Simultaneous multiple journal submissions: the case against

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, July, 1994 by Steve Pressman

I

Introduction

ACADEMIC JOURNALS serve several important scientific functions. First and foremost, they are a record of professional dialogue, advance, and knowledge (Zuckerman and Merton, 1971; Ziman, 1976, 99ff.). As Zinam (1968, 109) notes, "the official scientific paper in a reputable journal is not an advertisement, or a news item; it is a contribution to the consensus of public knowledge." For individual economists, publication in academic journals contributes to professional advancement.

Journal publications also serve as a primary measure of the relative ranking of economics departments (Baumann et al., 1987; Graves et al., 1982; Tschirhart, 1989) and as such help to determine the reputation of economics departments and programs at different schools. This, in turn, can affect the quantity and the quality of graduate students applying for admission, as well as the funding received by a department and its members.

These positive functions not withstanding, academic journals have come under increasing criticism. They have been faulted for publishing articles which say nothing new, which say it poorly, and which no one reads. Another line of criticism has been directed at the decision-making processes that journals employ. Specifically, journals have been faulted for discriminating against women (Ferber and Teiman, 1980)(1) and individuals from less prestigious institutions (Gordon, 1980; Peters and Ceci, 1982). Such discrimination may take the form of higher rejection rates, fewer requests to revise and resubmit papers, or slower response rates from editors (Mahoney, 1987). Journal referees have also been shown to be biased against empirical results that do not conform to their theoretical perspective (Mahoney, 1977).

Yet another telling criticism of academic journals concerns the lengthy delays in making decisions about submitted papers (Szenberg, 1994; Mahoney, 1976, 106ff.). Scientific discourse and advance is slowed, and the professional advancement of individual economists is retarded, by these delays.

The information provided by editors of economic journals does not make this last issue look especially serious. According to Miller and Punsalan (1988), average response time(2) varies from one week (Public Choice) to 16 months (Indian Economic Journal) with a mean average response time of around three months for all economics journals. The American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the major journals in the profession, report response times of 2 months, 3 to 4 months, and 3 to 6 months, respectively. Unfortunately, it is not clear whether the averages reported for each journal are means or medians, and more importantly, no information about the variability of these averages is given.

In addition, we have no information about how these self-reported averages were computed. Suppose that out of three submissions one paper is rejected immediately by the editor as inappropriate for the journal, another paper has a 6 month turnaround between receipt of the paper by the editor and the time a decision letter is sent to the author, while a third paper has a twelve month similar turnaround. Does the editor report data on just the two papers sent out for review, in which case the average response time should be 9 months? Or, does the editor compute an average for all three papers and report response time as 6 months?

Finally, the accuracy of these self-reported response times seems highly questionable. My own experiences, and the experiences of numerous economists with whom I have discussed this issue, suggest that average response times are somewhere between 6 and 9 months. It is improbable that journal editors took a random sample of submissions and computed a mean or median turnover time based upon this sample; more likely, the numbers they reported were impressionistic. The fact that many journals (e.g., Quarterly Journal of Economics) reported average response times as rather large intervals gives some credence to the view that the figures provided to Miller and Punsalan were impressionistic rather than calculated response times. Self-reported editor perceptions, are bound to be overly optimistic.

Arguments that there was discrimination in the refereeing process led to calls for double blind refereeing policies (Ferber and Teiman, 1980). Now the lengthy refereeing process has led to calls for a policy of multiple submissions to journals, just as the multiple submission of book proposals and manuscripts is now an acceptable practice (Shubik, Helm and Baumol, 1983, 368).

In what follows I argue that multiple submissions to journals will fail to speed up the reviewing process in academic journals, will fail to advance the careers of individual economists, and will lead to worse problems than the long response times that this policy is supposed to address.

II

The Case for Multiple Submissions

THE MAIN ARGUMENT for allowing multiple journal submissions is to speed up the decision time involved in getting papers accepted for publication (Szenberg, 1994). Multiple submissions would reduce the time it takes to get a paper accepted for publication in two ways. First, it would make the editorial process more competitive. Under present rules and practices, authors are permitted to send papers to only one journal at a time. Whichever journal currently possesses the paper has monopoly control over it for an indefinite period of time. There is always the remote possibility that the author will withdraw the paper; nonetheless, there are few penalties for taking a long time to make a decision on any single paper (Peters, 1976). But, the argument for multiple submissions goes, if journal A had to compete for the paper with journal B, the incentives would be very different. Any journal that wanted the paper, or thought that it might want the paper, would need to do a quick refereeing job and make a decision quickly. Otherwise it would lose the paper that it wanted to competing journals (Mahoney, 1976, 106ff.).