A Guide to Publishing for Academics

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steven r. Gordon

many editors have no interest or insufficient bandwidth to assume the

role of teacher or coach at this point and will desk- reject an article

if it is clear that the authors need instruction. For example, at the

Quarterly Journal of Economics, editor Larry Katz noted, “A paper will

get desk rejected for sure if it is sloppy (missing references, tables and

figures that can’t be deciphered, equations with notation that is not

defined, poor and verbose writing, etc.) regardless of the quality of

the ideas” (Ozler and McKenzie, 2012). At the American Psychologist,

outgoing editor Hyman Rodman advised incoming journal editors,

“… the editor’s primary function as gate- keeper—deciding which

articles to admit for publication—must ta ...