The Slings and Arrows of Research

Sometimes research is not for the faint of heart.

Yesterday, I got a rejection letter on a piece I'd done with a former student. I sat on her doctoral committee (not her chair- just a member) , and this was one of her essays. It had already been rejected at a two top-tier journal, and a second-tier one. Now we send it to a lower-tier one. After all, better to have it published somewhere than nowhere.

Then I got a phone call from a second coauthor (another student who's committee I'd been on, but at another school). I'd spent the last couple of weeks putting a data set together for a project we'd discussed. Unfortunately, the initial analysis turned up a dry well - there wasn't anything remotely interesting.

So, since the approach seemed promising (although it didn't work out on this data set, we'll use it to examine another topic. We might as well use the approach that we developed, even if it didn't pan out for this data. If it turns up nothing the second time, we'll drop it.

Meanwhile, I continue onward with another study with very good results where we've done pretty much all the empirical work. At this point, we're writing up the results (and the rest of the paper) to send to a conference with a deadline is in a couple of weeks.

That's the nature of research. After a while, if you have a number of projects going on simultaneously (and papers under review), you'll have some that turn out well and some that go up in smoke. The secret is to enjoy the successes and not get too upset about the rejections and dry wells and keep rolling.

The law of large numbers works pretty well in research - have a large enough number of things going on, and something will hit. And no one will care about your failures- only the ones that pan out.

Another Rejection Letter (Sniff!)

Just got aother rejection from a journal. I'm not all that surprised, because it was a pretty good (I think it was ranked #5 in it's area) journal and it was a stretch to send this piece there. But you never know - sometimes you catch a referee (and editor) in the right frame of mind.

Oh well, this just means we make a few changes and send it back out to another journal. I used to panic about this stuff, but I now know that most papers (if they're decently well done) eventually find a home somewhere.

I felt pretty good a couple of weeks back, since I had five pieces under review. But one of them got accepted (darn!) another came back with a revise-and-resubmit, and this one got rejected. So, I'm no longer "Mungo Compliant" - I fall short of the "three paers under review" standard. So it's time to get the R&R's off my desk and back in an editor's hands.

I have five other projects in various stages (two of them are actually somewhat completed working papers), but until they're submitted to a journal somewhere, they're nothing but vaporware.

So it's back to the academic salt mines...

A Quick Rejection

That was fast! I submitted a paper to a journal a few days ago, and I already got a rejection - the fastest one I've ever gotten.

Actually, it was what is known as a "desk rejection", where the journal editors make an initial judgement that the paper is not appropriate for the journal before sending it out to a referee. The decision wasn't surprising, since they editor pointed out a problem with the paper we were already aware of.

But, we didn't mind too much. In fact, I wish more editors did that (not reject my papers, of course, but make a quick decision). It's far better to get a rejection quickly than to go through the alternative: to have the paper sent out to a referee who takes several months to get back to you, get a revise and resubmit, satisfy the referee's demands, and THEN to have the editor tell you that the paper "doesn't make a significant contribution." That way I can either fix the problem or send it out to another journal quickly without having to wait six months or a year.

I know the editors of the journal are trying to increase the quality of the journal. Making quick editorial decisions like this are a good step - if authors know they'll get a quick decision (and yes, it was a reasonable one), they'll be more likely to send their work there rather than to a close substitute journal. And more submissions means more choices, and therefore higher quality publications.

As Shakespeare would say, "If the deed t'were done, tis best t'were done quickly."

At the other extreme, my colleagues and I have all had similar experiences at a particular journal that often takes 12-14 months to get a review back. That's not unheard of at econ journals, but it is WAY too long for a finance one (most of the better finance journals have a 2-3 month turnaround). As a result, we've all decided that we'll send papers there only if there's no reasonable alternative.

Now we figure out whether to fix the issues the editors mentioned or to just send it out to the next journal as is and roll the dice. I know one thing - it's not doing us any good on my desk, after all.