Academic Journal Reviewing: Rubbish...

Occasionally, I question the caliber of a few editors and reputation of the so-called premier journals in the management discipline. I submitted a paper to a journal during the middle of March, two months later, I get the following reply:

"I am writing because we have thus far been unable to find a willing reviewer for your piece. One reason for the difficulty is that we have already slated for our 50th anniversary issue articles on the theme of innovation. Consequently, our resources (our reviewers) who specialize in this area are greatly depleted. We're very sorry, but on a rare occasion, this happens, and we have no choice but to return your article to you without review. You can be certain that this is not a reflection of the quality of your piece. Please accept our apology for the inconvenience, and good luck in finding an alternative place of publication."

Now, do you see something wrong with this email response?

If you do not have reviewers to draw on then don’t you owe it to the authors to let them know this right away, instead of holding the paper in hiatus for eight weeks? Moreover, I am quite sure that there are several individuals who are capable of reviewing an email on innovation albeit they may not belong to your editorial board.

Surprises in academia are in short supply, but occasionally you get the weirdest of surprises….I think this is one reason to keep a Blog…to vent…and share interesting experiences…hopefully, someone can learn from this…