├── rejection_spirling.pdf ├── README.md └── essay.md /rejection_spirling.pdf: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ArthurSpirling/Rejection/HEAD/rejection_spirling.pdf -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # Rejection 2 | 3 | If you are reading this and you are an academic, you know what it is like to be rejected at a journal. Depressed, shocked, angry, bitter, rueful, embarrassed. Whatever your career stage, these are all perfectly legitimate feelings. And they are common. 4 | 5 | You'll find an essay [here](https://github.com/ArthurSpirling/Rejection/blob/master/essay.md) and [here (pdf)](https://github.com/ArthurSpirling/Rejection/blob/master/rejection_spirling.pdf) which lays out my personal thoughts on rejection---and some strategies for coping. I don't have much practical advice, but I hope you find it helpful nonetheless. 6 | 7 | Whatever you do, don't give up, don't think the field isn't for you, and don't quit. It's much earlier than you think. 8 | 9 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /essay.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # Rejection 2 | 3 | "Your Submission." 4 | 5 | There it is. The email from the journal. You freeze. Boom, BOom, BOOm, BOOM. Your heart pounds. You swallow. Excitement, anxiety. Click. "Dear Professor", well at least they're polite. Scan the first para. Where is it? Where's the decision? 6 | "I have now received three reviews..." the editor drones on in officialese. Yes, yes, and what did they say? "As you can see, the reviews are mixed." The fucking reviews are fucking mixed? Fuck. You know what comes next. Not even 7 | worth reading really. They've decided to "decline" (OH FUCK OFF!) your manuscript. But the Editor hopes you'll send your work there again. Fuck. What a disappointment. Rejected. Fuck. That's ruined the day. The week. 8 | And it's only 146pm. Got to teach later. 9 | 10 | If the above sounds at all familiar, welcome to the club: you've been rejected from a journal. This is a short essay about that 11 | experience, and what to do about it. I write it as someone who finds himself tenured and shall we say, charitably, "mid-career". I still get plenty of rejections, but they don't sting as much as they once did. I won't offer "one weird trick", but I do have some thoughts. 12 | 13 | 14 | ## What Didn't Work 15 | 16 | First, some things that never worked for me. When I was a junior 17 | professor trying to get tenure at a major research university just 18 | outside Boston, I was "mentored" by senior faculty members in my 19 | department. I use scare quotes because nobody, including me or the 20 | mentors, knew what this relationship was meant to consist of. So 21 | our meetings mostly involved me pretending things were going well, 22 | while never revealing that three referees had just this very week 23 | ruined my life and made me want to leave the field in a blaze of 24 | social media quit-lit glory. What follows are some of the well-meaning 25 | things I was told: 26 | 27 | 28 | - "have you considered..." 29 | 30 | 31 | It pains me to complete this sentence, because what was said in place of 32 | the ellipsis was varied and yet always trivial. Indeed, I had to sometimes 33 | remind myself I was having a real conversation with a real person. 34 | Advice included: going to the major conference in my field to show off my work (which I had done for my entire career to date, and now routinely 35 | chaired panels at), giving talks at top departments where likely reviewers 36 | could see my work (not really a choice variable) and putting papers 37 | on my website (said to me by someone who did not, at that time, 38 | have a website). Thanks but no thanks. 39 | 40 | 41 | - "it isn't *personal*" 42 | 43 | What people mean by this is that the referees and editors don't 44 | dislike you personally, and are not making their decisions on this 45 | basis. The problem, of course, is that this is bullshit. First, 46 | your work---on which you might spend years just getting the 47 | data---is, in fact, very personal. You are the person most 48 | associated with this idea or technique or data. So a referee rejecting a 49 | paper focussed on that idea or technique or data certainly feels 50 | personal. Personal to you, in particular. But second, this sort of 51 | comment implicitly assumes that publishing, and success more 52 | generally, is not about anything other than the merits of one's 53 | work. And this is so obviously false that as a poorly-networked 54 | junior professor I found it almost insulting (I cannot imagine what 55 | it is like for colleagues in more marginalized communities). So 56 | this won't do. 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | - "this is happening to all the junior professors right now" 61 | 62 | 63 | Better. But still flawed. First, when I picked up the big journals, 64 | they seemed full of junior professors' work. Just not mine. And 65 | about 90% of academic twitter and Facebook posts seemed to be about 66 | celebrating doing better than the other junior professors (specifically, me). 67 | Not-so-humble brags. So it was through gritted teeth that I 68 | "like"-d the posts, dying a little with every click. Second, so 69 | what? This is the hazing period that I have to get through so I can 70 | be accepted as a "real" scholar and my work can be assessed on its 71 | merits? This ain't it, Chief. 72 | 73 | - "rejections are useful because you get comments that help you make 74 | your work better" 75 | 76 | 77 | I get this. I really do. And it's true to some degree. But journals 78 | are so overwhelmed with submissions that there is no particular 79 | reason to update that your rejection is something other than a 80 | false negative. To a first approximation in my field, at the "top 81 | three" journals (which vary by subfield, and by definition of 82 | three) everything is rejected --- literally, unconditionally, 96% 83 | of stuff submitted will not make it. You are damned by faint 84 | praise: if the referee doesn't love it, and really make the case on 85 | your behalf, it won't appear. And referee reports are high 86 | variance, both within and between journals. It is true that they 87 | sometimes note common flaws, but more often than not they intensely 88 | dislike different aspects of the manuscript: for some it is too 89 | technical, for others it is too informal. For others footnote 4 has 90 | a typo. And for all the journal must reject. Beyond this, it's not 91 | the rejection that improves your paper---it's the reports. 92 | Responding to those as part of a revise-and-resubmit offer would 93 | make for a much happier me. 94 | 95 | ## What almost worked 96 | 97 | Alright, that's the negative. What's the positive? Here are some 98 | thoughts that helped, a little at least. Some more than others. 99 | 100 | 101 | - "you still have the paper." 102 | 103 | I heard this from a committee member after my first rejection from 104 | a general journal in grad school. The decision itself was swift, 105 | brutal and utterly justified by the extraordinarily low quality of 106 | my submission. But his point was that while I had gained nothing 107 | (well, except some referee reports), I had also lost nothing. The 108 | paper still existed. It would still go into my dissertation. I 109 | could still submit it elsewhere. It was still "good work" (it 110 | wasn't), and so would "find a place" at another great journal (it 111 | wouldn't, because it was bad). The problem with this advice, 112 | however, is that it isn't very comforting once you are on the 113 | tenure track. That's because still *having* the paper is now the 114 | problem. You worked on it for two years, it's been rejected four 115 | times before, and the last thing you actually want to still have is 116 | this fucking thing. You want to now *not* have the paper, because its 117 | been published in a journal. 118 | 119 | 120 | - "why is the rejection "bad"? That is, what are you trying to 121 | achieve that you cannot now achieve given the rejection?" 122 | 123 | 124 | This sounds like psycho-babble, but it helped me somewhat. As I worked 125 | my way through the tenure-track, I realized that what I valued 126 | about the career wasn't as contingent on publication in top venues 127 | as I thought. I wanted top pubs because I wanted tenure. But the 128 | reason I wanted tenure was because I wanted intellectual freedom 129 | and security (and income!). If I could achieve that without this 130 | particular result at this particular journal, I would go a long way 131 | to being happy. 132 | 133 | Now, clearly, I want my work to be respected and to be read---and 134 | major journal publications help that. But I realized that 135 | acceptances were merely a means to an end. Get to the end, and the 136 | means wouldn't bother me. Indeed, I sometimes tell junior 137 | colleagues that most people get tenure at most places most of the 138 | time. This is true only in equilibrium, but if you are 139 | writing papers and sending them out, you are acting correctly 140 | within that equilibrium. So you should get tenure (I'm skipping a 141 | few steps for brevity). 142 | 143 | A version of this logic that I've seen colleagues in the field use 144 | with some success is to switch focus altogether. For them, the idea 145 | is not to maximize the number of publications in a given year, but 146 | to maximize the number of rejections. Because rejections imply that 147 | you have successfully followed the process of being a scholar 148 | (researching, writing, sending out), and under some fairly mild 149 | assumptions (think approximately no signal in rejections, and a 150 | version of the law of large numbers) this is to be celebrated. This 151 | never worked for me, but I can see how it might work for others. 152 | 153 | 154 | - "the optimal rate of rejection is not zero" 155 | 156 | How often should you get journal rejections? If the answer is 157 | never, you are either 158 | 159 | 1. doing consistent God-tier work (I am, but unfortunately the god 160 | in question is Tartarus) or 161 | 2. extremely well-connected and basically everything that is wrong 162 | with superstar academics (welcome to the real world, Your Majesty!) or 163 | 3. aiming too low. 164 | 165 | 166 | That is, rejection is an inevitable consequence of being ambitious 167 | and "reaching" in terms of quality of outlet. Sadly, that need not be the (only) reason you were rejected. But you miss 168 | 100% of the shots you don't take. It just so happens that you miss 99% 169 | of the ones you *do* take in academia, but that margin is where all 170 | the action is. In some sense, it's easy to never get rejections: 171 | spend your entire life working with more senior/famous people 172 | and/or never send out your own stuff and/or aim low journal-wise. 173 | Be proud you didn't do that. 174 | 175 | 176 | - "no one knows, and no one cares" 177 | 178 | 179 | Rejections are intensely personal. Doubtless, you are going through your own private hell as journal after journal declines your best work. But it is *private*---other than the editor (who is handing down 1200 other rejections this year) and maybe the reviewers, no one else knows you have been rejected if you don't tell them. That's not a reason to keep it secret, but it does suggest any shame or embarrassment you feel is entirely self-imposed. An interesting consequence of this is that everybody else thinks your career is going better than you do: they only see the *successes* on your CV (the PhD you got, the papers you've published, the grants you won). And that's the people who actually spend time thinking about your output---which to a first approximation is absolutely no one. No one cares. 180 | 181 | ## What made me feel better 182 | 183 | - "life is long" 184 | 185 | 186 | A lot of life hacks you read are about "living in the moment". This 187 | is a hard sell to tenure-track academics, where one's career tends 188 | to be in two stages: pressure and ceaseless stress for five or six 189 | years, followed by, well, whatever you want. Of course, a tenured professor's life is not without stress and hardship, but relative to other paths, the job is a very fulfilling and secure one. The reason I was trying so hard to publish, and why I took rejections so poorly, was that I thought of myself as being in the "bad times" 190 | and trying to get to the "good times". Every paper felt make or 191 | break. I found it hard to imagine I would write more papers, and 192 | that they would get better: how could anything be better than my 193 | job market paper? I wish someone had told me my subsequent work, if 194 | I kept at it, would be better. Yours will be. And your life will be 195 | easier. Looking back now, it is hard to understand why I was so 196 | utterly invested in single papers, when I would end up writing so 197 | many more (some worse, some much better). And that brings me to my 198 | next point: 199 | 200 | 201 | - "spread the risk" 202 | 203 | 204 | I still get rejected. All the time. It still stings, but some 205 | rejections sting more than others. The ones that sting the least 206 | are the ones where I've written in a team. Anything non-solo, but 207 | especially now as I move into Computer Science and Data Science where it is not unusual to have five or six authors on a paper. Why is this? At least part of 208 | it is because I have someone to commiserate with when I get 209 | rejected: all five of us got dinged, and I know for a fact we don't 210 | *all* suck. A problem shared is a problem halved and all that. While 211 | political science is moving towards team production as a valid and 212 | common mode, it is not yet ubiquitous---and especially not early in 213 | one's career. And there are reasons, some good, as to why this is. So simply saying "write with others", which often boils down to "write with senior people who can get things into journals" may not be particularly helpful advice. 214 | 215 | But there are several observations that come from this. First, academia 216 | is about networks. And, rightly or wrongly, success in academia is 217 | about networks of powerful people who want you to do well. Going to 218 | grad school with smart, ambitious, well-connected people is the key. But if you are 219 | reading this essay, I doubt that's a choice variable for you right 220 | now. Co-authoring with people helps you build those networks. A 221 | lot. But so does almost anything that involves you being in contact 222 | with them: emails, small conferences, etc. I spent too much of my 223 | early career feeling---and therefore acting---as if I was on the 224 | periphery. People thought I was standoffish and aloof, when I was 225 | in fact simply suffering from an extreme form of imposter syndrome. 226 | My biggest career regret is not throwing myself into the networks I 227 | could have. 228 | 229 | Second, one way to spread risk is to diversify. For various 230 | reasons, not least being thought a dilettante (the horror!), it may 231 | not be wise to write papers on lots of different subjects. But you 232 | can write a *lot* of papers, and just send them out and see what 233 | sticks. A colleague told me that "if you write enough, they cannot 234 | ignore you forever". And I see now that this is right. 235 | 236 | ## Final Thoughts 237 | 238 | So what does this essay add up to? If you've just been rejected, it 239 | probably doesn't make you feel much better. I don't have the 240 | struggles you have. I am old (40), and you are young (34): 241 | standards were lower in my day (2015) than they are now (2020). But if it just makes you pause. And not quit the field. And not feel worthless. It will have 242 | been worth it. It's just a rejection. Life goes on. 243 | 244 | But seriously, fuck that fucking reviewer. What an asshole. My God. What a fucking world. 245 | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------