culled for relevance by some administrator bound to secrecy). All experimental results in a paper would be accompanied by dates and references to their submitted experimental plan, and submissions would be randomly audited to ensure no one’s gaming the system. My ideal journal would use a process like this, but, like PLoS, have zero standards for impact.
Oh I would love to go to the BEA – it looks like a blast.And, I'm so sorry I won't be able to pittacipare in the book discussion of the Old Capital. I had to return the book and my library won't let me check it out again – apparently I used up my limit – grr. Hopefully next time I'll be able to join you guys in the read a long or book discussion!
The quality of papers would unambiguously increase. After all, your acceptance is a done deal, anything you write will be published, why bother writing anything less than the most interesting idea that is currently on your mind.
The specifics of the setup will affect this greatly. If the selected author can write anything, there will be a temptation, especially near the end of the year, to push out half-baked ideas to increase one’s publication count, and possibly one’s citation count as well. If the author is limited to a particular number of papers, then there’s a different set of incentives.
Of course, one could get at least one paper out of dissecting the various incentives and improving the proposal in accordance therewith.
Columnists. They are given a set space and they can more or less fill it with whatever they want, once or twice a week. This could work in a similar way, but of course isn’t it simply better to drop the insistence on publishing in a journal, and aiming at a wider audience? Hence, column in a big paper/magazine.
This post sounds like a great “innovation” (how is this that different from the Journal of Economic Literature, well respected researchers writing in their field of expertise?) for tenured/superstar economists, but it sounds awful for the newbies/non-pedigreed economists.
More importantly, I do not think that the biggest problem with journals is that authors are writing what a journal wants…there is a journal for every skill level and interest area. Sure we can’t all have AERs, but we can’t all be the 1% either…that’s life. So let’s attack some a real problem. For example, publication lags are so long that by the time an article is in print it’s no longer the cutting edge (for the discipline or the author). Publishers like the Berkeley Electronic Press and other online journals have made a big step in that dimension. BE is great because the paper can get route to different levels depending on the revisions the authors pursue…letting the authors do the cost-benefit analysis for the next stage.
BTW I don’t think journals are the biggest problem for economists right now. While the tone is a little dramatic for my tastes, I think these suggestions to improve economics are more first order: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2012/01/how-to-save-economics.html
The BE journals have also failed to live up to what those who got them going hoped for, although why that is the case is a matter of substantial ongoing debate.
I think this is a completely worthless proposal that will not be adopted by any top academic journal. It will block out the unexpected great paper by the unknown person. It is completely contrary to the spirit of what academic journals are and should be about.
As it is, I would lay odds that if some journal editor were stupid enough to put into place such a policy, s/he would pretty quickly turn it into something where the authors competing would in effect make proposals for what kinds of papers they would write. That is something different from what the proposal is.
Probably what comes closest to this is the Journal of Economic Perspectives (and to some extent the JEL also) where most papers are invited. But in those cases the topics are specified, not just, “hey, send us any old thing you feel like writing within the next following time period.”
“The quality of papers would unambiguously increase.”
Really, unambiguously? As he clearly hasn’t thought this through, I wonder if these journal authors would do the same.
haha I was thinking the same. Seriously, now you are letting author’s get away with writing whatever they want without having to please anyone. hmmmm yeah that has always been an incentive that makes people work harder!
Good papers are not the result of “pursuing your fancy”, they are the result of hard work on a problem that other people want an answer to.