MOVING TO FRONT FROM MARCH 19--UPDATED
A philosopher in the UK asked me to share an anonymized version of their unhappy experience:
I originally submitted this paper on 27 January 2020, and on 29 January I was told that the internal review process would take around 10 weeks. That period having passed without me hearing anything - and with the REF deadline of 31 December 2020 looming - I sent emails to the journal’s managing editor on 6 May and again on 5 June, without response. I then emailed the publisher on 3 September and again on 28 September. Finally, on 10 October, I was contacted by the managing editor who told me that she was waiting for the second reviewer’s report. Nearly 5 months later I discover in fact the paper had not been sent out for review at all. In sum, 13 months’ wait for a desk rejection with no feedback.
I know it’s common for long delays in the review process, but to my mind this really takes the biscuit.
PPQ was appropriately apologetic about this:
Due to a recently discovered mistake in our records from the past year, the email you received concerning your submission having passed initial review was sent in error and your submission had not been previously submitted for an initial review. We regret to inform you that after having sent your submission through an initial review our editors have decided not to publish your manuscript. The journal policy is to provide comments only on articles that receive external review, and due to the fact that this records error affected several submissions we are unfortunately unable to make an exception in this case despite the long delay in our decision.
We know this situation is unacceptable and we sincerely apologize for the unfair burden our error has imposed on you. We are making significant changes in the operations of the journal to ensure this does not happen in the future.
UPDATE: I've heard from others who had similar experiences. One young philosopher in the U.S. writes:
I had the same unhappy experience at PPQ...I have to say, I don't find the "records error" excuse convincing. That doesn't explain (1) why I never got a confirmation that they'd received my MS; (2) why my follow-up to the journal's e-mail was not replied to; (3) why the multiple e-mails I sent to the managing editor wer replied to; (4) why an e-mail to Janet Levin [a faculty editor of the journal] was not replied to; (5) why it took seven months to complete the intra-department review. I have my suspicions about what happened, but I think they're best left unsaid. I will note that they have a new managing editor (another USC grad student).
For me, this was merely irritating. But I do feel bad for those, like your correspondent, who are under pressure to publish.
And a young philosopher in Australia writes:
I saw your post about the "fiasco" at PPQ. I was one of the victims of this fiasco. I've heard that there were about 100 papers treated in this way as a result of a breakdown in the PPQ editorial leadership that occurred recently....
You say that PPQ is being "appropriately apologetic" about this. Perhaps that's true (although in the apology email that I received from Janet Levin, she called it a "lapse," which is a bit of an understatement). But in any case I believe that PPQ ought to do more than apologize. I believe that PPQ can and should offer to send my paper out for review and ought to extend the same offer to all of the other authors who were similarly treated.
In my case, the timeline is something like this:
March 2020: Initial submission of my paper
July 2020: I receive an email saying "Your paper passed our initial review process and we are currently in the process of securing referees."
Late February 2021: I receive an email saying that the paper had never been initially reviewed and is now being desk rejected (appx. 1 year after initial submission!)
I think it can be argued that I was seriously harmed and misled by PPQ's having given me false information about the status of my paper. When I submitted the paper, I had about nine months left in a research position. In [month omitted] my contract expired, and I now am without a full-time position (I'm doing sessional teaching [at a university in Australia] while I'm on the philosophy job market). If PPQ had simply told me honestly that they were backed up and unable to give my paper an initial review anytime soon, I would have withdrawn the paper and submitted it elsewhere. It is possible that this might have resulted in my getting it published before the end of my contract, which in turn might have helped me argue for a contract extension. Obviously, it's impossible to know what would have happened, but it's not outlandish to imagine that I might not be unemployed today if PPQ had not misled me in July of 2020.
And I am sure that many others are in the same boat. Given that progress in our profession depends heavily on the rate at which we publish our papers, it can be seriously damaging to be misled about the state of one's paper in an editorial process.
It seems to me that PPQ ought to do something to address the damage they've very likely done to a lot of authors and I think the most natural way of doing this would be to just offer to send out for external review each of the papers that were caught up in this fiasco.
In general, if a journal says that it is treating someone's paper in such-and-such a way, then I would think this creates an obligation to follow through, or at least an obligation to offer to follow through. I am curious whether you agree.
I'm not sure imposing a burden on PPQ referees who were not responsible for this mess is the right remedy, but perhaps the faculty editors at USC ought to undertake to send substantive comments to those authors affected, as a more concrete way of making amends.
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