Academic

Expedited Review and Professorial Puffery

By Jacqueline Lipton

I was having lunch with some colleagues the other day (they know who they are) and we got to talking about how much professorial puffery to include in cover letters when we submit to law reviews - Tim Z. posted on this here recently.  One other issue that comes to mind is how much puffery to include when seeking an expedited review.  Obviously, the journals from which the expedites are sought need to know the identity of the original journal making the offer and its deadline.  However, I've always wondered how much updating to give journals if multiple offers come in, but this doesn't actually change the expedite deadline ie when new journals make offers but request a response by the original expedite deadline.  I would assume that the only relevant information for the journals still expediting the piece is the deadline date.  Thus, they only really need to know of new offers if those offers change the deadline.  However, I suppose there is an argument that it is also useful for journals to know how many competing offers there are, and what journals those competing offers are from.  Expediting journals might decide to reject a piece if they see that new offers are coming in from journals (eg specialty journals) that they think the author might choose in preference to an offer from them.  In other words, they might feel that they are being used as a stalking horse for the author to keep expediting up without any intention of taking any offer they might make.  Alternatively, journals might simply be annoyed by repeated communications from an author noting that more and more offers have been made, but the deadline hasn't changed.  This might seem like annoying bignoting on the part of the author.  I would be really interested to know what others - particularly law review editors - think about this.  I must admit to having engaged in this practice in the past on occasion, but I don't think it's made any positive  difference to my success in the crazy trading up game.  I suspect it might actually just annoy law review editors.  Any thoughts from colleagues or editors welcome here.  And I promise I won't do it this year!

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on March 08, 2009 (boomark / email).