> friend had a paper go three rounds at AER and that took 3 years. I > wouldn't be surprised if a lot of bad papers get rejected quickly and > that would bring down the average turn around time a lot.
That is indeed the case. Journals get many papers of low quality, and it's easy to reject the bad ones out of hand. And remember, most papers could be improved, and will go through a round of revision. > But that is > irrelevant if you are submitting a good paper that is eventually going > to be published. Then you care about the time to publish and its > disgraceful at nearly all economics journals. - - Bill Dickens > William T. Dickens It's not irrelevant at all, and it's not prima facia disgraceful, at least on the part of journals. First, it's not irrelevant because its a signal that your paper is being taken seriously, rather than a curt "this is lame." After having seen some lame papers in my day, this happens more than you might think. Second, don't blame journals - blame your colleagues. It is simply impossible to get decent reviews on papers. Take a non-hypothetical example - my recent article in Rationality and Society. This paper is an agent based simulation of an epidemic where agents engage in a very simple signallying game. Now how many of my colleagues could read that paper? Among sociologists, relatively few. Add into the mix that some might lazy, on sabbatical, have family issues, etc. Then it becomes very hard to get reviewers. That happened when I first submitted it to a health journal - nobody they knew was willing to read a technical model. I know one person whose paper was sent to *ten* reviewers. There were promises that the reviews would come in, but they never did. But what can the journal do? I know among sociology journals and some others, turn around times have been cut by doing the following: reject papers if they don't survive the first R&R; reject papers based on a single bad review; accept papers one only two decent reviews if they author has a good track record. I know economics journals have setup incentives, but in general it doesn't seem to have worked if the members of this list are to be believed. So let me conclude by observing that the Journal of Artificial Societies and Simulations is the fastest reputable social science journal I know. It's on line, has a cadre of dedicated reviewers and a very smart editor - so you think papers whiz through the review process. Some papers do appear "in print" in a month or two, but most take about 6 mo-year to see "publication." Why? Simple, humans are slow and the editors wants quality. It simply takes time to have people read through a paper and then have the author thoughtfully respond. While there is a lot of nutty stuff in academia, journals do the best they can given the constraints. If you want decent peer review and not have full-time paid reviewers, this is the best you can get. The only thing you can do to imporve the system is to review the papers you get, and encourage your colleagues to do the same. Fabio
