I received an email last night (who sends these sorts of things out on Saturday night?) telling me that the essay I submitted to THE journal in my field hadn't been accepted. It was the nicest rejection I've ever gotten. I also received feedback from two reviewers. The first reviewer's tone was a bit jerky, although the comments were helpful. The second reviewer said the essay is original and well written, but that I need to reframe the argument a bit. That makes sense to me. It doesn't make me happy because it means a lot of work--work that I don't have time to sit down and do write now since I'm teaching 3 courses that involve a lot of grading--as in I just returned a stack of papers, have 2 more stacks to grade, and get another stack this week. I can do the revisions, but they aren't, unfortunately, the kinds of revisions that I can do quickly and send the essay back out next week. So now I get to think for a while and try to figure out where to go from here. I've been slowly revising another essay that I could focus on for the next few weeks (when I'm not grading and sending out job letters). With any luck, I could have that out by December so that I still have something on my CV that is under review. I feel like I need that to be somewhat competitive on the market.
And while I knew this journal was a long shot, I was really hoping for a revise and resubmit. I need some positive feedback on my work--something more than "this is original and well written, but the argument doesn't make sense."
2 comments:
This is a huge bummer. I'm sorry. I know how frustrating this is, believe me.
One thought, though...maybe send it back out again without doing revisions?
Here's what I'm thinking. This was a fancy journal, you got reviewed, and the feedback was positive. That means this is a good essay and probably worthy of publication, even if it didn't make it for this journal, which probably has an insanely low acceptance rate.
Given all of this, I say if there's something you can fix easily or quickly, make those changes but then send it back out as is. It's original and well-written and that means someone else might be delighted to have it. Or at least another editor might be happy to work with you on it.
Because a sympathetic editor is what you need. It sounds to me like this could have been an r&r if they'd wanted to do it.
anyway, it's frustrating. I totally get it. But original and well-written is good feedback. Find a narrower journal with a higher acceptance rate and send it out.
Thanks for the good advice, A. I have been thinking about journals I can submit to, and I have found one that I like. I'm carving out some time to make some of the changes suggested, and I will send it out next week.
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