I do not yet have a top-five publication, but what I have reliably been told
by a close colleague who has a friend who is editor of a top journal is that
the following rule is used by some editors at top general journals to
determine whether a paper is of general enough interest. When they receive
a paper, those editors look at the list of references. If there are too many
references to field journals, they desk-reject, telling the author their paper is
not of general enough interest, and to send it to a field journal. This is
second-hand information, so I cannot be sure that it is true, but looking at
lists of references for the papers published in top journals on topics I am
familiar with, I have no trouble believing that this rule of thumb for
knowing whether a paper is of general enough interest is widespread among
the editors of top general journals. And though you may think that this is
not a good way to determine what counts as general interest or not, an
ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
One unspoken fact of life in the economics profession is that if you want
to publish in top journals, it significantly helps to be “in the club,” meaning
that it helps to have attended a top PhD program, to have been invited to be
a member of the NBER, to be on first-name basis with the movers and
shakers at the very top of your field—that is, those economists at top-20
departments who actively publish in your field—and to have presented your
work to them at the right conferences.
8
As I mentioned in the previous
chapter, it really helps if your reviewers have seen you present your paper at
a conference or seminar, because that will have given them a chance to ask
their questions, and they will therefore trust your results more.
Dostları ilə paylaş: