Brian Weatherson, of TAR, has published a few more comments about refereeing professional journal articles (here). His discussion is well worth more than a passing glance.
One issue deserves serious consideration, and I’ll attempt to reiterate (at least to the best of my ability) and endorse what Brian says.
In point 6, Brian writes:
But I really don’t think the comments thread at Leiter is taking seriously how much of the problem is caused by there being too many papers being submitted… Lots of papers I see to referee are basically glorified blog points that don’t attempt to make more than a very small point. Some of them would be quite good blog posts. But most journals aim a little higher than that… I do think that many papers get sent out when the author could profitably have either rolled the paper into a larger paper, or spent time talking to colleagues/friends/blog readers about relevant literature that should be consulted.
I am often criticized by colleagues for not sending my papers out to journals for publication; instead, I choose to submit them to conferences, pass them around to folks I know and trust, or mull over them for a while. People commonly say that I’m wasting my time. If I’m understanding Brian’s point, it’s that we should develop our papers and our arguments before we send them off to a journal. A well-written, well-argued, well-developed, and well-received paper published in a journal is better than a paper that has none of these attributes.
I also have to say that much of what I have seen published recently isn’t nearly as good as it could have been if the author mulled over it for a few more days, weeks, months, years, etc. Much of the time I think that the author could have developed x line in his/her argument to make it a better paper. Shouldn’t my reaction to published papers be more like, “I don’t agree with x line of argumentation for 1, 2, 3, reasons?”
Many of my fellow ‘08-’09 job marketeers will think that much of what I’ve said is bunk (they probably won’t dismiss what Brian Weatherson’s said b/c he’s Brian Weatherson; j/k). We cannot expect to get a job if we haven’t published an article or two. I think that it’s naive to think departments will not hire an applicant just because that person hasn’t published anything. The basis of hiring depends on not only what you have done but what you are capable of doing. A short publication record should not be blamed for one’s lot in the job market.
