A perfect storm is slowing journal publication in the field of higher education, leading one top title to temporarily halt submissions.
Growth in the discipline, a spike in quality and international submissions, reluctance by scholars to review articles, and focus on a limited number of top publications all contribute to backlogs and sluggish turnaround, say editors of the top three journals in the field. Scholars are buzzing about prospective solutions, including more and bigger journals, honoraria to encourage article reviews, and an increase in online publication.
Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall University, was recently reviewing an article for The Review of Higher Education and went online to check its submission guidelines. He was surprised to find a notice that said consideration of submissions had been suspended in June until further notice.
Weird, he thought. The Review is one of the three most prestigious journals in the discipline, along with The Journal of Higher Education and Research in Higher Education. “It happens on rare occasions,” he says. “If the editorial board of a journal is switching over, sometimes they’ll do a very short hiatus.” But here there was no switchover and the pause was indefinite.
Colleagues on Twitter were similarly taken aback.
“That’s unheard of,” tweeted Sara Goldrick-Rab, of Temple University.
“Simply stunning,” wrote Michael Harris, of Southern Methodist University, “that one of the top journals in the field is closed for submissions. What does this mean about the state of our field? Nothing good I think.”
But maybe not entirely bad, either, says Gary R. Pike, The Review of Higher Education’s editor and a professor of higher education and student affairs at Indiana University at Bloomington. The problem is an embarrassment of riches resulting in a two-year backlog of accepted manuscripts. The quarterly publishes about 20 articles a year on access equity, enrollment management, education, pedagogy, community colleges, and other matters. Pending board approval, Pike hopes to double the size of the issues and open submissions again in early 2019.
The backlog of accepted articles is one problem; the slow turnaround time for consideration is another. In Kelchen’s case, it took about nine months for an acceptance for an article about student fees, and then another eight months before publication, after two rounds of revisions. For the gears to grind to a halt completely, he and others say, is a real problem for researchers relying on article publication for hiring, tenure, and promotion.
Jenny J. Lee, a professor of higher-education policy at the University of Arizona and an associate editor of the journal, says one obstacle is a shortage of willing reviewers. In one extreme case, more than 25 people she asked to review an article either declined or simply didn’t answer her, she says. That was an outlier. The article was co-written by Pike, so even though potential reviewers didn’t see authors’ names, they could have known by topic that he was likely a contributor, and reviewing work by the editor of a top journal might be daunting. Still, says Lee, she has worked on the editorial boards of nine journals, and six to nine rejections or no-replies by potential reviewers of an article, even senior scholars on a journal’s board, is common.
There are undoubtedly some shirkers, say Pike and other editors, but a bigger factor is that scholars are being asked to review more often. The volume of submissions for RHE was about 250 yearly when Pike started in the job four years ago. Now it’s close to 350. Mitchell J. Chang, a professor of education at the University of California at Los Angeles and editor in chief of The Journal of Higher Education, says that it is on course to get more than 500 submissions this year. Robert K. Toutkoushian, editor in chief of Research in Higher Education and a professor at the University of Georgia’s Institute of Higher Education, says that when he took the job nine years ago the journal received 250 submissions yearly and now gets close to 700.
‘Our Field Has Grown’
The Review’s two top competitors aren’t planning their own submission hiatuses, but they are experiencing the same problems and their editors feel Pike’s pain. Chang, who assumed the editorship of the Journal in March, says that its backlog of accepted manuscripts is 12 to 14 months, and that he understands how Pike would worry that a two-year backup might make articles obsolete by the time they see print.
“Our field has grown from a really small niche research area,” says Chang, and scholars in economics, psychology, and other fields are increasingly contributing to higher-education journals. Also, scholars worldwide are feeling increasing pressure to publish, and the journals are all seeing a spike in international submissions, say their editors.
Kelchen, of Seton Hall, suggests three measures to improve the backlog and long wait times: Reject more manuscripts at the gate and don’t send them out to reviewers, stop accepting manuscripts from authors who don’t pull their weight as reviewers, and offer a small financial incentive to reviewers to do a thorough job and get their work in on time.
Journal editors say they are already pretty tough gatekeepers, sending out so-called desk rejections of 40 to 70 percent of submissions on an initial read for lack of depth, topical misfire, insufficient sourcing, poor timeliness, or other reasons. And there are dangers in overly aggressive gatekeeping, says Kevin R. McClure, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Every editor has biases regarding topics and methods, and “the fear there is that you’re not necessarily giving all papers a fair shot to get multiple opinions.”
The punitive approach elicits wistful chuckles, but editors say they rely on circles of collegial good will, and submission blacklists might be a little rash.
There are obstacles to the incentive approach, too, and Lee, of the University of Arizona, says that academe “is in a sad state” if it’s come to that, but that the problem needs to be dealt with.
“I’m not sure who has the money,” says Pike. And, says McClure, compensation would add some administrative headaches.
Money Talks
But Scott Imberman, a professor of economics at Michigan State University and a co-editor of Economics of Education Review, says journals are “making money off volunteer labor. Providing a bit of compensation and incentive for on-time reviews can make them a lot better.” He cites a 2014 paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives on an experiment giving reviewers for an economics journal different deadlines, a $100 cash incentive, “public posting” of their turnaround times, or some combination.
“We conclude,” the authors write, “that small changes in journals’ policies could substantially expedite peer review at little cost. … Price incentives, nudges, and social pressure are effective and complementary methods of increasing prosocial behavior.” In other words, money talks, even if it’s only a little money.
Lee says the internationalization of submissions to American journals should go both ways. American academics are too focused on American journals and should send more of their work to Higher Education, Studies in Higher Education, and other respected journals abroad.
Scholars suggest that journals make it clear that those who submit articles should be willing to be tapped as article reviewers too. On the flip side, journals can offer those who review a certain number of articles a place on their editorial or advisory boards.
Still, the most powerful incentive might be an awareness that if everyone doesn’t do their part, the process will sink. Kelchen says he is asked to review 20 to 30 articles a year and agrees to 85 to 90 percent of them, saying no mostly to papers outside his expertise. “If I’m not doing my reviews as a faculty member,” he says “the system slows down even more.”
Journals’ sluggishness is shifting some of the most timely higher-education policy discussion, says McClure, to blogs and white papers by think tanks, consultants, and news outlets with data-analytics teams. But while journal editors see a valuable place for early airing and discussion of new research, they recognize that peer-reviewed work is still the gold standard for tenure and promotion. Frustrating as the process can be, they say, they fill a crucial niche — slowly.
Alexander C. Kafka is a senior editor and oversees Idea Lab. Follow him on Twitter @AlexanderKafka, or email him at alexander.kafka@chronicle.com.
