Academic publishing is so, so slow. . .
As I was updating my CV for the upcoming academic jobs season, I came to a stunning realization.**
Currently, I have nine articles published (7 refereed, 2 non-refereed) . . . and nine articles pending. In other words, exactly half of my finished work, over two years of pencil-breaking effort, still isn't available publicly to other scholars. Two are forthcoming, and the others are a mix of "under review" or "revise & submit." And the main culprit, of course, is the drastic slowness of academic publishing.
One of pending pieces, for example, was listed as "accepted and forthcoming" for three years before I finally pulled it and submitted it elsewhere, where it's now under review again. Both my currently forthcoming articles were written for the Baum Bugle two years ago, but the editor has been holding on them.*** Another article has been in circulation for a year. I still have faith in it, though, since it was passed over by three different journals that rarely published science fiction or fantasy. Well, why haven't I submitted it to a journal that does SF&F? Because I already have articles under review at all the major ones.
It's enough to make one bang one's head against the wall. And, if headaches were anything like academic publishing, it would come four months after initial contact.
Incidentally, thank goodness for The Journal of Tolkien Research. They publish material almost immediately upon acceptance, and my prior experience has been that they finish the first stage of peer review in less than a month. Why more journals aren't like JTR, I'll never know. (Except that I do, of course.)
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**Okay, this realization has struck me many, many times before.
*** To be fair, Sarah told me that one of them would take two years to publish, and she's been holding the other "in reserve" in case a planned feature falls suddenly through.
Currently, I have nine articles published (7 refereed, 2 non-refereed) . . . and nine articles pending. In other words, exactly half of my finished work, over two years of pencil-breaking effort, still isn't available publicly to other scholars. Two are forthcoming, and the others are a mix of "under review" or "revise & submit." And the main culprit, of course, is the drastic slowness of academic publishing.
One of pending pieces, for example, was listed as "accepted and forthcoming" for three years before I finally pulled it and submitted it elsewhere, where it's now under review again. Both my currently forthcoming articles were written for the Baum Bugle two years ago, but the editor has been holding on them.*** Another article has been in circulation for a year. I still have faith in it, though, since it was passed over by three different journals that rarely published science fiction or fantasy. Well, why haven't I submitted it to a journal that does SF&F? Because I already have articles under review at all the major ones.
It's enough to make one bang one's head against the wall. And, if headaches were anything like academic publishing, it would come four months after initial contact.
Incidentally, thank goodness for The Journal of Tolkien Research. They publish material almost immediately upon acceptance, and my prior experience has been that they finish the first stage of peer review in less than a month. Why more journals aren't like JTR, I'll never know. (Except that I do, of course.)
--------
**Okay, this realization has struck me many, many times before.
*** To be fair, Sarah told me that one of them would take two years to publish, and she's been holding the other "in reserve" in case a planned feature falls suddenly through.
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