ASR

[curious]

I've heard that ASR is becoming increasingly open to publishing qual work...have others heard similarly?

[still curious]

and also for those who do qual work that have been successful with ASR what are some tips for framing your work?

[me]

some of the vandy editors do qual so this could be true - however, they continue to have fairly strict length requirements... so cut cut cut before you sent it in

[anon]

Any recent experiences with ASR? I keep hearing that the turnaround time is quick and was thinking of submitting.

[pretty fast but]

Turnaround seems to be pretty consistently about 3 months. The one issue that I know several people have had, though, is that they seem recently to be asking for more R&Rs before a conditional accept. Two to three R&Rs seem to be common, with new reviewers at each R&R, and I've heard of at least one person who got a rejection after a second R&R. One theory is that with the current large committee of editors there's less decisiveness. So, while the turnaround time is pretty quick, it may also involve one more R&R than you'd get at another journal. Then again, most rejections will occur on the initial submission and once you've gotten an R&R from ASR it's probably worthwhile pursuing.

[yes]

Yes, ASR is a slog these days, but may be worth it. I received an R&R last year with five long reviews, all of which wanted different things. The editor's letter did not provide much guidance and I got five reviews again the second time, with probably two reviewers from the first round. The paper was rejected, which is my fault, but I think that all of the contradictory instructions did not nudge me in the right direction either. My read is that the editorial board is indecisive and solicits more and more and more feedback when trying to make a decision.

[yuppers]

I've experienced the same thing (rejected R&R with little clear reason) and have heard similar stories from several others (including both junior and established folks).

Frankly, I am still somewhat bitter about the process and think that the current editors have done a poor job with the journal. It's admittedly a tough task, but having a standard of soliciting 5, 6, or 7 reviews and delaying an actual decision until after an R&R (or 2) is a poor policy and really can harm grad students' and assistant profs' careers.

I'm not planning on sending any papers back to ASR until the editorial change.

[trash]

Feb 20, 2013 19:23:32 GMT -5 @yuppers said:

I'm not planning on sending any papers back to ASR until the editorial change.

You're not alone. Even a lot of big names in the discipline think that this journal has gone to shit under the new editors.

[hmm]

I agree with the general sentiment that the quality of articles has gone down under these editors. Using 5 or 6 reviews is also absurd and will overburden the better reviewers.

How much longer is the Vanderbilt crew in charge? It looks like three years, but they've been editors since 2009. Are they doing a second term? The ASA is not so transparent on these sorts of issues.

[yesagain]

It can't possibly be worse than when ASR was at Ohio. Back then, ASR published boring as sh&^ quantitative minutia and occasionally a really weird qualitative piece just to show that they are still running a general journal. I hate to sound elitist, but there is an argument for only giving ASR to big general departments where quantitative and qualitative methods are well represented.

[4moreYears]

Feb 21, 2013 10:58:49 GMT -5 @hmm said:

How much longer is the Vanderbilt crew in charge? It looks like three years, but they've been editors since 2009. Are they doing a second term? The ASA is not so transparent on these sorts of issues.

Renewed, last I heard. So 4/5 more years?

[doubter]

I have to disagree with a few things.

First, I've liked a number of recent articles. I have a feeling that if we compared the articles in ASR 'these days' to some actual sample of all articles from other editorship, we wouldn't come out with a strong balance of opinion either way. It's a lot easier to look at a few issues from ASR 10 years ago and like some of the articles, in part because we only remember the articles that "made it." (oops, I did just try this with a few issues, and I'll have to admit the February and April issues of 2004 were pretty impressive. June totally didn't do it for me, though). Still, I'm doubtful that the articles are much worse.

Second, I am not entirely sure that it's so bad to have authors going through multiple reviews. If each review makes the paper better, then shouldn't we actually be in favor of this? Consider one potential alternative: a much harsher rejection policy that leads most authors to do little substantive revision, resulting in the same paper not being improved but just getting circulated to a 'lower' journal, where arguably it belonged in the first place?

Just a little discussion on the other side.

Oh, I recently went through an ASR review process, and I'd be happy to do it again, and probably will plan to sooner rather than later.

[multiplereviews]

While I agree that receiving multiple reviews may ultimately make the paper better, this is only true when the editors actually step up and give some guidance to the author(s). When you have five reviewers ultimately asking you to make radically different changes/revisions this can be an impossible task. This is compounded by the fact that a resubmission may potentially go out to an entirely different set of reviewers. Have also heard that some of the reviewers are just straight up assholes that seem to actually enjoy telling people how worthless their research is. I understand most papers the journal receives are probably not the greatest, but a little tact and basic human decency on the part of some in the sociological community would be nice too.

As an aside one thing that I find troubling with the review process (and I don't know how true this is for ASR per se) is the extent to which reviewers are composed of graduate students or untenured faculty. This isn't an issue of expertise (although in certain cases it may be), but an issue of valuing people's time. Grad students and asst profs face greater time constraints than tenured faculty, yet I frequently hear that the later are more likely to turn down invitations to review articles and so on. Just a thought....

[morenotbetter]

More reviews is definitely not always better. What ends up happening is that each reviewer sees the paper as a different paper that SHOULD speak to a different sub-disciplinary audience. It then becomes impossible to please all of the reviewers and some get mad when you make changes to please the others. The only way to make that work is to have a strong editorial board that lets the authors know that they should be listening to some reviewers and not others and then sticks by that guidance, rather than becoming flustered by a bad review from somebody who is in one sub-disciple, then sending the paper to another reviewer in the same scholarly community that the negative review came from, and so on until you end up with 6 reviews that all say, "well, this is not the paper I would have written!"

[vandy]

Has Vanderbilt totally run this journal into the ground?

After talking with a number of people, all of whom are upset with how this journal has been run since moving to Vanderbilt, it seems the editors never really weigh in on the articles. They simply look at the most negative review and parrot that in their letter. They've got three editors and not one of them seems to be doing their job.

Big names in our field are not-so-privately talking shit about this editorship. And ASA renews their editorship?

Read the articles lately? My guess is that a number of people are good at getting their friends and colleagues through as recommended reviewers and get the green light for a mediocre-at-best article.

Congratulations! This is a total shitstorm.