Read on Twitter
I strongly agree with this. And I have a theory that part of the reason why academic writing is often bad is because of peer review... (1/n) https://twitter.com/MorganLKaplan/status/1262769758761627648">https://twitter.com/MorganLKa...
I& #39;m a think tanker, not an academic, and I have no formal training in political science. But I have published in peer reviewed journals so had to learn about the review process through trial and error. Lots of error! (2/n)
Over time I learned to write for the reviewers--who are a subset of my audience, but only a subset.
Reviewers are super-experts and it& #39;s their job to critique your work. This influences the way you write, I think... (3/n)
Reviewers are super-experts and it& #39;s their job to critique your work. This influences the way you write, I think... (3/n)
...you pay a lot of attention to the details, offer obvious lines of pre-emptive rebuttal (pre-buttal!), and try to engage deeply with the existing literature.
None of this is bad per se, but it& #39;s easy for the big picture to get lost in all of this. (4/n)
None of this is bad per se, but it& #39;s easy for the big picture to get lost in all of this. (4/n)
In fact, I can& #39;t stop myself from offering some prebuttal in Twitter thread!
Peer review isn& #39;t the only reason, by any means, for bad academic writing. And it& #39;s possible for a well-written article to survive review. But I do think there& #39;s a tension here. (5/n)
Peer review isn& #39;t the only reason, by any means, for bad academic writing. And it& #39;s possible for a well-written article to survive review. But I do think there& #39;s a tension here. (5/n)
Also, while it was a tweet from @MorganLKaplan that lead me to write this thread, I& #39;m not singling out @Journal_IS (the writing there is much better than most academic journals).
But I do have a suggestion to editors... (6/n)
But I do have a suggestion to editors... (6/n)
...why not ask reviewers to comment on the clarity of the writing and consider it, as one factor of many, in deciding whether to accept a paper? (7/7)
