Notes from a Panel Discussion with Journal Editors

The Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (FAB) Affinity Group of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) hosted another virtual “meet the editors” session featuring editors from five biomedical, public health, and ethics journals: Arianne Shahivisi from the Journal of Medical Ethics, Lynette Reid from Public Health Ethics, Eve Rittenberg from JAMA Internal Medicine, Laura Haupt from the Hastings Center Report, and Robyn Bluhm from the blog’s host journal the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics.

Here are some highlights from the discussion that might be helpful to readers and writers across international and feminist approaches to bioethics. Each journal has its own unique readership, scope, and norms, but many of the editors had significant points of agreement across them. The notes here reflect those shared points and are not attributed to specific editors or journals among the panel participants.

Is it ever helpful or advisable to reach out to editors or journals in advance of a submission or to resubmit a previously rejected paper to the same journal? 

In general, it is not necessarily beneficial to contact editors prior to submission, nor is it advisable to send a previously rejected paper back to the same journal.

Often desk review – and potentially desk rejection – happens quickly, and some of the editors suggested that submitting and getting through this step is more efficient than the time to contact an editor in advance.

Some journals have very high rates of desk rejection, up to 90% of all submission (so don’t take it too personally!) and desk rejection may occur due to fit or scope of the paper with the aims of the journal, though sometimes may also be about overall quality. But a great paper can get desk rejected for just not being the right fit for the journal at that time.

The editors noted that only in very rare circumstances should a rejected paper ever go back to the journal that rejected it. If a paper had been substantially revised or reworked after a long period of time since initial rejection this might be the exception to the rule of not resubmitting. This is the one case when reaching out to editors in advance to explain and inquire about the situation might be useful.

If your paper gets through desk review, what happens next?

Many, perhaps most, papers go through multiple rounds of review and revisions. Journals also use different layers of peer and editorial review depending on the journal. There are challenges with obtaining sufficient peer reviewers, with some editors sharing experiences of approaching 30-40 potential reviewers before securing two who are qualified and available to review. Unfortunately, even the reviewers who agree to review sometimes fail to turn in their reviewer reports on time. This can slow down the reviewing and revise and resubmit process considerably.

However, many editors noted that while successfully going through revisions and resubmissions is not a guarantee of publication (IJFAB blog editors can attest to being rejected after by some journals even after multiple rounds of R&R), if authors take reviewer feedback seriously and revise substantively, this can lead to a good change of eventual acceptance.

Additionally, editors will at times flag promising papers that just aren’t the right fit for their journal for transfer to partner journals that may be a better fit.

How to know if you are a good fit to peer review for a journal?

Sometimes when asked to peer review a paper, we might wonder if we have the right or sufficient expertise to provide an appropriate peer review. Editors noted that if you are approached to peer review a paper, those editors managing the submission deem you an adequate expert on the topic to review.  That said, they also encouraged disclosing anything relevant to the perspective from which one is reviewing. This might include noting the specific perspective you bring to the paper as a reviewer, or any limitations you have for how you are able to assess the paper. For example, if the paper is on a topic that you work on but uses different methodology, you might note that your comments are as a topical expert, but you defer to other reviewers for better assessment of the methodological soundness of the paper.  

What are journals and editors looking for right now?

No surprise, the editors noted that journals want good and new ideas!

Some editors leaned more heavily on not only the ideas being good, but the writing being clear and accessible even in a first draft. Others, however, others noted that a good idea packaged in a paper that needs more editorial support might be something they are willing to work with authors on during the peer review process.  

Editors described challenges facing authors of bioethics papers rooted in the very interdisciplinary nature of the field of bioethics: getting the right fit between a paper’s topic, methods, and journal can be tough. Normative papers may not fit with the kinds of typical submission types for journals that mainly publish empirical or clinical research, even if they are relevant to those fields. Sometimes a bioethics paper has too much of a disciplinary approach (like law, policy, or philosophy) for a bioethics journal with interdisciplinary readership.

But the editors also noted a need to take critical approaches to bioethics and to expand at the very notion of what bioethics is – projects to which feminist approaches can and do contribute! – including a wider lens on the “bio” of bioethics to include animals, the environment, and the planet. They also noted approaches in public health, global health, and theoretical frameworks beyond the ones traditionally represented in the literature, including from critical or feminist frameworks and outside of western traditions, as all important to future conversations in the bioethics literature. While international and feminist work is central to the identify and mission of IJFAB, these are areas of interests to a much wider set of editors engaging in bioethics publishing, broadly construed.

Good luck and get writing and submitting!