on editorial amputation

College Composition and Communication, as many of you know, is a major journal in the field of rhetoric and composition. Those of you who subscribe and have received your December, 2008 issue might have noticed that it's a rather hefty issue. This is because it features five main articles as well as the customary chair's address from this year's CCCC.

The heft is not, however, due to the usual end-of-issue shorter pieces, such as the "interchanges," review essays, or the feature that the current editor Deborah Holdstein started, called "Re/Visions," in which scholars revisit and reconsider articles that appeared long ago in the pages of CCC. These, you may have noticed, have been amputated: each piece--including a three-part "Re/Visions" feature and three review essays [!]--is printed for a few paragraphs, and then it trails into a web address that is presumably a site called "The Extended CCC," where interested (and subscribing) readers can read the rest of the piece. The issue also includes a four-page editor's account of why the amputation occurred, and this account reads like a polite defense, including a long discussion of CCC's miniscule acceptance rate.

I first found out about the editorial decision when Holdstein called me up a couple of days before the issue was going to go to press. She called me because I had organized the latest "Re/Visions" feature, a set of essays by Dana Anderson, Christa Olson, and me about a little-known article that Kenneth Burke published in CCC in 1978. The editor wanted to explain to me what was going on.

Needless to say, I was not happy about this decision, and I told Holdstein so. I also let the journal's officers know that I don't think it is the right decision to ghettoize the lively shorter pieces by lopping them off and placing them online. Practically, it means that citing the pieces is very weird. What page numbers ought to be used? And it means that people who rely on library subscriptions of the journal won't have easy access to the essays. And finally, no matter what the editor says about how these are real publications, it means that our work has been devalued.

In looking through the print edition of the issue under question, I also noted that there are THREE review essays. Review essays are also VERY hard work, and they constitute some of the most crucial evaluative work in every field. I also have to wonder why there are so many review essays. Isn't there usually only one? If that is the case, then the acceptance of so many review essays is a case of mismanagement that is unrelated to the low acceptance rate that Holdstein puts forward as the main justification for the EP CCC. What's more, our Re-visions piece ends with a blank half-page, which means three more paragraphs could have been included. The poor review-essays only got a paragraph printed in the journal, if that, before slamming into the circulation information and advertisements. Seeing those review essays, and knowing how much work went into the writing and editing of those essays made this book review editor very sad.

In any case, the thing is a bit of a mess, and even though there are various accounts about who is to blame, and even though the editor is obviously in a tight spot where page limits and acceptances are concerned, and even though I understand the problems and costs associated with publishing a book-length issue, I think this never should have happened. Jenny Edbauer Rice's piece on "Rhetoric's Mechanics" is cool, though--check it out.

Anyway, while I by no means think our "Re/Visions" essays are earth-shatteringly important, they were great fun to pull together, and the process of writing mine helped me to compose the epilogue to my forthcoming book. I also happen to think they are unfairly lopped off. I am therefore making our "Re/Visions" contribution available for download so that interested people can read it without trying to remember their usernames or passwords. You can access our essays, "Burke is Dead: Long Live Burke!" (Anderson); "The Squirm" (Hawhee); and "Burke's Attitude Problem" (Olson); as well as the original Burke article, "Questions and Answers about the Pentad," by following the links below.

Download Burke revisions
Download Questions and answers about the pentad

Comments

[Nels P. Highberg]

Wow, that's horrible! That does make citation difficult and really creates a wall towards access. If I decide not to re-subscribe, then I can't decide to read these later even though I was a paying subscriber at the time? Slimy.

[Collin]

I almost blogged about this at the time, but elected not to, given that I was hazy on the confidentiality of the conversations. Although I had no role at all in the decision-making process, I was involved in some of the discussions with Deb about how to handle this problem.

The problem isn't just the ridiculously low acceptance rate--it's that rate combined with the fact that the journal has a colossal backlog right now of accepted essays. Traditionally, the answer to the latter problem has been to lower the acceptance rate--accept fewer essays, and the backlog lifts eventually. But Deb's right, I think, to note that that's not a viable solution. The acceptance rate can't honestly go much lower, and even if it could, the editor would have to start rejecting submissions that had been accepted by the readers.

The problem is one I harp on all the time, and that's scale. Our discipline is much larger than it was 10 or 20 years now, and the size of the journal hasn't accommodated the large influx of TT faculty who would like to publish work in what is arguably the flagship journal. And the problem, in my mind, is only exacerbated by a decision-making and election process that pays no attention to professional qualification. Without putting too fine a point on it, there is no guarantee that, in any given year, the people making decisions about the journal have any editorial experience.

There are several solutions that any of us might imagine for this problem, from publishing an extra issue, to temporarily adding pages, to moving to a hybrid of print and POD, etc. I can guarantee that these were all ideas that I suggested, but I don't know how many of them factored into the actual decision. I also talked with Deb about the option that they eventually chose, although my suggestion was to move review essays online, since they're less often the object of the kind of page citation that Nels raises.

So while I'm sad that this happened to you, and wouldn't have been happy had it happened to my R/V set, I also think that there's a larger problem with the journal that needs to be solved. And so I'm also sympathetic with Deb, who's had to struggle with this for some time now. There are several contributing factors--the acceptance rate, the backlog, the growth of our field and subsequent increase in the number of submissions, the obvious and warranted interest in features like Re/Visions, the fact that the average length of a CCC essay has steadily climbed over the last 20 years, the desire to keep the page count consistent, the desire to keep the price of the journal low and accessible, and so on. It's a huge problem that has very material consequences for all of us, and yet, we don't really have the organizational means to deal with it well.

Sigh. So I'm sorry, not in the it's-my-fault way, but in the damn-that-sucks way.

[Z]

This is weird. Something clearly went very wrong with editorial management. I mean, even with everything that's explained here, you're still left with the question: why has this never happened (so far as I know) to another journal? A lot of journals have loooong backlogs, but find a way to make it work. You could accept 10% fewer articles for 2 years... you could not print reviews for 2 years ... you could not accept any articles for a year ...

Look at it this way. Basically what has happened is:

1) someone is publishing a magazine, and determines what goes into that magazine;

2) someone has agreed to print more content than can fit into the magazine;

3) as a result, someone cannot actually publish the magazine.

Weird. Not good. Let's face it: in most professions, this really would be grounds for dismissal. I mean, the content of the journal is under the total control of *someone*, so there's really no way you should get to this point.

[Z]

Ok, not to pile on, but I'm really flummoxed by this.

Isn't the definition of "editor" essentially "person who makes sure that if the text is too long it is made short enough to fit"?

[dhawhee]

I think it's great that we're having this conversation, and I am torn between what both Collin and Z say above. This especially since I work up close with two different journals (QJS and RSQ), both of which have pretty low acceptance rates, and one of which I'll bet is even lower than CCC. I hear Collin's point about scale, but Z's question about why this hasn't happened at, say, CE, is still a good one. (Z for those of you who don't know, is not in our field, btw, and I think this makes his position rather valuable.) The bottom line is: this does not look good.

I had to keep some of the circumstances out of the blog because of confidentiality as well, but it's clear from Holdstein's editorial apologia--e.g., her use of qutoation marks for budgetary page "crunch"--that she feels wedged in.

Even so, we would have happily trimmed down our "Re/Visions" feature but were never asked to. I hope referees take note of this issue and start being more scrupulous in advising the editor about what to accept. Either way, the acceptance rate is going to plummet even further for the remainder of Holdstein's term--I see no way around this. Until, that is, word gets out, and people strategically send their stuff elsewhere.

[Clancy]

This may be naive, but could CCC just not accept new submissions for a certain period of time until they clear some of the backlog?

Also, as someone on the tenure clock, I'm wondering if the people in the backlog have been given an idea of how much more time it will be until their articles could appear in print. Some of those authors (unlikely I know, but for the sake of argument), upon finding out how long it's going to be, might opt to withdraw their submissions and try to publish their articles elsewhere if time is more important than venue.

[Clancy]

Oh, AND. I've said it before, and I'll say it again! Senior scholars in the field need to do a better job submitting manuscripts to up-and-coming and online (pref. open access) journals. Doing so would go a long way toward legitimizing these journals, and the pipeline into CCC would be thinned a bit as a result.

[dhawhee]

Clancy, I think you're hitting on one of the big problems here (in the first comment): that this backlog situation is coming as such a surprise to (seemingly) everyone. Typically, editors get the word out about backlogs which in turn subtly convinces some folks to send their stuff elsewhere. But unless there have been conversations I'm not privy to (totally possible), this word-of-mouth phenom has not occurred. Messages inquiring about backlogs have not received replies. Why not just get the word out earlier that there's a considerable backlog? I had no clue about any issues at CCC until Holdstein called me, and at that point there was nothing I or anyone could do.

The legitimation point is a good one.

[Jim Aune]

We do seem to have a relative shortage of publication outlets for rhetoric. I'm amazed, for example, at the number of venues for publishing in media/cultural studies. This seems like it should be a top agenda item for RSA discussions, at least. I remain skeptical of online publications, having sat on too many tenure committees/outside tenure reviews in recent years, and I know that were I to include such publications as part of my annual review, they simply would not count, or would count approximately as much as a book review, more like "service" than research. RSQ, for example, seems more "theory/history" than "criticism/public discourse" oriented; is it time for a second journal that does more criticism? In NCA circles, you have QJS, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, and Argumentation & Advocacy (the latter two should be better known among English rhetoricians, but that's really it. In my recent (about a decade's) experience, it seems like a better time investment to write a short book (once it's done, one usually gets a decision in under 6 months) than an article for the rhetoric journals, which, in one recent case, took me three years from initial submission to publication.

[dhawhee]

Jim, I totally agree with you that there ought to be more rhetoric journals--JRC, anyone?--though a journal of rhetorical criticism would do zero to alleviate the pressure from CCC, which is not really all that rhetoric-oriented. I would have thought the journal Pedagogy--a very good journal out of Duke--would have done so, but Collin's right, the field has grown too much for this.

[Joshie Juice]

Jebus: The decision to chop ANY manuscript into half-print, half-online, while obviously the result of pressure, is, in a word, stupid. Let's go with the first definition of stupid: "lacking intelligence or common sense." Such a decision lacks common sense for the reasons you specify, Debbie. The pragmatics of perusal should be part of readerly "common sense." One wonders if the assumption behind the chop-chop is whether anyone reads such essays; certainly by making half of an article available to subscribers only will seal the deal. As for "lacking intelligence," while I have not read the editor's apologia, it's obvious no one considered how academic work is valued. For example, in Comm Studies people often mockingly refer to the NCA experience as a high school social with a little academics on the side. The reason is because NCA attempts to schedule as many submissions as possible, as opposed to scheduling only quality panels, and so forth. The same logic applies to journals: if every attempt is made to squeeze in everything, the whole volume suffers. The decision is short-sighted, and thus, lacking in intelligence. I don't regularly read CCC, and I will for Jenny's and your piece, but this turn of events won't get me to subscribe any time soon.

[jenny]

I'll just say this: I have a piece in this same CCC issue. It's so old that I have a footnote referencing Friendster as the "up and coming social networking site." Hmm....anyone remember Friendster?

Oh, and I also talk about how Presidential candidate Bob Graham uses the internet to his advantage. Anyone remember Bob Graham?

[Nels P. Highberg]

What about submitting to non-rhet/comp journals to show those outside the field how great rhetoric is in looking at the texts of their field? I just had an article published in a theatre collection, and the editors were excited about my essay because it used a whole new lens for analysis.

This won't alleviate the problems at CCC. I'm just wondering why rhet/comp work has to be in rhet/comp journals.

[dhawhee]

Jenny: I think I might be friendsters with Bob Graham. Your piece is still timely, though, a very good read.

Nels: good point. I think this has been happening, and ought to happen more, and your point also ties in with Clancy's because people are a little more free to publish in extradisciplinary venues after tenure is shored up.

I did want to make another thing clear: this amputative decision was made after a LOT of thought and effort, so I don't think it was careless, just unfortunate.

[Alex Reid]

Jim's point about online publications and tenure cmtes is well taken. And yet in an economy when newspapers are leaving behind their print identities and university presses are going under, something is likely to give.

I imagine its hard for any new journal to gain a reputation, let alone an online one. But what happens to the ones that move the other direction? That is, what would happen to CCC if it decided tomorrow it was going to be online only. All the articles are online anyway. What would happen if they just stopped putting it on paper? Obviously they could immediately publish all their backlogged essays.

What possible service is the journal providing to our profession by denying scholars access to this work that the editors clearly think is worthwhile? They could publish it online tomorrow, but they choose not to. What is the rationale?

Would CCC cease to be a flagship publication in rhet/comp if it did this? Or would the journal put pressure on other journals in our field through its capacity to publish research in a more timely fashion?

I wonder what is happening in other disciplines.

[cbd]

It would be easier to stomach this if NCTE/CCCC had a halfway decent web presence and/or any history of making changes and upgrades with scholarship in mind. They don't, of course, making me wonder how long it will take this scholarship to fade into obscurity.

[Steven D. Krause]

I tried to post here before to this discussion, but I think I might have screwed something up....

In any event, I do have a lot of sympathy for Deb and her co-authors here, especially since it seems like the way they all found out about it was by opening up the latest issue.

Having said that though, I'm not so sure that the idea of fewer pages of print that tie to an online presence is a bad one. Or, as would be my preferences, it'd be nice to see all of NCTE's publications go straight to online distribution.

Bradley is right: the NCTE would have to do quite a bit in terms of changes and upgrades to rethinking its web sites/presence for this to work. It's not like flipping a few switches and slapping some PDFs online is all it takes. Just talk to some of the people who have been involved in online journals.

But isn't it inevitable that we're moving to online versions of academic journals? And isn't that a good thing?

[David Beard]

1. I always feel weird about claims that there are too few journals in rhetorical studies. The answer, really, is that there are tons of such journals, but their disciplinary profile is skewed, off-center, and so they lack the oomph that publishing in the NCTE/NCA journals have. This is a problem than could be fixed, but it requires the gamble/gift that Aune suggests: that folks with proper profiles in rhetorical studies "give" their articles to the second and third tier journals.

2. Any rhet/comp person who doesn't read Arg & Advocacy is missing out on the best kept secret in rhetorical studies -- Dr. Aune is right. For a discipline that embraces argumentation as part of comp, we need to look more broadly. The Springer/Verlaug journal "Argumentation" has good stuff once in a while, too, but I admit -- it is expensive! A&A for me.

3. As an interdiscipline, one of the things we have suffered from, of late, is the effects not only of disciplinary centralization (if it's not NCA/NCTE, it doesn't count), but of a clash of cultures in terms of how new ideas and new journals get disseminated/created.

When a critical mass of scholars in an emerging field of communication studies manifests, they organize and they strongarm NCA into creating venues for their work. Historically, we can see this I think in both CSMC and C/CS -- they seek legitimation through the major association and the publication venues created therein. It is a very, very slow process, but maybe a strong one.

The second tier, in Communication, are the journals that function as microcosms of the NCA journals -- the regional journals that publish a heterogeneous mix of the types of articles that are more efficiently segregated in the NCA journals.

Composition, on the other hand, has worked with an outsider ethos from the beginning. I just have to say it: when rhetoricians in Comp wanted to legitimize their work, they created venues, and the venues they created were maybe weird, maybe off-kilter, and maybe took a while to find themselves, but they did stuff waaaaay ahead of its time. I am thinking here of Rhetoric Review, JAC, Pre/Text, and more.

The second tier in Composition, are the journals published out of the back pockets of schools committed to the project (who sometimes support the editors with a grad assistant) and senior faculty with vision. I would not want to be an assistant professor today in a field that never had Theresa Enos, Lyn Worsham and Victor Vitanza in the 1980s -- or the people who continue those kinds of projects today. I am thinking, here, of journals like Writing on the Edge and even the next generation of this kind of project, Parlor Press.

When we talk about merging rhetorical cultures in Comp and Comm, this is a big difference -- and one I have no idea how to talk about much beyond what I have said here. But I think that working through this difference could go a long way to creating rhetorical research venues that match in selectivity, in quality, and in prestige in tenure meetings the NCA/NCTE forums.

Below, a list I compiled for the ARS a few years ago of journals that, at one point since 2000, published at least one article germane to rhetorical studies. (Some have gone online -- economic issues, I think.) What do you take away from this list?

Journals with Rhetoric in the Title:
Advances in the History of Rhetoric (American Society for the History of Rhetoric)/ Philosophy & Rhetoric (Pennsylvania State University Press)/ Rhetorica (University of California Press for the International Society for the History of Rhetoric)/ Rhetoric and Public Affairs (Michigan State University Press)/ Rhetoric Review (Taylor & Francis)/ Rhetoric Society Quarterly (Rhetoric Society of America)

Publications of the National Communication Association
Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (National Communication Association)/ Quarterly Journal of Speech (National Communication Association)

Regional Journals in Communication Studies
Communication Studies (formerly Central States Speech Journal; Central States Communication Association)/ Southern Journal of Communication (Southern States Communication Association)/ Western Journal of Communication (Western States Communication Association)

Publications of the NCTE
College Composition & Communication (NCTE)/ College English (NCTE)/ Teaching English in the Two-Year College (NCTE)

Other Publications Germane to Rhetorical Studies
Argumentation (Springer Netherlands)/ Argumentation & Advocacy (American Forensics Association)/ ”Composition Forum (Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition)/ Composition Studies (Texas Christian University)/ Computers & Composition/ Informal Logic/ Issues in Writing/ International Journal of Listening (Journal of the International Listening Association; International Listening Association)/ JAC (Journal of Advanced Composition; Independent)/ Journal of Business & Technical Communication (Sage)/ Journal of Teaching Writing/ Journal of Technical Writing & Communication/ Popular Communication (Erlbaum)/ Speaker & Gavel (Delta Sigma Rho-Tau Kappa Alpha National Honorary Forensic Society)/ Technical Communication Quarterly (Technical Writing Teacher; Association of Teachers of Technical Writing /LEA)/ Works and Days/ Writing Center Journal (International Writing Centers Association)/ Writing Program Administration/ Women’s Studies in Communication/ Written Communication (Sage)/ Writing on the Edge

[Dana Anderson]

I'm heartened to read all the responses here and for their confirmation that it wasn't just me who found this to be an odd editorial decision. I only have two comments: (1) I will be amazed if any of these half-print, half-"extended CCC" pieces are cited, ever; and (2) Gosh, a phone call and a little heads-up would have been nice. Or is there some correlation between economic condition and professional courtesy I'm missing?

Again, thank you all for your insightful posts.