Journal Review Constraints and Publication Success: The Camel Going Through the Eye of a Needle*

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Journal Review Constraints and Publication
Success The Camel Going Through the Eye of a
Needle

• Andreas I. Nicolaou
• AAA IS Section Mid-Year Meeting
• January 2008
• Phrase borrowed from C. Saunders MISQ editorial

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Some Findings from MISQ Senior Scholars Survey
(MISQ Sept. 07)

• - Improving Review/Editorial Processes
• Among others,
• Broaden editorial mission to include papers
  focusing on topics currently going to journals in
  related cognate fields JIS New Editors
  Challenge.
• Limit comments by reviewers to a maximum of page
  length MISQ scholars said 4 pages, so this
  gives an idea of whether our reviews are in fact
  too lengthy.
• Limit number of reviewers to a maximum of two
  this assumes we have two high quality reviews on
  each manuscript.
• Past JIS Editor has increased first round review
  response time to avg 60 days- believed to have
  increased review quality.

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Author Responsibilities

• Before Each Submission
• Vetting the paper at workshops conferences
• Peer reviewed
• Professional edit
• Do not assume problems will not surface during
  the review process critically assess problems
  and address before submitting.
• Excellent read is Bob Zmuds editorials on what
  should appear in a manuscript (MISQ June/Sept 95)

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The Essentials

• What editors/reviewers look for in a manuscript
  new, true, and interesting (Saunders editorial).
• Conjunctive condition.
• Aristotle (Rhetorics)
• The modes of persuasion should be complementary
  to syllogisms derived from observation (or
  demonstrate by logical reasoning).
• True persuasion must avoid non-essentials which
  in Aristotles view, distract from the scientific
  method and harm the communication of valid
  conclusions.

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Review/Publication Funnel System

• Journal review process is a funnel system (Lee et
  al., MISQ Sept 2007).
• Downside
• Earlier points on improvement of review process
  increase throughput rate however, capacity is
  fixed (within a range, as known), thus fixed
  number of papers that can be published.
• Upside
• Once you reach a critical point, authors can in
  fact manage the review process how?
• See earlier discussion of Completeness of Author
  Response to Review Team Comments.

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