As usual, this is a compelling and worthwhile read. Keep it up Doc C!
Congrats on your publication.
C o n g r a t u l a t i o n s !
Congrats. But, "Geneva get her groove back"? Ouch! Until now TNI has been one of the more staid and academic-ish opinion journals. I can't imagine Nick Gvosdev would have pushed for that as a title. I knew Rosenthal was supposed to "spice it up", guess that's happening.
Dr. Carpenter
I've just finished reading the footnoted draft of Reviving Geneva/Geneva 2.0. This is important work.
It might interest you to know of a research project on the same subject that was initiated at the Maxwell School last year, entitled New Battlefields, Old Laws: From the Hague Conventions to Asymmetric War (see here: http://insct.syr.edu/Battlefield...ttlefields.htm)
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It, in turn, was inspiration for the founding, in early 2008, of the Complex Terrain Laboratory at University College London. We're in the process of getting set up; CTLab has as its remit the very social science problems that underpin these legal and policy challenges.
Your work is a welcome addition to extant scholarship on this problem-set. I look forward to reading more.
Best
Michael A. Innes
UCL Complex Terrain Lab
::
funny story. in practice, of course, the experience tends to vary a bit journal by journal, or even editor by editor within a journal. and some of the practices you mention are a bit on the extreme side. Not all places force you to accept a title you really hate, for example; some have a "dual key" approach in which both parties have to be satisfied. And 24 hours to approve final proofs is not abnormal, but usually you'll see edited galleys before you see proofs and you'll get a few days to absorb and tweak those.
The biggest variable, though, is not with process but with quality. If the editing is actually done with sensitivity and skill, your piece will almost certainly be drastically improved. If it's done badly or crudely, the results might be ugly. Unfortunately, the number of good editors out there is tiny. At TNI, the original head honcho, Owen Harries, was one of the best in the whole business, and one was lucky to fall into his hands. But times change...
lc
LC and anIRprof,
I must clarify that I didn't object to the process so much as I was caught off guard by it.
Funny story aside, I actually feel I owe a great deal to the editor I worked with. On the whole the piece does read much better now – I’d have had no idea how much it could have been improved had I tried to place it in a scholarly journal, whose editors would probably have “improved” it in the other direction.
And as far as "spice" goes, I think that's actually a fair price to pay for engaging more of the public in foreign policy. The subtitle to my piece on the TNI website is quite clever, and I'd never have thought of it.
Charlie,
I feel your pain. Or rather, I have felt your pain in the past. Everything your wrote rings true. I was smiling, grimacing, and nodding in agreement as I read your post.
The good news: The pain and disilusionment fade in a few months and you will conclude that the editors did not screw up your argument THAT much. Soon you will be ready to try it again and you will be slightly more prepared for the experience. It will still suck, but not as much as the first time.
I have a colleague who compares it to child-birth -- even though it hurts a lot, Moms are hard-wired to forget just how much, then they sign up for round #2 and #3.
And that is pretty much it for the good news. Perhaps you are still telling yourself that even though the edited version of your article omits evidence and lacks your normal nuance, that at least you will now have some effect on policy, or at least some effect on the terms of the debate, right? More people will read your stuff now, right? I genuinely hope that is right, but don't hold your breath.
Now the bad news: it can get a lot worse than what you experienced.
1. Editors at policy journals can completely change the meaning of what you wrote...and then express no concern or remorse when you point this out to them. (After all, their prose was punchier and their argument more provocative. Never mind that it was also not supported by the evidence that you present in the preceeding paragraph.)
2. Editors at policy journals sometimes refuse to make the changes that you submit to them in the proofs. It is like they channel Kennedy from the Cuban missile crisis and just pretend that they never received that second telegram from Khruschev. (Yes, that makes you the godless communist in this story). Then they respond to some previous comment you made in a phone call two weeks ago. Then you back down and the Politburo fires you...I mean you accept the editor's version of the changes.
3. Editors at policy journals scoff at silly academic norms like listing authors in alphabetical order, citing sources, or using different titles for different articles.
4. You know that feeling you have right now that the editor really doesn't think much of you or your article? You got that feeling from the tone of all your exchanges, right? Yeah. You are right about that. The editor thinks you are a silly academic with your head in the clouds.
Great post. Thanks for sharing.
I would like to clarify (for some perhaps notional record) that I, not lamont cranston (whom I do not know and have nothing against), am the person who has commented regularly in these threads as LC. From now on I will be using LFC, so lamont cranston can have "lc" or "LC" to himself.
Thank you for the clarification, L(F)C – will be careful when using shorthand in future…
Michael, thanks for your comment - though I actually had a much better experience than you seem to have had with some journals. My editor was extremely responsive to my push-back on the corrections, actually on everything but the title, and even there we negotiated.
Scholars have to take some responsibility, and should prepare themselves. The bottom line is, you have to sign off on the copyright form in the end, so if you’re not happy with it, you can always say no.
I got the sense that what editors expect (OK, the editor I worked with - my bad generalizing from a single N) is a conversation with the author, and I’m not sure that’s so unproductive. It’s just that academics have never been trained how to have that conversation smartly, hence my feeling of being out of my depth. We should learn to do this better, with less friction, and to produce more quality, readable pieces. That, I think, would be a win win scenario.
Oops, that last was meant for "MT" not Michael (two eggs on face) - Michael, I meant to say thanks for your comment (and for reading the paper). What are the folks at Maxwell up to since the October conference in DC?
Hi Charli - yeah, that Michael reference had my scurrying through the other comments to verify who you were addressing. The NBOL project's alive and well - more offline in e-mail.
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