Research in Public #19: Pressing on through discouragements[1]
So, now that the paper is feature-complete, the actual outcomes have not been going so well.
First, it got rejected from the Bitcoin research conference in Wyoming.
Then, I got two desk rejections. One from Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and the second from Electronic Commerce Research and Applications.
The first time it was rejected because the editor felt that the causal identification wasn't sufficiently strong, and the topic wasn't of sufficient interest to a general audience. He mostly framed it from the perspective of "would an internet regulator care about this?"
The second rejection was a one sentence rejection. It said the topic was interesting but that the lit review and theory weren't sufficiently developed. That was surprising to me because I have an extremely comprehensive theoretical model, as well as what I think is a fairly decent literature review. According to Claude, the paper is written in the style of an economics paper, while information science papers (where ECRA is positioned), have different standards for what an intro should look like. When they say theory they mean more in established theoretical frameworks, rather than a theoretical model as economists would think of them.
I haven't written much about these rejections till now because writing about rejection hurts. But it can also be cathartic. It seems that this paper is gonna struggle in the publishing world because the natural audience (people who study digital platforms, i.e. information science professors) isn't the audience that I'm accustomed to writing for, and the audience that I know how to write for aren't naturally that interested.
Claude also thinks that there may be some bias against bitcoin as not a serious topic.
It's strange because my colleagues really liked the paper. They said it was a very natural exploration of economic concepts in a setting where it makes sense.
I'm not exactly sure what to do. I can continue sending to good journals and hope for a sympathetic editor. Or maybe I can try some more narrowly focused outlets that are interested in cryptocurrency. Again, a big problem is that this paper is written like an economics paper, because that's what I'm trained to do. I am not sure how to change my writing to fit the style and standards of other disciplines.
Have you considered a version of the paper for popular audiences? It doesn't have to be entirely pop-econ or pop-sociology, but I suspect most people do not consider the dynamics at play in social media and this could be a really interesting post/series of posts for some outlet like medium or if you are willing to go niche, Bitcoin Magazine.
I'd be open to writing a version for more popular audiences. It could be pitched as "here's a cool way people are using bitcoin, and it seems to solve a real world issue"
I wouldn't really know where to start though, or who to reach out to.
You could try reaching out to Clara Shikhelman or Sergi Delgado who have been working on fostering relations between Bitcoin developers and academics among other things through organizing the Bitcoin Research Week and the Bitcoin Research Prize. Clara has also co-authored some papers on the economics of the LN, so they might have some contacts or ideas that would help. They both have left Chaincode Labs meanwhile, so I’m not sure whether they are still focused on this type of bridge building, but I would expect that they’d reply regardless.
During my stint in academia, I learned that writing and publishing tend to be very supervised activities for outsiders. It seemed, if you were not a titled/credentialed lackey in the inner circles of an area of discipline, they really want to launder your work completely before they get near it. Or, they just don't bother.
Once also I submitted and went through several gruling rounds of edits (taking months) before the editor finally said I should consider submittinf to another journal.
also, i'd love to hear more about your experience in academia one day
Yeah, the whole process is making less and less sense as digital distribution and open source collaboration tools become more widespread
What was their reason for rejecting it? They prefer cryptography stuff? Blockchain stuff?
They didn't give a reason, and I don't think they've published the accepted papers list.
The call for papers said interdisciplinary, with econ being one of the listed fields. Interestingly, the Bitcoin Research Institute at University of Wyoming is housed in the philosophy department
def could be too econ-y, too heavy on the formal modeling for them
That's possible, yeah. Another possibility is that it wasn't really about bitcoin per se. I was a more traditional econ paper about incentives, bitcoin is just part of the setting.
Ah man, I feel you. It's the worst there is when you put blood, sweat, and tears into something for someone else to desk-reject away in not enough time
Yeeeeaaaaap... its like a kick in the gut
Appreciate you sharing the rejection part of the process. It does help towards the goal of showing people what the research process is like.
I don’t know the nuances of the behavioral and experimental journals very well but that seems like the audience most likely to find this interesting. They’ll probably take issue with the lack of experimental design though.
I think I need to find a journal that is ok with solid, but non-experimental empirical work, and is willing to publish on somewhat niche topics.
Unfortunately, I don’t know what that journal is
Keep at it. I do think there is definitely a bias towards bitcoin.