I suppose everyone
remembers their first time. Mine was in the pages of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research which in 1973 printed my
first CV- citeable academic journal publication. Its title is perhaps
indicative of how they did things differently then, “The Experience of
Politics”. I find it hard to imagine
that anyone would get away with anything like that now.
Let me remind younger
readers of olden times. You or your secretary typed up the paper and you (or
your secretary – I had one at the age of 23, a temporary university lecturer)
put it in an envelope and posted it off to the Editor, in this case at SUNY
Buffalo. The journal published no guidelines for submission, other than to note
that “Papers submitted for publication will not be returned unless accompanied
by a self-addressed, stamped envelope, or return postage …”. Yes, that was it. But in April 1971
I did receive an acknowledgement of safe receipt and in July 1971 an acceptance
– “there will, however, be a considerable period of unavoidable delay …” Not
yet used to such delays, I wrote impatiently in March 1973 to enquire about
date of publication; I was scheduled for June and would soon be receiving a
galley proof. And June it was, calloo, callay.
Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research was I thought a
mid-ranking philosophical journal. (It still exists). It was indexed in The Philosopher’s Index at Bowling Green
University. Since my article appeared without an abstract, I was asked to provide
one for the Index and still have their proof of my text. It ends “It’s quite a
good paper, if I may say so”. It had not been edited out, so I assumed my
Abstract had gone unread. (I ran these little experiments in
those days and have just started up again: see the Blog post on this site dated 11 September 2018 ).
Click on Image to Magnify
I would like history to
be my judge, but Google Scholar does not index this quite good paper. It may
have been cited somewhere, but in all probability, not. I have no
correspondence relating to it.
This I now understand
has nothing to do with me; it is a quite general problem.
The other day, I
looked at one of the Word docs. on my desktop and thought it might make an
academic journal article. I prospected but rapidly gave up. The whole process
of submission seems to have been bureaucratised to the nth degree
and I set that fact (which would raise my blood pressure if ignored) against a
couple of others. Even if accepted, it is highly unlikely that the Word doc.
would find any new readers, even more unlikely that it would end up being
cited. I googled and the consensus seems to be that in the humanities, about
half of all published articles go completely unread and about eighty percent
will go uncited by anyone, not even the author’s Facebook friends. Since in
retirement I am not trying to build a CV, why bother? I have no answer to that
question other than, Why indeed?
And why would anyone
bother, unless to build a CV? Well, there is of course a gambler’s chance that
your article will be one of those that gets read and a smaller gambler’s chance
that it will be cited – though, of course, there is only a fifty-fifty chance
that anyone will see the citation and, worse, one of my online sources makes it
the criterion for an article having been read by anyone that its first two
pages should have been read. That’s tough on the citations.
There is a further
reason why I baulk at the academic journal. In the past and even now, the
journal took copyright. Oh, we were told that it relieved you of the burden of
negotiating permissions and they threw in promises of profit-sharing. But there
are two big practical disadvantages, as I have discovered. First, when putting
together anthologies, editors apply to copyright holders not authors. This can
mean, to give an example from my own experience, that an editor may pick an
early version of something and miss out on the fact that there exists a later,
more polished attempt on offer. You could have told them, if asked. Second,
when in retirement you put together a
collection of your own work and try to do the dutiful bit of obtaining “kind
permission” (obs. “without charge”),
you discover that your journal is now owned by some conglomerate using an
online permissions program which doesn’t even recognise the journal, now
defunct, which it owns. More blood pressure problems as I assembled Studies in Pragmatics (2017).
As a result, you will find the recent would-be article on this Blog for 11 September 2018.
