Dead silence from journal

[fleabite]

Folks, what would you do in the following situation? I submitted an article over two years ago to a journal. I have heard nothing (three polite, unanswered follow-ups in the interim). Based on the electronic submission board, it wasn't sent out for review for at least eight months after submission. It's now listed as waiting for the editor-in-chief's response, but it has had that status since at least May 2021 (I hadn't checked on it for a few months before that).

Several people have reported similar experiences on a wiki. One waited eleven months and then had a rejection without being given any info from readers' reports, another withdrew a submission after waiting more than a year, and a third was rejected after two years with single-line excerpts said to be from readers' reports (but on inquiring for more information was told that the responses came from conversations with the readers). It makes me wonder whether my article was even sent out for review at all.

I expect I'm going to have to withdraw it. Here's my main question: The journal is published by an institution. Would you alert the head of the institution to this situation? It's a bad situation for applicants, especially since the journal indicates that it reports, on average, in about 100 days.

[Parasaurolophus]

Yeah, just withdraw it.

I expect the institution knows what's up, so I wouldn't bother. Just pass the word along to students and colleagues that it's to be avoided. Maybe say as much when you decline to referee for them in the future, explaining that it's thoroughly unprofessional

[Hibush]

That journal is definitely deceased. It is not just restin'.

[fleabite]

The weird thing is that it continues to publish four issues per year so some people must be managing to get through the process. The most recent two issues are special issues with their own editors. I wonder if the managing editor is basically ignoring any submissions that don't fit into hu's ideas of the ideal subject matter or would require work on hu's part.

[Wahoo Redux]

We have one weirdo who runs a "press."  It is listed in places like Poets & Writers and I believe in the MLA Bibliography, but this person just publishes hu's friends and then touts the achievements of hu's little one-person show.  Sounds like your business.

I'd withdraw. 

[fleabite]

I'll give it one final email follow-up, but I will probably have to. I was holding out because there's only one other viable possibility for this article unless I want to expand it into a book. (It's long because it includes a transcription of an important, previously unknown document, and the document eats up a lot of word count.)

[theteacher]

Withdraw and submit it elsewhere. I would have never waited for more than three months after submission, given that it took 8 months to start the review process. Some editors simply don't put the time and efforts needed to properly run a journal.

[jerseyjay]

I never would have let it go two weeks with radio silence, much less two years.

I have had journals lose my emailed submissions, which is why I also follow up if I do not get at least an acknowledgment of receipt.

I have had journals take a long time to make a decision, but they usually at least keep me updated.

Are you sure the manuscript did not go to a dead email  or wasn't sent to spam (this has happened to me once, too).

If it had been two years without a decision, but at least the editor had been in contact with me, I might or might not pull it. (I have had this happen, for various reasons: once a reviewer died.) But without hearing anything, I would certainly pull it.

Is there something particularly valuable about this journal that makes it worth waiting so long? Or is there something particular about this article that means that waiting so long is not a big deal? Is there something about your career that makes such a long wait not important? I mean, if you are a retired lawyer and you wrote an article about a novel (I have seen this), then there is no particular rush to get it published. Or if you are a full professor who cannot keep track of all your submissions. But most people, who are looking for work, trying to get tenure, or even vaguely interested in career advancement, two years without any response is way too long.

I would send an email to the editor at his or her academic institution, the managing editor, and the contact for the journal saying that since it has been two years with no reply, you are pulling the article and submitting it somewhere else.

They might apologize. They might say they have no idea what you are talking about. They might ask, why did you wait two years before telling us?

In terms of contacting the institution, do you mean like Oxford University Press, the American Medical Association, or some publisher? Personally, I wouldn't invest too much time in this. I would just send the note saying you are pulling it, perhaps wait a day, and then send it out to another journal.

[mamselle]

I can guess, but I'll ask: Humanities or STEM?

M.

[fleabite]

Humanities, mamselle, as I'm sure you guessed.

jerseyjay, I know it was received because the journal uses an interface to which submissions have to be uploaded and which tracks all correspondence from the journal to the writer (although not vice versa). I received an initial acknowledgment with a tracking number on the day of submission and nothing since then. Given the info on the wiki that I mentioned in my original post, the lack of response is not unusual for this journal. I'd rather not name the institution that publishes it, but it is not a rinky-dink operation.

I waited this long because this was one of only two options for this article due to its length. I'm publishing a previously unknown document, which has to be reproduced in full, and there is a reason that the document would be of particular interest to the institution that publishes the journal. Being in the humanities, I'm used to long waits (I just keep working on other articles in the meantime), but never anything this bad. I'm not at all happy about the delay, and I would prefer that this did not continue to happen to others.

[jerseyjay]

In the humanities, delays of this length are not, per se, rare. However, what is rare is that there is complete radio silence.

If this journal is one of two places that you can publish this piece then perhaps you are stuck with this journal. In any case, I would still look up the institutional email of the editor and send it there. I would do the same thing for the managing editor. This may take a bit of searching, since these addresses are usually not on the journal's website, but the affiliations of the editors usually are. I would ask for an update, stating that it has been two years, and ask for a timetable. This may or may not result in a reply. If you do not receive a reply, then I would certainly pull it.

You can of course just pull it and send it to the other journal now.

[Hibush]

In the humanities, delays of this length are not, per se, rare. However, what is rare is that there is complete radio silence.

If this journal is one of two places that you can publish this piece then perhaps you are stuck with this journal. In any case, I would still look up the institutional email of the editor and send it there. I would do the same thing for the managing editor. This may take a bit of searching, since these addresses are usually not on the journal's website, but the affiliations of the editors usually are. I would ask for an update, stating that it has been two years, and ask for a timetable. This may or may not result in a reply. If you do not receive a reply, then I would certainly pull it.

You can of course just pull it and send it to the other journal now.

I'm being a broken record here, but normalizing and accepting this kind of unprofessional behavior is not good. It really handicaps humanities scholars individually and the broader field substantially. If the people doing the scholarship and publishing it don't think it is improtant enough to attend to, why should anyone else? That is the unmistakeable message to the rest of the academy. This behavior may be doing as much "doom the humanities" as anything else.

[mamselle]

I recall, along time ago, now, turning in an article on which I'd placed a lot of hopes, and into which I and an obliging colleague had done a lot of work, only to have it languish for nearly a year because I'd been encouraged (by the retiring editor) to turn it into a somewhat prestigious journal and had heard that just inquiring after it too soon could fox things...

Turned out that my application had been turned in and printed with my name on a title page that had no instructions about anonymity and the new editors had flagged it to send it back before sending it for review, and never did.

Finally I called, about 3 months after the 1-year mark, and discovered all this.

It was declined, anyway, for crazy reasons (the readers were weird: the new editors didn't know and couldn't lean on the standard ones, one was known by their own admission never to have worked with primary MS sources, didn't understand the methodology, etc.) but there were no other parallel, or even closely-related, lower-level journals to submit to, so it's still languishing.

Good news--a new pub on the topic has come out which I plan to use to re-focus towards a sort-of close periodical that has an interest in the new pub, so there's hope there). Since we're talking a 13th c. Ms, I'm not too worried about being scooped, so there's that, too.

But the first part--the reason for the delay--should have never happened, and I should have asked sooner, but I was new and scared...

M.

[Hibush]

M, I'm picturing your timely email inquiry to the editor today with the wisdom of experience and sly eloquence.

[mamselle]

M, I'm picturing your timely email inquiry to the editor today with the wisdom of experience and sly eloquence.

Thanks!

M.