Chronicle of Failure
Mar. 15th, 2006 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pyesetzEver since I wrote this post, I've had this idea that there would be an "academic experience" journal someplace where I could publish it. Recently a little bird told me ("caw! caw!") that the Chronicle of Higher Education publishes stuff like this in their "Opinions" section. So I sent them a copy last Monday.
Despite the short URL, suggesting early web-adoption, the Chronicle seems to have no policy for emailing submissions. They want double-spaced printouts. Also they state that they will send a postcard acknowledging receipt, followed by final determination within a month. (This is much better than Pascal News, which said nothing while sitting on my submissions for a year before finally publishing them—and then only because a change of editor caused them to start scraping the bottom of their slushpile barrel.)
Last week I managed to avoid worrying about it too much, but this week was pretty bad, checking the mail every day looking for a postcard. Would they actually send me one, or would they just throw my submission away as "not serious"? When I was at UMass, I applied as a graduate student to the Linguistics department. After a month, I asked a professor about the status of my app. He said they had taken no action because they thought the app was "not serious". Um, why would I pay an application fee for an app that was not serious? So I applied to the Computer Science department. It eventually turned out that half the department thought I would be a great candidate while the other half wanted me kicked out of town on my ass. Yeah yeah, "abrasive personality", yadda yadda. So I applied to the Slavic Languages department. They accepted me, although I had told them up front I had no intention of completing the doctorate (which would have required two years' study of German). So the app that actually *wasn't serious* was the successful one!
There was much to worry about. The Chronicle pays $300 for accepted submissions, which makes them considerably more liable for what I say than a freebie journal would be. My post says Rosenblatt's death was a suicide (this is a contested issue). It says Andrew Wiles' wife wasn't as supportive of him as she claims. It says David Rumelhart is "a poor scientist". These claims are not well-supported. The affected people could sue for libel.
I put my email address on the submission letter as an afterthought, in case they wanted to talk about the libel issues. Today I got an email from them: "We appreciate your submitting an article to The Chronicle and regret that we are unable to publish it. Because we commission most of the articles that we publish, we have room for only a few of the hundreds of manuscripts--many of them very good--that are submitted each year. We are always pleased to review new submissions, however, and we thank you for thinking of us."
All's well that ends! Stephen King got over 60 rejection letters before he found anyone crazy enough to publish his stuff.
Despite the short URL, suggesting early web-adoption, the Chronicle seems to have no policy for emailing submissions. They want double-spaced printouts. Also they state that they will send a postcard acknowledging receipt, followed by final determination within a month. (This is much better than Pascal News, which said nothing while sitting on my submissions for a year before finally publishing them—and then only because a change of editor caused them to start scraping the bottom of their slushpile barrel.)
Last week I managed to avoid worrying about it too much, but this week was pretty bad, checking the mail every day looking for a postcard. Would they actually send me one, or would they just throw my submission away as "not serious"? When I was at UMass, I applied as a graduate student to the Linguistics department. After a month, I asked a professor about the status of my app. He said they had taken no action because they thought the app was "not serious". Um, why would I pay an application fee for an app that was not serious? So I applied to the Computer Science department. It eventually turned out that half the department thought I would be a great candidate while the other half wanted me kicked out of town on my ass. Yeah yeah, "abrasive personality", yadda yadda. So I applied to the Slavic Languages department. They accepted me, although I had told them up front I had no intention of completing the doctorate (which would have required two years' study of German). So the app that actually *wasn't serious* was the successful one!
There was much to worry about. The Chronicle pays $300 for accepted submissions, which makes them considerably more liable for what I say than a freebie journal would be. My post says Rosenblatt's death was a suicide (this is a contested issue). It says Andrew Wiles' wife wasn't as supportive of him as she claims. It says David Rumelhart is "a poor scientist". These claims are not well-supported. The affected people could sue for libel.
I put my email address on the submission letter as an afterthought, in case they wanted to talk about the libel issues. Today I got an email from them: "We appreciate your submitting an article to The Chronicle and regret that we are unable to publish it. Because we commission most of the articles that we publish, we have room for only a few of the hundreds of manuscripts--many of them very good--that are submitted each year. We are always pleased to review new submissions, however, and we thank you for thinking of us."
All's well that ends! Stephen King got over 60 rejection letters before he found anyone crazy enough to publish his stuff.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-21 01:27 pm (UTC)I have a book "How to be Canadian" (full of dry Canuck humor) which describes the seven meanings of "I'm sorry" in Canadian English. In a passive-aggressive culture it's very important to use that phrase properly.