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Warning! This is a thread about academic inside baseball.
Let's call it Sherlock Holmes and The Case of the Missing IR Articles.
Let's call it Sherlock Holmes and The Case of the Missing IR Articles.
As others on here (including @sbmitche @smsaideman @drkristawiegand @JarrodNHayes) have noted, the amount of IR that the APSR is publishing has been… low as of late. https://twitter.com/drkristawiegand/status/1117795527133925377
In one sense, this doesn’t matter (from @Journal_of_GSS, to the new journal edited by @ProfSteele @suboticjelena, there are probably more outlets for IR scholarship than ever before).
But as @smsaideman notes, there are implications for junior scholars: https://twitter.com/smsaideman/status/1092539345804935168
But as @smsaideman notes, there are implications for junior scholars: https://twitter.com/smsaideman/status/1092539345804935168
One possibility is that it’s just a vicious circle: https://twitter.com/thwillow/status/1092543078676729857
But the most recent editors’ report indicates the problem isn’t that IR’s not getting submitted - it’s that IR’s not getting accepted.
Hence the mystery!
Here are a couple of hypotheses.
1. It could just be noise/small sample size? Except, Pr(IR|Accepted) is similarly low at APSR in other recent years.
Here are a couple of hypotheses.
1. It could just be noise/small sample size? Except, Pr(IR|Accepted) is similarly low at APSR in other recent years.
2. The fact that there are lots of great IR journals means IR scholars are submitting their better work elsewhere, so the IR submissions are of lower quality on average than those from other subfields?
(But this seems unlikely, as AJPS & JOP don’t seem to have this problem)
(But this seems unlikely, as AJPS & JOP don’t seem to have this problem)
3. IR has an unusually heterogeneous reviewer pool, which makes it harder for IR pieces to make it through the review process?
(But I imagine the CP reviewer pool is also rather heterogeneous, and CP pieces are getting accepted at a much higher rate)
(But I imagine the CP reviewer pool is also rather heterogeneous, and CP pieces are getting accepted at a much higher rate)
4. Reviewers anchor their evaluations of the pieces they’re reviewing based on how their own submissions to the journal were handled, and IR is currently caught in a cycle of negative reciprocity, as IR reviewers enact vicarious revenge on future manuscripts?
5.
https://twitter.com/ylelkes/status/1289197601301188608
(Though this raises questions about why IR reviewers do this to one another more than CP reviewers do, say).
https://twitter.com/ylelkes/status/1289197601301188608
(Though this raises questions about why IR reviewers do this to one another more than CP reviewers do, say).
To be clear, I'm not faulting the editorial teams (a thankless task, for little reward) - they're presumably just dealing with the set of reviews they receive!
6. Methodological differences: https://twitter.com/mcopelov/status/1289202334552264704
