I think you’re well within your rights to correspond with the editor to ask for hir clarification, and/or to ask hir to forward your questions on to the reviewers. Then ze can leave it up to the reviewers as to whether or not they want to be in touch directly with you, or perhaps just convey the response through the editor.

But, disciplinary conventions vary–in my field this would be ok, but I would consult friends and colleagues in your field.

I find it frustrating that peer review does not allow me to request clarification from reviewers…..I’ve had reviewers make negative comments that don’t make sense. I think there should be a system in place in which you can request for a reviewers to restate a portion of their review if it if unclear.

I’ve found it difficult to dissect a few “word salads” that I have gotten back from reviewers.

Well, hopefully, third time will be the charm. I actually met the third editor in person and spoke with him for an hour at a conference I presented at. In addition, I had him read the article first before I formally submitted to the journal. He liked it so I gave it a shot. Finally, I had sent this article out for my own peer review process to several top scholars in my field, Jewish American history; most agreed that it was insightful and more than worthy of being published. Surprise, surprise! I emailed one of those scholars a few days ago with my latest work and he know that he wrote a “very, very positive readers report. This guy is a big deal so I hope the journal listens to him!

I will let you all know what becomes of it. But even at this very early stage in the game, and it is a game, I know not to give up.

Another issue you brought up history maven, which I considered addressing but the post was getting long, is the growth and proliferation of the “special issue.” It feels like the number of articles published by any journal anymore is about half (or less than half) what it used to be. This practice again raises questions in my mind about the difference between publishing an article in a book versus in a journal, when these “special issues” are edited by a guest editor who undoubtedly has in most cases solicited manuscripts from friends and acquaintances, and who probably has a greater degree of liberty than editors who are abiding by the standard review process. (When I was a junior faculty member and first started publishing 11 years ago, senior faculty used to make a big deal over the difference between articles in books and articles in journals, but I think people have settled down and now accept them as equivalent.) Still, special issues seem to take up a lot of space that otherwise went to unsolicited articles.

And Sqadratomagico: you’re entirely right about my utopian author-friendly scheme! But, maybe it would make journals sharper about which articles they sent out to readers, and which they rejected out of hand. I think journals need to develop a new “prejection letter” saying, “thanks for your article, but we’re not really interested in stuff in this field right now.” (I think some journals do this.) That would seem to be more honest than putting an article through the review process when an editor clearly wasn’t interested in publishing an article. (Although, with the existence of e-mail, it would seem odd I suppose for someone to send an article somewhere that was wildly off-base. I’ve had good luck e-mailing editors and asking if they have any interest whatsoever in an article before sending it to them–sometimes you get a politely tepid letter encouraging you to send it on, but other times you get a stronger response, either way!)

Susan–a friend of mine was a student of Judith Bennett, and your “best advice” was her advice, too: she told my friend to have 3 copies of the article in addressed envelopes ready to go, so that if the first journal you sent it to rejected you, you send it on to the next journal unrevised and continue the process uninterrupted! (Was it Judith Bennett who gave you that advice!) I liked the moxie–”screw you if you don’t like my article, someone else surely will!”