PS: Political Science & Politics | 2021
Against Desk Rejects!
Abstract
Ascourge is sweeping the discipline of political science (and other sciences as well). Affecting an enormous proportion of active political scientists, the name of this new disease is “Desk-Reject Affliction.” Every major journal in political science is infected, with journal editors suffering, by far, the most serious cases of this disease. The malady has progressed to the point that many journals, including respected journals, are now desk rejecting1 half or more of the manuscripts submitted to them.2 Some desk rejects involve a single individual—possibly the editor of the journal but perhaps a subeditor—making the decision that a manuscript is not appropriate for the journal and/or, because it is judged that the paper would not survive a normal peer-review process, is not worthy of expending precious reviewer resources.3 Beyond the traditional practice of rejecting unequivocally “off-the-wall” manuscripts (e.g., papers without a bibliography), desk rejects are a fundamental violation of the hallowed principle of peer review. Whereas it may be true that published papers are subject to peer review in one form or another, those not published are not published due to the decision of a small number of people—perhaps only one—whomay not be experts in the paper’s subject matter. For a subeditor in the field of macro-level comparative politics to decide that a paper on micro-level political psychology, for example, does not warrant review by a journal is not a valid example of peer review.More generally, the personmaking the decision to desk reject amanuscript often has entirely different qualifications and expertise compared to a typical subjectmatter peer conducting a review. Moreover, whereas peer review may not necessarily require the views of more than a single reviewer, the standard in political science has been (and is, for papers that are not desk rejected) to make decisions on the basis of multiple independent reviews (see “the dreaded third review”).4 In this sense, our political science journals now have become more like law reviews: many papers are rejected by non-peers without any substantive review andwith little justification. The reasoning behind a desk reject is nearly always opaque and rarely if ever explicated in any detail. Editors sometimes offer gratuitous advice to send the paper to a subfield journal— although the standards for what should be published in a general versus a subfield journal often are completely undetectable from the papers that are published in the journal and are virtually never explicitly articulated by the journal. On occasion, editors may have specific hidden criteria for what type of papers they seek to publish (e.g., no formal theory). It is difficult to regard the typical desk-reject “justification” as a meaningful review of a rejected manuscript. The large literature on procedural justice teaches us that there are two aspects to any given transaction, such as submitting a paper for publication. First, there is the outcome. I suspect it is rare for authors to complain too loudly about procedural failings when the decision is to publish their paper. However, as has been written, “legitimacy is for losers.” That is, the second-most galling aspect of a desk reject is that the rejection is procedurally unfair.5 First, there are instances of editors taking months to desk reject papers, although I suspect this is rare. Second, the failure to provide substantive reviews to justify an editorial decision renders the rejection arbitrary and illegitimate.6 Even the notorious New York Police Department’s use of “stop and frisk” left a paper trail about why the decision to stop someone was made (albeit only after a judge ordered it to do so). Judicial scholars sometimes understand judges’ decisions as reflecting “what the judge ate for breakfast.” Perhaps the same theory is apposite for some editors as well. To be rejected by an unfair process is the worst cut of all. There is another unwelcomed consequence of the deskreject system.When Pat Patterson was editor for the American Political Science Review (ancient history), he often spoke about the review process as a “seminar by mail.” I am sure that most authors have profited from negative reviews from true peers.7 However, papers that are desk rejected repeatedly have little or no hope of improvement because the author is never told what specifically is wrong and how the shortcomings might be corrected. I believe our science and our scientists are harmed by that. Another implication of Desk-Reject Affliction is that editors have assumed far more power than they traditionally have been given. Few authors want an editor who is simply a calculator, doing nothing more than counting the number of positive and negative reviews and deciding accordingly. However, for editors to be able to decide without any accountability (via a paper trail) that a large proportion of papers are not worthy of publication means that editors—whose terms often are years long—have unprecedented influence over the discipline.8 This is not a wise strategy. A discipline shaped by only a few editors is likely to be much different from one in which peers decide what does and does not get published. Why have desk rejects become so commonplace in our discipline in such a short time? Editors (like criminal lawyers who engage in plea bargaining) inevitably claim that if every paper submitted were to consume the time of three reviewers, the editorial process would grind to a halt. There simply are not enough peer reviewers (i.e., juries) to handle the crushing load. Therefore, the problem is that too many papers are being submitted. Desk rejecting has become the solution to this problem.