Authors, reviewers, editors: One head, three hats.

I have now served as a co-editor of Food Policy for over four years. This is not much editorial service by any stretch of the imagination. So, I do not consider myself an experienced or seasoned editor—neither should you treat me as such. But this has been one of the most rewarding service roles I have ever held. It helped me grow professionally, and it showed me “how the sausage gets made.”

So, what have I learned? Here is a selection of musings in no particular order…

There is one gatekeeper and that’s the editor.

Much too often I come across a comment where someone says “I served as a reviewer to some paper and I accepted it” or “the reviewer accepted the paper but the editor rejected it.” There is only one person, for better or worse, who makes the call about the paper’s whereabouts. That's the handling editor.

Editors are not evil. At least, a person doesn't become evil when they start serving as an editor. They only happen to be the people who get to make a call that may be different from what the authors had been hoping for. A vast majority of papers submitted to journals in the field of economics (or related fields) get rejected. So, it comes with the territory. The editor only happens to be the bearer of bad news.

Desk rejections come in many flavors.

Most papers get desk rejected. That means the editor didn’t see the path for the paper to become the article in the journal. The message usually says something akin to “it’s not you, it’s me.” Fair enough, at times, that might as well be the case. But more often than not, it is actually you, that is, the authors, who are at fault. That can happen for several reasons:

• the authors targeted the wrong journal.

• the authors failed to tell a good story of otherwise good research.

• the authors didn’t do good research.

This last bit may sound harsh, but it is the harsh truth. Not all papers are good. Some of those have the potential to become good, some don’t. And those that don’t will, very likely, get desk rejected.

Desk rejections are on the editor. Well, any decision is on the editor, but desk rejection is a decision made without seeking a second (and third, and fourth) opinion. So the burden is bigger on the editor with desk rejections. Why desk reject? Why not give every paper a shot? That is, to an extent, to mitigate the burden on reviewers.

Reviewer is the scarcest resource in peer reviewing.

Until I started handling papers as an editor, I didn’t realize how hard it was to find a person willing to serve as a reviewer. People don’t react to invitations, don’t accept invitations, don’t return reports… a lot. So, the reviewing process is lengthy partly because it takes a long time for the process to start. In my experience, to secure a reviewer, on average, you need two potential reviewers. So, about six per paper.

Are there that many academics out there? Yes, I believe so. But not everyone plays the game by the rules. So, that shrinks the pool. I have also begun to believe that the availability of reviewers is seasonal. I don’t have hard data to back up what I am about to state. But I think, the first half of the calendar year is a more lucrative period for finding reviewers.

Those who are willing to serve as reviewers, still have other stuff to do. So, they impose some constraints on their reviewing time. It usually goes something like "one paper per month" or "no more than one paper at a time." Such constraints do not cause seasonality. But there are some other types of constraints that do. Stuff like "no more than 20 papers per year" will favor the beginning of the year.

Three hats.

I am, currently, an author, a reviewer, and an editor. Quite a few scholars are the same way. Most academics, at the very least, are authors and reviewers at the same time. Point is, there is no us (the authors) and them (editors and reviewers). At least there should not be. Often, it seems to be that narrative takes that route. I think that is the wrong route. Authors, editors, and reviewers, together, serve one purpose—advancing knowledge. And in any case, one is always and only a scholar, regardless of the hat they are wearing.