The Best Blind Review Connections Can Buy

In his prefatory remarks in a creditably honest response to a rejection letter he received from a journal (my guess is that this is the Quarterly Journal of Speech), Josh Gunn (Communication, University of Texas, Austin), considered in graduate school gossip as a "rising star" in rhetorical studies, reveals the most open secret in the so-called "blind reviewing" of academic journal articles:


"Yesterday I received another rejection for a manuscript I've been working on for about three years now. Having submitted more articles for review than I can count, I must admit sometimes rejection is relatively easy, especially when the reviewer is curt and rejects my ideas out of hand. The rejections that continue to hurt are those that take the time to explain why my essay should be rejected in detail, but not to "help" me or teach me something. Rather, the rejections that hurt are those that say, in essence, you're an idiot, and here are four single-spaced pages why this is true. The editor, also a friend of mine, was very kind and humane: one reviewer recommended that the journal pursue the article, while the other, reject. Divided reviews are my lot, so this is nothing new. But I think the editor was concerned about the tone of the rejection, so she apparently she contacted a third scholar, who also urged rejection. The editor, bless her, offered a revise and resubmit with significant revisions, but I decided to send it elsewhere because I think the damn thing is good enough already, and I don't want to take advantage our friendship (I suspect she would have rejected someone she did not know with the same set of reviews)." (Posted on The Rosewater Chronicles Blog, June 29, 2005).