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Unpopular opinion: too much work is submitted to Public Administration journals. I'm not a journal editor, so maybe my opinion isn't worth much. But doing these reviews man, like alot of this work is hella green banana. Like, it would be a good paper 2 years from now
NB: I do not absolve myself. I have benefit from patient editors that help me work my way through undeveloped work 
I do think some of that work may have been better developed with some tweaks to the institutional structure.
I do think some of that work may have been better developed with some tweaks to the institutional structure.
PA PhD students: There's a really good chance, unfortunately, that the paper you got an A on in your seminar and didn't get much criticism at the conference just isn't ready for submission to a good PA journal. Chances are it isn't even particularly close.
Present the paper as often as you can and ask overtly for critical feedback. Gets lots of it and revise it carefully. Ask others outside of your department to read it. When you're getting lots of the same feedback and you can defend your choices and strategies only then...
...might it be getting close. Too much pressure to publish for the sake of publishing leads to folks submitting their work too early and more undeveloped work at the door of journals. Also submitting that paper now instead of when its better burns your chance at that journal...
Maybe I'm wrong here but based on the conversations I hear this is a collective action problem in the field. Some mainstream PA conferences are very welcoming but also notorious for lacking critical feedback. Young scholars often take this as a sign that their papers are ready
and submit them to good journals. Undeveloped submissions bombard the editor desks, and some get through to reviewers. The volume of papers overwhelms reviewers and diminishes average review quality, This 1) reduces useful feedback to authors and 2) exacerbates idiosyncrasy...
...in the publication process. Sensing the process is idiosyncratic, junior authors desperate for "hits" submit more often and even earlier and round and round we go. There are other externalities too: 1) editors are overworked processing just to be processing and can't be...
...as hands on as they maybe could otherwise be with the process for individual papers. 2) Reviewers get burned out reading lots of unripe work. Some of the stuff I've gotten recently rivals the papers I read for seminars: Often good ideas with very undeveloped investigations
3) Students miss critical theory and design learning and development opportunities that would come had there been more incentive to develop papers 4) Some bad work gets published because of the stochastic nature of publication decisions.
Collective action problems are tricky but I have a couple of thoughts: 1) A much more robust seminar culture. Some places do a better job with this than others, but we should be engaging each others work more outside of conferences. Students would see good work more regularly...
Everyone hates the Econs but that field (and management, which also has a host of its own culture problems) does a better job with this. PhD students more regularly see more developed work from more senior faculty and it helps from expectations on what publishable work look like
2) Norm more challenging theory and design questions at conference. They should be more than well dressed clap fests. Its ok to leave a conference feeling like your paper needs alot of work wince it probably does. You can challenge work nicely. @APPAM_DC is a good example.
3) Ditch the norm that a paper can only presented once at one conference. Especially without a really robust seminar culture. I have been on this soapbox before but I don't understand why this norm is in place (CV padding I guess?), but its a silly one to me
I enjoy seeing papers grow over time. Fours years in a row at the same conference is a bit much yeah for someone more senior, yeah. But I enjoy seeing the growth of papers (and watching mine grow!) over time and with exposure.
K Rant over
K Rant over
