Why Publish?
Because the professional competition involved in peer review is what keeps us on our toes.
By Sharon Kaye
As I was jogging my usual route this morning, a disturbing thought broke through my consciousness. In retrospect, I know this thought has been hanging around the edges of my mind for some time now. I’d successfully repressed it until this morning, when it suddenly broke through: I’m slow. I used to call myself a runner. Sometime in the past few months I became a jogger, and at this point I’m beginning to wonder if I have the right even to call myself that anymore.
What’s wrong with me? I wondered. How is this year so different from two years ago, when I was flying through the same workouts? Pressing myself into honest reflection, I identified the difference: two years ago I entered a road race, and I haven’t entered another since. The race was just some small, local event—but it was competition, a public display of achievement. People don’t like to speak of winners and losers in events like these, but let’s face it: there are those who place and those who do not.
I tell myself that I’m doing the same workouts as I was doing prior to that race, but it isn’t true. I’m going through the motions. I’m cutting corners. I’m not challenging myself. Why should I? I’ve got nothing to prove. And that’s why I’m slow.
This very thought was weighing heavily on my mind when I went to a meeting at my university where the question was posed: why do we regard publishing in academic journals as a requirement for things like tenure, promotion, and fellowships? In the humanities, in particular, there doesn’t seem to be any good reason to privilege the academic journal over other venues. If the goal of humanities publishing is to spread new ideas, then it seems that creating a popular Internet blog would be the better choice.
The usual answer to this line of reasoning is that the goal of humanities publishing is not just to spread new ideas, but to spread good ideas, and this goal requires peer review. We all know how much our students’ papers benefit from multiple drafts, especially when each draft is critiqued by a painfully honest editor. One never really outgrows this need. So, as professors, we rely on publishing venues that are anonymously peer-reviewed. The anonymity allows the reviewers to be painfully honest, telling us which ideas aren’t any good so that we can improve.
The problem with this answer, however, is that academic journals are not the best venue for this kind of critical feedback. Oftentimes, journals reject an article without providing any feedback, or the feedback suggests that the reviewer just wasn’t interested in the topic of the article. Anthology editors—who handpick reviewers who know the topic, are willing to provide detailed criticism, and are deeply invested in making papers worthy of the volume— are more likely to provide useful feedback than are journal editors. An anthology paper often undergoes several stages of revision before publication, and the final product is far more sophisticated than anything you could have written on your own.
Professional Competition
So the question remains: why journals?
I never understood the answer to this question until I thought about the recent slump in my workouts. The journals are the competition.
The peer review you receive from someone like an anthology editor is wonderful, but it isn’t competition. (After all, how many submissions is a volume on Ockham’s metaphysics likely to receive?) It’s a bit like hiring a trainer, which, incidentally, I am seriously considering doing. A trainer can really help, offering honest and ruthless criticism while also providing support, suggestions, and encouragement. But in the end, your level of achievement is up to you. And if you don’t have to compete for a place, you won’t have the motivation to push yourself beyond what you thought possible.
But I can push myself! Yeah, right.
Unlike anthology editors, journal editors receive dozens and dozens of submissions on a regular basis, all competing for print space. The review board has a large pool of comparison for rating the submissions and making decisions. There are winners and losers. The more prestigious the journal, the more competitors there are. You have to push yourself or you will not place.
So let’s just come right out and admit it: we privilege the academic journal because we want academic writing to be competitive. We want academic writing to be competitive because we want excellence. Nothing produces excellence like competition. This idea is as old as civilization itself. It’s why the Greeks invented the Olympics, and it’s why we love to watch them. Interestingly, the objections against the journal system are the same as the objections against any major sporting event.
First, there is the charge of foul play: the referees are biased, the playing field is uneven, the judges are corrupt. Unfortunately, this charge is often well deserved. The Olympics always seem to generate some sort of official scandal.
Yet the imperfections of the Olympics don’t undermine their ultimate value any more than do the imperfections of the journal system. The ultimate value of the Olympics lies not so much in who actually wins, but in the extraordinary accomplishments of all of those who try to win. Furthermore, although everyone who competes is the victim of unfairness some of the time, no one is victimized all of the time.
The second objection is that academic publishing is a vanity. Professors inflate their self-importance by telling themselves that they are advancing the state of knowledge, while the truth is that very few publications break new ground. This is especially evident in the humanities, where the vast majority of articles involve over - turning some obscure interpretation of some obscure author, thereby creating nothing more than yet another obscure interpretation to be overturned.
The absurdity of this objection can be seen by applying the same logic to sports. Why should athletes ever strive to win? All they do is create a new statistic—at best, and only very rarely, a new record to be broken by the next guy.
Picture the aftermath of a grueling Olympic event. The winner takes the podium. Millions of people around the world cheer as he accepts the gold medal. With tears in his eyes he stands before them and accepts their accolades. This is in fact the very moment he has been visualizing for years, during the long, hard hours of training.
Vanity? Only if he scoffs at his opponents and ignores those who helped him along the way. Someone who refused to strive despite having talent could more easily be accused either of self-abasement or, worse yet, indolence.
We aren’t all cut out for Olympic achievement either in sports or in academics. But we are all capable of much more than we think under the pressure of competition.
So, sign me up for the next road race. I have some training to do.
Sharon Kaye is professor of philosophy at John Carroll University in Cleveland. She is editor of Lost and Philosophy and author of A Beginner’s Guide to Medieval Philosophy.
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