Editing Journals

[Prof. C. Sormani]

I am posting some thoughts arising from discussions with various women mathematicians. We are concerned on behalf of junior women. There is a complete lack of women among the editors of journals in mathematics. There are constant endless rejections of articles by women with mediocre to nonsensical justifications for the rejections. These articles are often later accepted at journals of equal caliber. Sometimes there are delays of many years before publication as rejections may only arrive after a year. For women in the early stages of their career these rejections and delays can bring an end to their career.

We need to call for significant reform.

Some possibilities we might consider:

1) decisions to reject over significance should be made within a couple months. Later decisions to reject should only be due to error.

2) obviously biased or condescending reports should not be permitted

3) referees should be publicly named

4) editors should be serve limited renewable terms

5) solicitations for new editors should be conducted without bias like any other job search: openly advertised with due consideration given to all applicants

6) journals that lack diversity among the editors should be reviewed for bias in the selection of editors

I am not yet sure how we should call for reform. Perhaps first should be to request that the mathematics organizations like the AMS establish certain standards. We might also consider contacting the publishers.

Please post your ideas here in this google group. If you fear the fact that this group is visible to the public you may privately email your ideas to me and I will post them.

[Jenny]

This is huge. I am so glad you are shining a light on the problem. The unstated policy you have described has plagued me for years. I have seen it all. My h-index tells us something important was happening in my research program all along. My work should not have met with excessive publication delays or rejections with no substantive reason given. Knee-jerk reactions stemming from deeply buried bias are the danger here. Good math should speak for itself, irrespective of gender politics (#metoo). 

All six of your suggestions are excellent and should be implemented right away to protect others. 

Jenny Harrison (UCB)