Zerophiliac against the World! Round Two!
Fight! Fight! Fight!!!
Fight 'em till the death!
JOP nixed my book review
(47 posts) (23 voices)-
Posted 3 years ago #
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On the first matter, in the discipline of Philosophy, usually when your book review has not been published after a year, it will never be. If in Poli Sci, things are different, then so be it. But I think it is unreasonable for a book review to be published almost 2 years after the date that the book was originally published. I think my suspicions were warranted.
I did not push the matter with the JOP book review editor. I aired it on a blog, innocently asking for guidance and instead several bloggers, including you, attacked my character.
I changed my mind about posting the review. People do reconsider their initial decisions. I realized that there are no bridges between me and JOP. I have no desire to publish my work there in the future, end of story.
Be a man, AnyUser, and talk to me face to face about this matter. I'll even arm wrestle you for the decision on who is right. Anyone want to wager on the outcome?
Posted 3 years ago # -
On the first matter, in the discipline of Philosophy, usually when your book review has not been published after a year, it will never be. If in Poli Sci, things are different, then so be it. But I think it is unreasonable for a book review to be published almost 2 years after the date that the book was originally published.
This surely wasn't worth the trouble, but I just looked up the book reviews published in 2009 in Philosophical Review. Here are the dates the books were published:
2009: zero books published in 2009 were reviewed in 2009 issues of Philosophical Review
2008: 2 books published in 2008 were reviewed in Philosophical Review in 2009
2007: 19
2006: 7
2005: 5
2004: 3
2003: 1So, at least for one of the top journals in philosophy, it is common for a book review to appear more than two years after the date the book was published.
Also, your own review of the 2006 Johnston book came out in 2009, 35 months after the book was published.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Gaspar, we need to distinguish two things here: (i) how long after a book review is submitted to a journal will it be published and (ii) how long after a book is published is it reasonable to expect a review of the book to be published. You are conflating the two. Check out Philosophy in Review, all book reviews are published within 6 months to one year after the date that they are submitted, average is about 8 months. I will hazard a guess that no Philosophy journal publishes a review of a book more than two years after its publication date. I could be wrong here, but that seems unreasonable, especially if the review was submitted to the journal less than a year after the book's publication date.
Posted 3 years ago # -
I understand that there are two points here. You spoke to both in the excerpt of yours that I quoted. I have no way to know when the reviews to Philosophical Review or any other journal were submitted, so I can't speak to the first point. On the second, you wrote "I think it is unreasonable for a book review to be published almost 2 years after the date that the book was originally published." And my points on this are 1) Philosophical Review, a major journal in the field, routinely publishes reviews more than two years after the dates of publication of the books (at least 16 of 37 reviews published in 2009 came out more than two years after the books were published), and 2) one of your own recent reviews was published just shy of three years after the date of publication of the book.
Posted 3 years ago # -
I think we need to distinguish two other things here:
1) Looking at some of these reviews leads me to realize that you political-philosophy types read some bizarre-**** ****, f' sho.
2) If you want to find-out what the book-review norms are in political science, wouldn't it make more sense to scrutinize actual political science journals, rather than philosophy journals? (This is to say nothing of third-rate Canadian philosophy reviews, which are apparently doing so well that the editors are URGING people NOT to order the journal anymore: http://www.academicprintingandpublishing.com/documents/24.html )Posted 3 years ago # -
We're talking about book reviews. I mean listen, we're sitting here talking about book reviews, not a journal article; but we're talking about book reviews. Not the journal article that I go out there and die for and write like it's my last article, but we're talking about book reviews, man. How silly is that?
Now I know that we’re supposed to lead by example and all that, but I'm not shoving that aside like it don't mean anything. I know it's important, I honestly do, but we're talking about book reviews. We're talking about book reviews, man. We're talking about book reviews. Book reviews. We're not talking about the articles. We're talking about book reviews.
Posted 3 years ago # -
^Practice. We're talking about practice.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Gimme my book review, man; gimme my book review!
Posted 3 years ago # -
Johannes is the franchise player of this thread. Well played.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Zero
Please point out a specific instance where I "attacked your character" (prior to the post where you told me I was an **** kisser, of course--at that points, all bets are off). If you are really this thin skinned, you're going to have a hard time in academia. The deeper you dig this hole, the harder it's going to be to climb out.
Posted 3 years ago # -
What's the point of reading a book review for a book more than two years old? By then, who cares? The whole point of writing a book review is to bash or praise it so that you kill or bolster book sales, isn't it? Wouldn't it then make sense for authors to contact book review editors (if they want to be sneaky, then they do so through third parties) to delay the publication of a negative reviews? Then book sales won't be affected. Makes sense to me.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Related untested assumption -- Some books get cited with huge time lags following publication. Some classics take decades to become such. Do book reviews have an positive/negative effect on citation? Do sales also work with time lags (e.g. book X sold N copies first year and sold 10N five years later) ?
Posted 3 years ago #