Complaints were loosely as follows:Phil82 wrote:I would be interested to know what that weird rejection letter said? Perhaps the document produced with NWE didn't meet their guidelines?midwinter wrote:
I should pipe up and say that NWE helped me get the weirdest rejection letter from an academic journal I've ever gotten.
1) I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU RELIED ON SOURCE A AND SOURCE B!! SOURCE B IS HORRENDOUSLY FLAWED AND HAD BASIC ERRORS OF FACT!!! AND SOURCE A IS MUCH WEAKER THAN THE AUTHOR'S MORE RECENT WORK ON A TOTALLY UNRELATED TOPIC!
Response: It was a friggin' footnote and all I said was "the only people talking about this subject are source A and source B." That's it. One sentence.
2) I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU POINTED OUT THAT THIS STUDY IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE THESE TEXTS AREN'T AVAILABLE IN THE US! VERY LITTLE OF WHAT WE PUBLISH IS AVAILABLE IN THE US!! IN FACT, WE JUST PUBLISHED SOMETHING ON THIS A FEW YEARS AGO!
Response: My point was that ONLY VOLUME THREE is available in the US, and what you published was only on that volume.
3) IT'S TOO LONG!! IT'S TOO WORDY!! IT'S TOO LONG!! BUT CUT IT IN HALF AND IT'S PUBLISHABLE.
Response: Fair enough.
4) EDITOR'S RESPONSE: WE'RE GONNA PASS.
Response: Fair enough.
In essence, all the comments about the argument were bizarre and contradictory and made no sense. All the comments about the prose were spot on.
So I spent Monday and cut ~4000 words and will give it another round of reading with some trusted colleagues and then send it off again to a better journal that won't keep it for NINE MONTHS and then reject it.