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21 January 2011At 08:48 on 8 September 2009, I had resubmitted my paper on indecision to a journal after replacing acknowledgements with place-holders. (The paper was originally submitted on 3 September, with the acknowledgements in-place and with a note from me that one of their editors was mentioned thereïn. The journal tossed it back to me to scrub the acknowledgments.)
To-day, then, at 08:48, we passed Day 500 since the (re)submission of the paper. Day 500, and the present status is Under review
, 
which became its official status on 15 November of last year. (I earlier labored its previous status changes.) Doubtless that someone is thinking that they've only
had the paper for 67 days, but the journal itself has had it for 500 days.
I am aware — Would that there were a G_d to help us all! — that 500 days is not a record for such delay. Still, economics journals which report their mean time-to-decision typically declare it to be something on the order of a month.
First of all I thought: isn't Daniel running the risk of the journal spotting this critique and then maybe reacting adversely?
Then it occurred to me: given how the paper's on indecision, might the whole piece be a sort of intellectual joke on his part?
Then, remembering how, a little earlier, I'd been wondering why Grantbridge Street'd started opening with an adult content warning, only to click on a pair of tits and unexpectedly find your warning to Joe Bloke, Blogger might do precisely that, I was set me wond'ring whether your indecision paper and the journal's 'indecisiveness' was merely more evidence for synchronicity?
It's not impossible that the journal would find the entry and reäct adversely; but I think that unlikely. And I have meanwhile been seriously considering withdrawing my submission to them anyway; although I may not have many potential venues left (because editors and reviewers have been more inclined to reäct to this paper as specialized than as foundational), there's none-the-less some limit to the ill-treatment that I should accept from any one of those that remain.
If there's a joke here, it's not mine. Rather, the joke would be on me — and on the endeavor to provide more reälistic and robust foundations for decision theory.
As to synchronicity, certainly some conceptions of it apply here.
Daniel,
The solution to your dilemma is simply this: write a second, addendum paper illustrating the INDECISION of the journal to publish, retract your submission from that particlar journal, and hopefully publish both in some similar venue. That would then prove all of your previous points in your orignal work, while creating enough humorous buzz to indict the journal where your treatise is languishing as well as allowing you to perhaps expand in some small way the original paper.
That they have done essentially nothing in over 500 days leads me to believe that, as prestigious as said journal may be, you are possibly barking up the wrong tree if you desire your wisdom to be heard. I hope there is a secondary choice for you to publish with, and when you get published by the second choice, you can give the first journal the choice to decide to take their journal and shove it where the sun doesn't shine, or acknowledge their error...either way, they'll be presented with their own indecision, which choice they make may take another 500 days to decide.
Good luck.