[Buddha-l] Conservative and liberal Buddhists

[Margaret Gouin]

It's pretty clear that the way scientific journals operate and the way
humanities journals operate differs in at least some respects; but I don't
quite see why the fact that 'it's always been that way' for either type of
journal means that we're stuck with it for all time. Online journals such as
JBE and JGB show that it can be different. Unfortunately the tenure trap
promotes inertia in this area, I guess.

Another thing that disturbed me in the panel I mentioned (which only dealt
with humanities) was that it was reported without even the slightest hint of
concern that some journals have huge backlogs of approved articles awaiting
publication. The worst offender had NINE YEARS' WORTH of articles awaiting
publication. This is simply ridiculous and I can't imagine why anyone is
seriously still submitting to that journal, except for the fact that it's
very prestigious. But what's the point? Your prestige is nine years down the
road. I've just started the process of trying to pull an article from a
publication (very prestigious) that is already three years late in appearing
because I'd rather get the article out there than wait (indefinitely) for it
to appear (maybe) in a big multivolume collection (which will be so
expensive that I anticipate very few people or even libraries will buy it).

Margaret