Inside Higher Ed reports that the American Economic Association (AEA) has started an experiment in which authors of rejected papers can voluntarily ask the editor of its flagship journal (the American Economic Review) to forward referee reports to one of the four field journals that the AEA publishes. The basic idea is that many submissions are good but don’t quite make the cut for the flagship journal. Allowing the field journals to piggyback on referee reports that were already written has major efficiency advantages for authors, journal editors and referees.
I like this idea a lot. I have written my fair share of referee reports that basically say that a paper would be publishable (perhaps after some revisions) in a field journals but are not suitable for the American Political Science Review (APSR “our” flagship journal).The main problem in our field is institutional. The American Political Science Association doesn’t publish many field journals. Instead these are generally run by different associations or institutions that are unlikely to be very enthusiastic about formally taking on the role of publishing the APSR‘s rejects. Indeed, if I write a positive recommendation for a paper that I have previously rejected for a different journal, I generally do not explicitly say so in my letter out of fear of prejudice. Any thoughts about this?
ps. There are, of course, also issues about precisely establishing what the hierarchy of journals is. For example, to many scholars in international relations, a publication in International Organization is worth as much as a publication in the APSR. For the most part, though, the hierarchy among tiers of journals is at least somewhat clear.