I was having lunch with some colleagues the other day (they know who they are) and we got to talking about how much professorial puffery to include in cover letters when we submit to law reviews – Tim Z. posted on this here recently. One other issue that comes to mind is how much puffery to include when seeking an expedited review. Obviously, the journals from which the expedites are sought need to know the identity of the original journal making the offer and its deadline. However, I've always wondered how much updating to give journals if multiple offers come in, but this doesn't actually change the expedite deadline ie when new journals make offers but request a response by the original expedite deadline. I would assume that the only relevant information for the journals still expediting the piece is the deadline date. Thus, they only really need to know of new offers if those offers change the deadline. However, I suppose there is an argument that it is also useful for journals to know how many competing offers there are, and what journals those competing offers are from. Expediting journals might decide to reject a piece if they see that new offers are coming in from journals (eg specialty journals) that they think the author might choose in preference to an offer from them. In other words, they might feel that they are being used as a stalking horse for the author to keep expediting up without any intention of taking any offer they might make. Alternatively, journals might simply be annoyed by repeated communications from an author noting that more and more offers have been made, but the deadline hasn't changed. This might seem like annoying bignoting on the part of the author. I would be really interested to know what others – particularly law review editors – think about this. I must admit to having engaged in this practice in the past on occasion, but I don't think it's made any positive difference to my success in the crazy trading up game. I suspect it might actually just annoy law review editors. Any thoughts from colleagues or editors welcome here. And I promise I won't do it this year!
Expedited Review and Professorial Puffery
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I question whether the journals really need any info other than a deadline. "Hi. I have an offer on my piece. Here's the deadline. I hope to hear from you by that date." Let's assume all of us are being honest, when we say that we do have an offer — that would negate any suggestion that editors need the info to confirm the existence of the competing offer. Unless professors are "trading down," editors should rationally assume that the offer comes from a lower-ranked journal. So, again, why the need to know where the offer came from? All that info tells us is that a few students at the XYZ Law Review liked the piece and wish to publish it. It tells us nothing else. So why do they ask for it? And why do we disclose it? The deadline, though, is important, and both sides have an interest in its disclosure.
Perhaps the student editors want the info to determine whether they may be "taken advantage of" or are being "used." That's rather hypocritical, as that is exactly what they have done when they use student editors at lower-ranked journals as their "first readers."
Here's my question for journal editors: Why give us more than 24-48 hours to accept or reject your offer? Two weeks? You're tempting us to shop around (and most professors are only too happy to yield to the temptation). A shorter leash would go a long way to remedying the silly gamesmanship rampant in this process.
I'm a recent (2007-2008) law review editor. I was at a top 10 journals, so I can't speak to the issue of how I'd feel about receiving expedites from schools where I thought the author would publish in preference to publishing with us. But speaking generally.
Updating with lists of new journals with the same deadline did not usually make a difference to me with one important exception I'll mention in a moment. And yes, it was kind of annoying to receive several "updated" offers with the same deadline. I don't think it negatively impacted my review of the article, but it was kind of annoying, given the volume of material we were trying to work through, to get 4-5 expedites with the same date from the same person.
The one exception to this rule was if the author received an offer from a top 25ish journal. Those I appreciated hearing about even if the date did not change. The reason for this was that in our experience, expedite deadlines were pretty flexible, and while we tried very hard to meet all the deadlines, we often assumed we could get an extra few days or even a week if we really needed them. This might be the case if, for example, it was a technical piece that needed an outside review, and the only member of our faculty who worked in that field was unable to review it before the deadline (of course, we always contacted the authors in cases like that to ask them to request the extra time). The reason it was important to share expedites from significantly higher-ranked journals was that our experience was that stated deadlines became less and less flexible the farther you moved up the law review rankings. So if the author received an offer from a journal that was unlikely to budge on its deadline (generally the top 25 or so), we appreciated hearing about it even if the final deadline hadn't changed.
Not too long ago, I spoke to the editor-in-chief of a top-5 law review, who told me that 2 signals were valuable to their review process: the signal of many acceptances and the signal of acceptances from well-ranked law reviews. The EIC thought that updates were useful, rather than annoying (with the caveat to make the updates not merely with each new acceptance, but only when the author got an offer reasonably higher on the food chain or when many offers had accrued).
Thanks, all, for the comments. This is most illuminating for me.
"Bignoting"? This appears to be an Australianism (e.g. here: http://www.australianbeers.com/culture/bignoting.htm ) I get the gist from the context, but what does it mean exactly?
Serves me right for "blogging while Australian". It just means puffing yourself up/exaggerating your achievements.
Response to Tim Zinnecker:
As the EIC of a top 25 journal, I understand that my journal simply does not have the bargaining power to present an author with a 48-hour deadline. The offers/acceptances process demonstrates a reverse application of the prisoner's dilemma: comparably ranked journals will offer longer deadlines, and if we don't match them, the author will simply drop us and shop their articles to others who will.
In fact, many authors value a one-week extension more than they value publication in a slightly higher-ranked journal. For example, an author may be happy to miss the deadline for an offer from a 20-25 journal to instead accept an offer from a journal that is ranked in the 25-30 range (or even the 30-35 range), IF it means that he has another week or two to shop his article to the top 20. This leaves the schools in the 20-25 range in an awkward position. Harvard and Yale are known to give one-hour deadlines, but if my journal tried to follow suit, the author would simply reject and choose to publish in any one of 30 journals that are ranked better or similarly to ours. (When I speak of journal rankings or "better journals," I am referring to relative prestige in the US News & WR rankings, not in citation-count indices).
It hurts each time we lose a great article to an only slightly better-ranked journal, especially after we have gone through the trouble of granting the author's request for the extension. (Some of the requests are ridiculous — two weeks because of a vague "family situation" or unexpected travel delays, or sometimes because "Stanford is full-committee reviewing my article right now and needs another week").
This said, the only way we can have a shot at getting an aggressive author to accept our offer is if we stay in the game by matching the deadlines and the extensions of other, comparably ranked schools. However, I know that many other EICs, who obviously have more guts than I, will just take their risks with the author and stand their ground when the author requests an extension or longer deadline. Perhaps this is a strategy worth trying, but it can endanger a journal's relationship with authors whom the Editors might end up having to work with for the rest of the year.