Unidad de estudio

In this theme regarding academic publication, three issues appear to be significant, which are (a) how the professor participants get their message across in their publication, (b) what feedback they receive and (c) how they decide on their revision, or how they deal with the feedback received.

4.3.1. Getting Message Across

The professor participants suggest that contribution and argumentation are integral to the message in their publication. Therefore, it is important for them to convey their message with new materials and a strong argument.

Professor Wonnicott believes that contribution is the most important aspect when he wants to get his message across in his publication. This ‘contribution’ is clearly linked to the ‘originality’ in the research which he claims led him to get his professorship:

I like to try and put together new materials in a way that is fresh, new, novel and contribute to the debate. … very similar to the way that scientists and engineers do, it’s the contribution to knowledge either through new empirical discoveries or through new theoretical developments, a reanalysis of something that exists or a new interpretation of, in my case, public administration and public policy. (Professor Wonnicott)

As for Professor Bracton and Professor Woodworth, argumentation is the main factor in how successfully they can get their message across and it is implied in the interview that argumentation is linked to ‘voice’ or tone. Professor Woodworth remarks that:

I would mould my argument, mould and meld my argument. … As long as I have a message I don’t mind. My voice needs to be balanced but it needs to have a message. So, it needs to be balanced and make a message. And I always, because I don’t believe in hectoring, I don’t believe in ‘bashing’ people over their head with my views. I believe in arguments and I believe in making your argument in a moderated way. But I do believe also that, you know, making a strong argument is a good thing. Having a view is a good thing and making an argument is a good thing. (Professor Woodworth)

Also linking argumentation to ‘tone’, Professor Bracton admits that in the past she tended to argue like a ‘young person railing against’ the issues in law whereas nowadays she has developed a ‘calmer’ tone to be more persuasive:

I tried to be calmer particularly because what’s happening in criminal trials make me so angry that I will lose the argument if I express myself in the tone I’m feeling. You can’t do that. There’s a lot of practitioners who go around and say ‘It’s the end of everything.’ You know what I mean. And the people who run the system would say, ‘You are so emotional and traditional. You got to produce arguments which are persuasive.’ (Professor Bracton)

These accounts suggest that the message in academic publication involves an original contribution and persuasive argumentation which is largely linked to the voice and tone of the academic authors.

4.3.2. Feedback Received

Among the three professor participants in this research, Professor Woodworth is the only professor who has found no problem with her publications. She never experiences reviewing requests for a major correction; only one paper was turned down because it was ‘just not within the journal’s reach’. Most of her papers receive no feedback.

Apart from the comment about ‘tone’ as described in the previous section, the feedback the professor participants receive from academic publication tends to reflect the nature of the current academic publication framework and signal its function to meet the satisfaction of editors as well as reviewers.

Professor Bracton remarks that now she cannot write for publication the way she used to because the REF has paved the way for what counts as a good paper. It seems that theory has become compulsory in recent academic papers. Professor Bracton was once told that the maximum score from the peer review for her paper was two stars because it mainly contained her interpretation of the law. That was quite a shock for her because it was not good enough at her level. Professor Wonnicott has also had a similar experience. He was once told by his reviewer that his paper was very empirical and that he needed to strengthen the theoretical framework in the paper. Still, they consider this kind of feedback to be valuable because it improves the quality of their work.

Nevertheless, the professor participants also cast doubts on some kind of feedback from the peer review process. It seems that the addition of theory, or the addition of theoretical perspectives, might also serve to satisfy the editor’s demands as well as to please the reviewers, as Professor Bracton recounts:

They sent it to a reviewer who’s clearly a barrister. It was obvious from his language that he was a barrister. He obviously knows nothing about empirical research and this is an empirical project. And we read comments and the editor said, ‘Frankly, I can’t publish it given what this reviewer says. You may just want to take it somewhere else.’ You know, the editor didn’t really agree with it but didn’t want to row with his own board member. (Professor Bracton)

Although her paper was turned down, Professor Bracton’s submission of it to another journal was successful. Moreover, the paper was graded quite high in the REF, higher than she expected. Professor Bracton felt ‘vindicated’ because she believed that the editor in that journal just sent her paper to the wrong reviewer. Therefore, she suggests that the peer review feedback is arbitrary. How to deal with feedback is the next aspect to be discussed regarding the theme of academic publication.

4.3.3. Decision on Revision

This theme of decision on revision is mostly derived from the accounts given by Professor Bracton and Professor Wonnicott because Professor Woodworth has not had major issues regarding peer review feedback.

Professor Bracton says that she cannot accept everything that everybody says. She usually distinguishes the comments and the feedback she receives into many categories before she makes judgments about that. The comments could vary from something that needs to be done to something that is helpful for her and something that will please the editors and reviewers. However, she insists that she will not ignore the feedback received.

The feedback involving her tone seems to have had a great impact on Professor Bracton since this kind of feedback has changed her worldview regarding the issues with which she is dealing. Her decision to revise her paper in relation to this kind of feedback entails her sense of personal growth in academic authorship and maturity in argumentation to get her message across.

So you go away, and say ‘OK. Let’s take all this overheated stuff out and write something much calmer so that it sounds as if you appreciate that there are two sides. Make it clear at the outset where we’re going, what was saying, et cetera, et cetera. Mm. And build up your case so it’s not too hysterical but it’s a strong argument enough to make your point.’ (Professor Bracton)

As for the feedback which can be helpful for her, Professor Bracton claims that some of it can transform the shape of her paper but she does not necessarily follow all of it because sometimes it is just a suggestion. However, the feedback about ‘putting in extra stuff [or theory] to get [one more] little star’ can make her wonder because it appears to be an additional requirement of recent academic publication, merely to maintain her academic position during the assessment. As for the feedback which serves to please the editors and the reviewers, Professor Bracton usually refuses to revise her papers because she is not impressed by the comments or she does not see the point of revising it other than just to please the reviewers or the editors:

I just took it somewhere else not because I have any issues with that journal - I published in that journal since - but because he’s got this lunatic and he doesn’t really want to have a confrontation with that person. And we don’t need it. We’ve got somewhere else to publish it, so we don’t care. (Professor Bracton)

This kind of feedback, which functions to please the reviewers, is also criticised by Professor Wonnicott:

We didn’t think that was academically necessary or good. And he [the publisher’s editor] tried to make us do this on academic terms. He said that the chapter wasn’t good but we had it looked up [at] by other people and they supported us. And so we have to compromise in the end by writing, leaving that chapter in but writing a new introduction. So, I said that I would never publish with that publisher again

If there are disagreements about the points made in the papers, Professor Wonnicott usually argues the points back with the reviewers when he believes that he has written something good. Still, he can rewrite his papers according to the recommendations given by his reviewers but he will not rewrite them just to please the editors, the publishers, or the reviewers.

Unlike Professor Wonnicott, Professor Bracton does not seem to argue with the editors for reconsideration of her papers with a negative feedback:

If they say it’s not publishable, you can’t say, ‘Well, I think it is.’ You know it’s just become nonsense then. (Professor Bracton)

In sum, the professor participants seem to distinguish comments and make judgements about how to revise their works. They cannot accept everything that every editor and reviewer says. They need to see the point of such revision rather than they revise just to please the reviewers. Otherwise, they might look for somewhere else to publish their papers.