Reviews and Rejections

It has been said that the death and taxes are the two inevitable facts of life. To this list I am inclined to add reviews. It seems no matter who you are - an academic trying to get research money, a company trying to land a government contract, a magnate trying to take over the entire steel industry of a whole country - you have to write some sort of document which is going to be reviewed by someone.

In this post I will compare and contrast two types of review structures that I have been personally exposed to: scientific and literary. Of course, many other types of reviews exist, for cinematic and musical performances, for yearly performances at jobs and contracts, for restaurants, etc. But I will stick to the ones I have experience with.

Scientific review:

For brevity I will consider only the submission and review of papers. Most scientific journals are open to accepting papers that have already been posted on the arxiv. This is an informal bulletin board which is heavily in use for posting the latest results, without peer review, long before they appear in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. It helps share the latest news, and also establish priority (a big deal in academia).

All journals I know of accept only electronic submissions. Submissions are open around the year. Each publishing house (the American Physical Society, the Institute of Physics publisher, Springer, etc.) has its own submission portal.

Typically, a paper must be submitted to a single scientific journal at a time, and can be submitted to a second journal only if it has been rejected by the previous journal. The paper usually comes back with comments from technical experts on the subject; it is rare not to hear back at all from the journal, though in some cases the editor in charge might need prodding to get the article reviewed in a timely fashion. The authors are usually allowed a second round to satisfy the objections of the referees. The rejection/acceptance letter usually arrives from an editor in the form of an email.

There is a mechanism for appealing a rejection at most journals. I have seen very few appeals being successful.

Usually, a correct scientific paper can be published in some journal. Meaning it can find a home somewhere, though the journal might not be of as high impact factor, relatively speaking, compared to where it was first sent. For example, in my field, I might send a paper to Nature; it might eventually be published Optics Express. It's rare for a bonafide scientific result, no matter its importance, not to be published somewhere.

Literary review:

For brevity I will consider the submission and review of fiction and nonfiction articles. Almost no literary magazine will accept writing that has appeared in public in any form elsewhere - even in a blog. There are exceptions for reprints and anthologies.

Many magazines accept hard copy submissions, in addition to electronic, and provide a street mailing address on their website. Most magazines are only open for submissions between well defined dates, typically a few months of the year. Then they close for their reading period(s). A large number of literary magazines accept electronic submissions through the Submittable portal.

Most literary magazines allow multiple submissions, meaning a story might be submitted to many magazines simultaneously. The proviso is that, if the article is accepted somewhere, the author should perform the courtesy of withdrawing it from the remaining magazines immediately. Most submissions never receive a reply indicating a rejection. The reason is that magazines are overwhelmed by submissions, and are shortstaffed. E.g. in 2021 the New Yorker received about 1500 fiction submissions, i.e. about 10 a week. So if you don't hear back, it's probably safe to assume you got rejected. In my experience, most acceptances occur within 2-4 weeks of submission; the editor/reviewer read it, thought it was good and fit the mission of the journal, and accepted it. I have seen some exceptions, though; I once got accepted after 4 months. Some magazines will send a stock rejection letter/email around 6-8 months after submission. Acceptance is usually in the form of an email, though once I did receive a call from the editor informing me of the news.

Very few journals provide feedback on a piece; none, to my knowledge allow a second round for 'fixing mistakes'.

It is entirely possible, and in fact the fate of most stories, that they are never published in any literary magazine.

Afterword

It is interesting to compare the two fields. Although science is suppose to be more objective than the arts, I find the reviewing process in the literary magazines to be far fairer.

Scientific papers are reviewed by our peers, a fact that immediately presents a conflict of interest since they are competing with the authors for resources such as recognition, grant money and career advancement. In my experience it is always a surprise to receive an unbiased review. Editors also operate under a conflict of interest as they try to focus on securing publication for results from established groups - these are what raise the impact factors of their journals.

Literary magazines, in my experience, suffer from fewer of these problems. Editors/reviewers usually have no sharp conflicts of interest with the authors. Generally the operating principle is that if they find the piece suits their purpose, i.e. it is the style of story they believe in, they don't care where it comes from, and act quickly and decisively. Hence a lot of authors get picked from the `slush pile'. Of course, the resume of the author can play a role, but many magazines advertise the fraction of unpublished authors they accept in each issue. It's usually quite substantial. And the reviews I have received have been honest - even when I disagree with them - and to the point. Maybe the review is more clear cut because unlike in science there is no accounting for literary truth (which boils down to someone's personal taste) and hence less room for argument.

In any case, there seems to be no way around the review process.