Scholarly Journal Decision Making: A Graphic Representation

The scholarly article is an important part of the scholarly communication process. According to the United States Bureau of the Census, the number of periodicals and newspapers published in the United States has grown most dramatically from about 2,500 titles in 1850 to more than 20,000 by the start of the twentieth century. Ulrich's International Periodical Directory documents this continued growth from 66,000 in 1984 to 145,000 active titles in 1995. Yet, the publication mechanism is not well understood by novice scholars, some corporate researchers, and many librarians. For beginning scholars, the process is a black box: they submit a manuscript, they hear nothing for months, and then they receive a rejection letter out of the blue. Some members of the public seem to believe that scholars write solely for purposes of promotion and tenure and that editors publish too many ideas devoid of comrmon sense. Others believe that new or controversial manuscripts may not see the light of day for various nefarious reasons. Thus, we believe it would be useful to share a graphic representation of the publication process with the library and information science community so that they can more readily understand and explain the situation to others. In particular, we have borrowed the tools of computer systems analysis to build a data flow diagram (fig. 1) of the refereed manuscript editorial review process. The diagram consists of four elements: terminators, data paths, process bubbles, and data stores. Terminators represent external sources and sinks of data. Named data paths show the flow of data between processes, terminators, and data stores. Process bubbles represent subsystems where data are examined and modified and decisions are made. Like filing cabinets, data stores hold data until a process bubble