The weblog’s editors, with the assistance of our Affiliate Editor Tal Gross, ready some statistics for the latest annual assembly of the EJIL Editorial and Scientific and Advisory Boards, which can even be of curiosity to our readers and authors. A abstract of the salient factors is as follows. Within the August 2023-August 2024 interval, the weblog revealed 314 substantive posts. Apart from the 45 posts which have been written by the editors, virtually the entire posts we revealed have been acquired as unsolicited submissions. To our greatest recollection, excluding guide discussions just one substantive put up was solicited over the entire of the previous 12 months. We acquired 640 submissions, of which we rejected 371 and accepted 269 (typically after feedback and generally a number of rounds of revisions). That’s, our rejection price is about 60%.
Two factors listed below are essential for potential authors. First, don’t be discouraged in case your submission is rejected – that occurs to most submissions that we obtain. We settle for posts that make genuinely authentic, novel contributions to scholarship, and don’t settle for posts that replicate content material that has already been revealed on EJIL:Discuss! or elsewhere. Excellence is a mandatory situation for publication, however it isn’t all the time a adequate situation. When reviewing submissions, we’re generally within the place to supply feedback to the creator on why their submission was rejected, however workload constraints are sometimes such that we can not present suggestions.
Second, in case you really feel {that a} sure perspective is lacking on the weblog, you will need to keep in mind that our content material is generated primarily by the submissions we obtain. That’s, in case you really feel one thing is lacking then please write a bit for us, or encourage another person to take action (topic to high quality issues set out above). We are able to’t publish what we don’t obtain. Soliciting submissions could be very troublesome to do with any regularity due to the constraints on our time, and since we obtain such a big quantity of unsolicited work, which we have now to evaluate. Moreover, it’s fairly frankly tougher to train high quality management over submissions which were solicited. And soliciting submissions may need the perverse impact of privileging these authors who’re extra well-known (or who’re recognized to us).