Discusión de los resultados

What happens when you submit your manuscript to a journal for review? For most of us, the review process appears to be a black hole which sucks our intellectual efforts into it while we wait and wait and wait! Indeed, it is not unusual for authors to worry about whether their article was lost, accidentally forgotten by a journal editor, or so despicably bad that the editors/reviewers can’t bring themselves to respond to it. However, these causes for the delay are very rare. The review process is lengthy, and depending on the area of the paper, and the availability of reviewers, it can take at least three months for a review to be completed. Indeed, in many cases it takes longer. I include the following e-mail correspondence I had with a very reputable journal about delays in a review on one of my articles. Names

Culture and Psychology

The covering letter should indicate whether the author prefers the manuscript to be reviewed anonymously or openly. Authors may suggest three possible reviewers.

have been changed to protect the guilty! Remember, we are referring here to a review, not the publication of the article, which is a much more lengthy process.

Dr McInerney

We have received a copy of your ms and will be sending out written acknowledgment letter shortly.

Sincerely, Joe Bloggs

Editorial Assistant.

About four months later I wrote:

Dear Joe,

I am enquiring about the status of the reviews on manu- script 99–04–202, which was submitted in April. Thank you for your assistance with this.

Regards,

Dennis McInerney

He replied:

Dr McInerney:

We’ve been having a heck of a time locating reviewers this summer. I have pulled your manuscript for the editors. Between the two of them they should be able to come up with reviewers.

Joe

I replied immediately:

Thank you Joe. This is an inordinately long period to wait for reviews given that the article was submitted in April. I hope the next stage will be expedited.

Regards, Dennis

And he replied!

When your manuscript arrives at the editor’s office it is usually given a log number which is used to track the manuscript through the review and publication process. After this the journal editor, or associate editor, reads the manuscript for an initial culling. At this point of the process, the editor assesses whether the article addresses the mission of the journal, makes a contri- bution to new knowledge or the application of knowledge, meets established ethical standards, and is presented in the correct format. Some journals have a very high rejection rate (greater than 70 per cent) and so it is at this stage that many articles are rejected. Articles can be rejected, or sent back to the author for correction, if they do not follow the appropriate guidelines for presentation, so as I said earlier it is very important to get these mechanical features of your article correct the first time round. It is worth pointing out here, and I will reiterate this in the next chapter, that just because an article is rejected does not mean that the research is poor, or indeed that the research article is poorly written. There are many reasons for rejection and you need to ascertain the reasons for rejection of a particular article. I know of authors who have gone through three or four journals before having a piece accepted, only to have the piece go on to become a seminal or well referenced article.

If the editor believes that the article satisfies the criteria for inclusion in the journal and is prepared in the correct fashion, they will send the article out for review. In this case a letter will be sent to you indicating this. Reviewers are selected from the editorial board of the journal, or from a list of ad hoc reviewers with expertise in the area of the research. This can often cause problems (and has for me) as the pool of reviewers for particular research areas can be quite small.

As I mentioned in an earlier chapter it is reasonable to request that your article not be sent out to specific reviewers if you are aware of potential bias on their part, or because of previous unsatisfactory experiences with particular reviewers (if you are aware of who they are). It is also reasonable that you request your article be sent to reviewers from relevant cognate research

Unfortunately, this is not a particularly long waiting period. We are still trying to locate reviewers for manu- scripts submitted last Fall.

areas; sometimes articles are sent to reviewers from different disciplines or epistemological research bases to the ones in which articles are grounded. For example, in my research I often look at the sociocultural underpinnings of motivation. More often than not my work, although clearly psychological in orientation, is sent out to sociologists and anthropologists. And more often than not this causes me great problems as it is rare that researchers from these backgrounds appreciate my methodologies.

When selected, reviewers are sent a letter inviting them to review your article, along with a set of criteria for evaluating the research paper, and guidelines on how to prepare the report for the editor. In general, journals seek at least three reviews, and sometimes as many as five. The following presents an example of the type of letter editors send to reviewers inviting them to review papers.

Cover Letter

Enclosed is a manuscript that has been submitted to Basic

and Applied Social Psychology. I hope that you will share

your time and expertise by providing an evaluation of its suitability for publication. If you can help me, please read the enclosed reviewer guidelines and provide comments for the author(s) as well as your recommendation about publication. Your comments can be returned in the enclosed envelope, or you can FAX or e-mail your com- ments to speed up the review process. Please try to return your comments within a month of receiving the paper; I try to provide authors with editorial decisions within 45 days of manuscript submission so that their work is not delayed too long. If you are unable to review the paper within a month, please contact me immediately so that I can find another suitable reviewer (voice mail: 314–935– 6545, e-mail: [email protected]). I would greatly appreciate your suggestions for other qualified reviewers if you are unable to evaluate the paper at this time.

The review process would grind to a halt without the gracious efforts of experts like you. I know that complet- ing a careful review is not a trivial addition to your schedule, so know that I truly appreciate your help.