Comments in Journals

From: Roger Collins <rcollins_at_cariboo.bc.ca>
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 18:21:21 +0100

Hi Stevan. This is addressed to you because of your depth of knowledge
of journals and their structure in general rather than any preconceived
notion on my part that you'll be able to comment on the following
issue. Anyway, here goes...

I've been in academia more than 20 years. Over that time it's been my
impression (and my stats and dataset may be faulty here) that journals
in numerous fields have cut back on the number of "Comments" to
articles they publish. This, if correct, has raised two issues in my
mind:-

1. What is the reason for this change ? Two possibilities come to mind
- one is that there's an increase in the number of publishable papers,
leaving less room in existing journals for "Comments". The second is
that the journal editors and referees would have a quieter time if
instead of publishing "Comments" they waited until further full papers
on the topic became available. In the course of typing this I've come
up with a third reason, similar to the second, which is that editors
may have been "burned" by past "Comments" in some way - either by
comments which are excessively narrow or by the fractious nature of
those who pen them.

2. Does this open the field to journals mainly or entirely devoted to
the publishing of "Comments" on articles in other journals ? If such a
journal were to be launched, what would be the reaction of established
journals / academics ? Would the whole scheme founder on a tide of
ostracism, or would it flourish because everyone would want to make
sure that in writing future papers they had all the bases covered in
their area ?

Thanks for any comments.

Sincerely,

Roger Collins
UCC School of Business
Received on Mon Jan 24 2000 - 19:17:43 GMT