David Kellogg - in his recent message and in the one dated June 2010 that David Kirshner links to - has raised some important issues, and I'd like to reply as one of the new troika of editors of MCA (along with Jorge Larreamendy and Andy Blunden), not about the specifics of the review of David's manuscript but on the general topic of the reviewing process in a journal such as MCA. I am a new editor for MCA, but for the past eight years or so I have been an editor (one of three there too) of the Taylor & Francis journal Qualitative Research in Psychology. Over that time I've not become a perfect editor, by any means, but I've figured out what seems to me a workable approach to the responsibilities of editorial tasks.
David suggests that if a manuscript is sent out for review this indicates that the editor has decided that it is "at least potentially valuable," and he continues "What that means is that I will NEVER give that article the rating 'Do not resubmit.'" My view is a little different. There are some manuscripts that as editor I reject without sending them for review. There are others where, because I think there is potential but that reviewers would be harsh on the manuscript in its current form, I invite the author to make revisions (I spell them out) and resubmit, and I only then send the manuscript out to reviewers. These seem to me to be appropriate decisions for an editor to make single-handedly (or at times in consultation with the other editors). But there are manuscripts I send for review because it is not clear to me whether they are publishable or not. I often need the reviewers' expertise in order to decide whether or not a manuscript has a sound argument, or cites the appropriate literature, and so on. In such case, reviewers may well recommend that the manuscript be rejected. The final decision is mine, of course, but without the reviewers' evaluation it would be difficult or even impossible for me to make.
David also raises the issue of the number of reviews that are considered necessary. My experience is that it is getting increasingly difficult to find people willing to review manuscripts (probably because more and more journals are asking), and that at the same time authors are increasingly expecting a rapid decision on their manuscript. As a consequence of these twin pressures I do make decisions on the basis of a single review, though I prefer to obtain more, if it is sufficiently clear from that review, and from my own evaluation, what the strengths and flaws of the manuscript are.
David Kirshner asks whether MCA invites collaborative reviews. In the past, with QRP, I have at times invited a reviewer to collaborate with one of their students, or to ask a student to write a separate review. (I think I copied this from Barbara Rogoff's practice when she was editing Human Development.) I found that often the student review was the better - clearer, more detailed, more informed. MCA doesn't have a policy one way or the other, but we are quite open to this kind of approach.
On the citation 'policy,' if that's what one should call it, my understanding of this may be different from others, but I ran into it when submitting a manuscript that was published in MCA a few years ago. Wolff-Michael Roth asked me to change the way some citations ran, and as I understood it (I was a bit slow; it took me a while!) the point was that one should build an argument on evidence and logic rather than on appeals to authority. I was reminded of what Jean Lave once told me about the interdisciplinary departments at UC Irvine - an informal norm developed that one couldn't cite an authority (Levi-Brulh, let's say) unless one could also rehearse that person's argument on the topic under discussion.
Consider this example: "Parker (2007), in arguing that depression is over-diagnosed, stated that the reliability of the DSM criteria for depression and the threshold for reaching a diagnosis of depression are low, and, consequently, normal emotional states are diagnosed as clinical depression."
Put this way, the emphasis seems to be on Parker, with the implication that he or she is an authority we should pay attention to. Most probably, however, the point the author intends to emphasize is that an argument can be made that depression is over-diagnosed because the DSM has a low threshold. if so, the sentence would be better worded something like this:
"The DSM criteria set a threshold for the diagnosis of depression that is arguably low and has poor validity (Parker, 2007). Consequently, normal emotional states are diagnosed as clinical depression."
Finally (and I have just read Huw Lloyd's message) reviewing is indeed a demanding task, and the quality of reviews varies widely. David is surely correct that a review should ideally not contain uncivil language. I can still recall a review I received as a new PhD which included the phrase: "This is the kind of work that gives qualitative research a bad name!" I think it is unavoidable that we academics get hot under the collar, and another thing an editor has to do is not take such statements at face value, make sense of the debates and conflicts within and between research areas, and reach a decision that takes such factors into account. Sometimes the manuscript one wants to publish is the one that stirs up controversy.
That's my two cents, at least. Jorge and Andy may differ in some of the details. I will be happy to discuss the matter further; xmca is the owner of MCA; its editors are just its caretakers for a while.
Martin
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