The Southwestern Naturalist.
(Southwestern Association of Naturalists)
First round of reviews.
| Turnaround rate | 276 days (SD = 0) |
| Review length | n/a |
| Review quality | 4 / 5 (SD = 0) |
| Overall quality | 4 / 5 (SD = 0) |
| Would submit again | 1 / 5 (SD = 0) |
| Journal recommendation | 2 / 5 (SD = 0) |
(based on 1 report including 1 review) |
|
Desk rejects. |
|
| Turnaround rate | n/a |
| Plausibility | n/a |
Reviewers & Editors (Initial Submissions)
| Reviewers | |
| Length | n/a |
| Overall tone | Neutral (modal) |
| Knowledge | 4 / 5 (SD = 0) |
| Helpfulness | 4 / 5 (SD = 0) |
| Fairness | 4 / 5 (SD = 0) |
| Overall quality | 4 / 5 (SD = 0) |
| Editors | |
| Length | n/a |
| Decision | Revise&Resubmit (modal) |
| Plausibility | 4 / 5 (SD = 0) |
| Helpfulness | 4 / 5 (SD = 0) |
| Fairness | 4 / 5 (SD = 0) |
| Overall quality | 4 / 5 (SD = 0) |
Reviewers & Editors (Successive Rounds)
| Turnaround rate | 248 days (SD = 0) |
(based on 1 report including 1 review) |
|
| Reviewers | |
| Length | n/a |
| Overall tone | Positive (modal) |
| Knowledge | 4 / 5 (SD = 0) |
| Helpfulness | 4 / 5 (SD = 0) |
| Fairness | 4 / 5 (SD = 0) |
| Consistency | 4 / 5 (SD = 0) |
| Overall quality | 4 / 5 (SD = 0) |
| Editors | |
| Length | n/a |
| Decision | Accept (modal) |
| Plausibility | 4 / 5 (SD = 0) |
| Helpfulness | 4 / 5 (SD = 0) |
| Fairness | 4 / 5 (SD = 0) |
| Overall quality | 4 / 5 (SD = 0) |
Comments
· Overall quality rating: 4 / 5 · Recommendation: 2 / 5
I submitted the manuscript to what I thought would be an appropriate journal. This was regional natural history kind of stuff, and fortunately, there is exactly a regional journal dedicated to just such research: The Southwestern Naturalist.
When I mentioned this to one of my colleagues, he groaned a little and said, “They take forever.” I sort of shrugged and said, “I’m not in a hurry.” It’s not as though I am worried about getting scooped on this project: ecology of an obscure species of digging crustacean? Not exactly a “hot” research field. But in retrospect, I wish I had checked the “submitted” and “accepted” dates in a recent issue more closely.
I submitted the paper on 22 August 2011. No, that is not a typo.
When I finally got the page proofs, it chafed my chaps to see the “submitted” date at the end of the paper: “26 September 2011.” Apparently, nobody even looked at this manuscript for over a month.
I got my reviews back on 24 May 2012. That’s nine months there. I sent back the revision one week later, and I hadn’t though the revisions were that major.
Time passes. Sound of crickets chirping.
My patience ran out around the ten month mark (we’re at February 2013 now). I emailed the associate editor about the status of my manuscript. He emailed me back to say:
I am no longer an editor for the Southwestern Naturalist.
I was gobsmacked. It seemed to me that a logical thing to do when an editor leaves would be to email the authors for correspondence to say, “This person is leaving; please direct your inquiries on your manuscript to this editor.”
I finally heard back that the article has been recommended for publication, and should appear in the December 2013 issue of the journal. This made me happy, because I thought it would be out by the end of the year, and I hadn’t had a lot of papers out in 2013.
In early November, I get an email that I should get page proofs for my article in January... which is already after December, dashing that hope that the article would be out before the end of the year.
With all that’s happened so far, I suppose I should not have been surprised that, having been told to expect proofs in January, I actually get them mid March. I sent them back quickly, in hope that the December, 2013 issue might be out around the end of March, 2014.
In the waiting time between when the paper was supposed to be published and when it actually was published alone, I submitted articles to three other journals, had them accepted, and proofed. I’m not trying to boast here, just contrasting my experience with this journal with others.
The paper has finally seen the light, and it has taken substantially longer to get this article through the editorial and production process (2.75 years) than it did to collect the data and write the paper (two years). I should have seen this coming, because the journal does list the initial submission and acceptance dates. But even those dates underestimate the publication time. My “received” date was a month after I submitted, and the publication date on the cover of the issue, December 2013, was months before the issue actually hit the web.
And, by the way, did I mention that there was a $320 page charge for all of this? And it’s a paywalled subscription journal, with no open access options?
Speaking of costs, I got an email on 19 May 2014 allowing me to order reprints. The paper still wasn’t available on the journal website, but I thought it was at least a promising sign that it hadn’t been forgotten. I clicked on the link, and was stunned to see that they wanted $69.68 from me so that I could have a PDF of my own paper. I had never had a journal want to charge me for a PDF before.
I was also stunned to see that a copy on CD would be more than another $10, when the cost of a blank CD from Staples can be as little as 18 cents. It feels like a money grab. And I can’t remember the last PDF I needed or wanted in CD format. And why would you need a DVD (another $13) for a single journal article PDF?
The paper was finally available online on 4 June 2014. That’s 1,017 days – or two years, nine months, and thirteen days from submission to publication.
I submitted the manuscript to what I thought would be an appropriate journal. This was regional natural history kind of stuff, and fortunately, there is exactly a regional journal dedicated to just such research: The Southwestern Naturalist.
When I mentioned this to one of my colleagues, he groaned a little and said, “They take forever.” I sort of shrugged and said, “I’m not in a hurry.” It’s not as though I am worried about getting scooped on this project: ecology of an obscure species of digging crustacean? Not exactly a “hot” research field. But in retrospect, I wish I had checked the “submitted” and “accepted” dates in a recent issue more closely.
I submitted the paper on 22 August 2011. No, that is not a typo.
When I finally got the page proofs, it chafed my chaps to see the “submitted” date at the end of the paper: “26 September 2011.” Apparently, nobody even looked at this manuscript for over a month.
I got my reviews back on 24 May 2012. That’s nine months there. I sent back the revision one week later, and I hadn’t though the revisions were that major.
Time passes. Sound of crickets chirping.
My patience ran out around the ten month mark (we’re at February 2013 now). I emailed the associate editor about the status of my manuscript. He emailed me back to say:
I am no longer an editor for the Southwestern Naturalist.
I was gobsmacked. It seemed to me that a logical thing to do when an editor leaves would be to email the authors for correspondence to say, “This person is leaving; please direct your inquiries on your manuscript to this editor.”
I finally heard back that the article has been recommended for publication, and should appear in the December 2013 issue of the journal. This made me happy, because I thought it would be out by the end of the year, and I hadn’t had a lot of papers out in 2013.
In early November, I get an email that I should get page proofs for my article in January... which is already after December, dashing that hope that the article would be out before the end of the year.
With all that’s happened so far, I suppose I should not have been surprised that, having been told to expect proofs in January, I actually get them mid March. I sent them back quickly, in hope that the December, 2013 issue might be out around the end of March, 2014.
In the waiting time between when the paper was supposed to be published and when it actually was published alone, I submitted articles to three other journals, had them accepted, and proofed. I’m not trying to boast here, just contrasting my experience with this journal with others.
The paper has finally seen the light, and it has taken substantially longer to get this article through the editorial and production process (2.75 years) than it did to collect the data and write the paper (two years). I should have seen this coming, because the journal does list the initial submission and acceptance dates. But even those dates underestimate the publication time. My “received” date was a month after I submitted, and the publication date on the cover of the issue, December 2013, was months before the issue actually hit the web.
And, by the way, did I mention that there was a $320 page charge for all of this? And it’s a paywalled subscription journal, with no open access options?
Speaking of costs, I got an email on 19 May 2014 allowing me to order reprints. The paper still wasn’t available on the journal website, but I thought it was at least a promising sign that it hadn’t been forgotten. I clicked on the link, and was stunned to see that they wanted $69.68 from me so that I could have a PDF of my own paper. I had never had a journal want to charge me for a PDF before.
I was also stunned to see that a copy on CD would be more than another $10, when the cost of a blank CD from Staples can be as little as 18 cents. It feels like a money grab. And I can’t remember the last PDF I needed or wanted in CD format. And why would you need a DVD (another $13) for a single journal article PDF?
The paper was finally available online on 4 June 2014. That’s 1,017 days – or two years, nine months, and thirteen days from submission to publication.
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