Stephen K. Donovan

Writing Successful Covering Letters for Unsolicited Submissions to Academic Journals: Comment

Steven Gump’s recent article on covering letters 1 is a potentially valuable contribution. My experience as an editor of fifteen years is that an informative and logically constructed letter of submission generally indicates that the associated paper is also well organized and worthy of consideration. I offer the following comments and ideas on submission as a supplement to Gump’s analysis. Gump is right in suggesting that a letter of inquiry is commonly an unnecessary and even sometimes annoying step for the editor. Often I have found the authors of such communications to be time wasters. Although a positive reply from an editor may give some potential contributors confidence, should we not query the value of a contribution offered with such timidity? There are some prospective authors for whom a letter of inquiry to an editor appears to be the most important part of the process of publication, since, following a positive reply, the manuscript is never submitted. It is as if merely having the title accepted for consideration in principle is sufficient for these ‘contributors,’ and I can only assume that their curriculum vitae carries this paper as ‘in preparation’ for perpetuity. Other potential authors will submit, but only after a lengthy correspondence. The advent of e-mail has made such time wasting easier. Although the paper is eventually submitted, it is preceded by a lengthy exchange of correspondence, the author bombarding the editor with questions that either are already answered in the instructions to authors or are unanswerable at that time, such as ‘When can I expect to see the paper published?’ Let the paper be submitted, reviewed, revised, edited, and accepted – only then I can determine an answer to such a question. I suggest that Gump’s essential components of a covering letter are

Online Review of Manuscripts: More haste, less speed?

With the modern culture of online submission and review systems, are peer reviewers being exploited and undervalued? What was once a simple process of accepting to review a paper, receiving it in the mail, and, eventually, returning it to the editor now requires passwords, usernames, printing off a hard copy, electronic reminders, and, tediously, entering all review comments electronically. Why not just say no? The hard work of the review process should be judging the paper, not fighting the program.

Research Journals: Toward Uniformity or Retaining Diversity?

The libraries of universities and other research institutions are home to an abundance of academic journals, published in multifarious sizes, thicknesses, languages, and formats, with covers varying from black to psychedelic and covering every subject imaginable. More uniformity of format would favour the author, who would no longer have to tailor style to wherever the latest contribution is being submitted, but the current diversity of formats is aimed at the reader. Long may it so remain.