Your creaky memory serves you (and all the rest of us) excellently well, Bruce. Actually, we kept discussing papers on the LCHC site as recently as last year (I uploaded some stuff on the Psychology of Art, and there have been wonderful papers from Andy and many others).
I recently downloaded the whole backlog of journals, and I am really distressed by how DULL and TEPID the writing has become. It's not surprising that the discussions we have often peter out after only a few exchanges.
I'm not over-impressed by the abstracts on offer in this issue, either. Normally I would go ahead and vote for the article on second language teaching. But the abstract reads suspiciously like a washing-powder style methodological comparison, with "SCT-CHAT" on one side and a caricature of "SLA" on the other.
Andy is right. Going outside the system of free articles for discussion is a good answer for the discussion list, but it does nothing to address the main problem, which is the quality of articles that appear in the journal.
I guess I think that the editors need to be a little more interested in genre bending, the reviewers a little more open to "revise and resubmit" instead of outright rejection, and we writers need to be thick skinned and persistent.
Contrary to what Andy says, rejections are not that bad. I think I'd much rather have a rejection than to have to put my name over some of the articles I've read lately. But then, that includes some of the drafts I submitted mysefl!
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
--- On Fri, 7/8/11, Bruce Robinson <bruce@brucerob.eu> wrote:
From: Bruce Robinson <bruce@brucerob.eu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] The Polls are OPEN!!
To: ablunden@mira.net, "eXtended Mind, Culture,Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Friday, July 8, 2011, 2:14 AM
If my creaky memory serves, we did discuss non-MCA articles suggested and mainly written by list members for a long period in the late 90s / early 00s. There are or were indications of this somewhere on the MCA website. Not sure why or how it stopped.
Bruce Robinson
From: "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net>
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Friday, July 08, 2011 2:28 AM
Subject: Re: [xmca] The Polls are OPEN!!
David, I think there is a LOT of merit to taking articles posted on the LCHC for discussion as the focus of XMCA discussion. We should not do that *instead* of the one MCA article per quarter though. There is plenty of time between the quarterly publication of MCA to discuss an article on the website. We should do more of that, for the reasons you give.
Andy
David Kellogg wrote:
Mike:
I wonder if there is any way we could include "write-ins" on the ballot. People could upload manuscripts to the "Papers for Discussion" at LCHC and then these could be included in the vote.
This might address several problems which seem to be dogging our quarterly discussions.
a) It often happens that the articles on offer have almost nothing to do with what people have on their minds and what is being discussed on the list.
b) It sometimes happens that the authors chosen for publication in the journal turn out to be more interested in being published than in being discussed and do not take part.
c) It occasionally happens that people like myself clutter up the list with long posts which really ought to be articles but which have no chance of publication, at least not in their current form.
It may also be a good way of getting the writing mentorship project off the ground, and it might even return us, one small but much appreciated step, towards that pre-MCA tradition of an unrefereed and unreviewed newsletter, with writing that is unafraid to walk on the wild side.
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
--- On Wed, 7/6/11, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
From: mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
Subject: [xmca] The Polls are OPEN!!
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture,Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Wednesday, July 6, 2011, 3:45 PM
A wide range of articles to choose from for XMCA discussion and private
musings.
http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Journal/poll.html
mike
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-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
MIA: http://www.marxists.org
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