Unilag Journal Of Politics: Call for Papers-Some Clarifications

[Dele Ashiru]

I have followed with keen interest the controversy which my initial post on Unilag Journal of Politics: Call for Papers have generated. While I share the sentiments of great many scholars who have reacted to the post about the propriety of “paying” to ventilate research findings, I think it is important to make the following clarifications at least for posterity:

1)    The Journal started with a grant from the Ford Foundation to the Department of Political Science, University of Lagos.

2)   When the Funds from Ford dried up, the Editors resorted to self help in order to keep the journal alive by asking contributors to pay for assessment and production.

3)   The money is often paid to assessors as honourarium to encourage them read and return manuscripts within the stipulated deadline.

4)   Ridiculous as this may sound, this is the reality and tragedy of knowledge production and dissemination in Nigeria

5)   For the avoidance of doubt, the Journal is not “cash and carry” as insinuated by some commentators. The payment of fee is not a guarantee that the paper will or must be published.

6)   Manuscripts are blind peer reviewed by established scholars in the field and their assessment is sacrosanct.

7)   Indeed, papers submitted by colleagues in the Department and Faculty have been rejected following assessors comment of ‘poor quality’ even after the payment of fees.

8)   The journal is highly rated as this could be verified from the quality of papers published therein.

9)   Finally, flowing from this controversy and in line with some suggestions by those who have reacted to the post, the Editorial team may want to review the question of payment or the modalities of payment and make such public for the benefit of all. This may include a commitment to publish well researched quality papers in the Journal whether the author agrees to pay or not.

What must not be lost is that we solicit for scholarly contributions from you all for the survival of the Journal and we are open to suggestions and criticisms.

Thank you. 

 

 

'Dele Ashiru.
Department of Political Science,
University of Lagos,
Lagos,Nigeria.
+234-8026274712, +234-8019119573.
http//:www.politicalscienceunilag.org
http//:www.unilag.edu.ng

[Olumide Olaniyan]

Hallo Dele Ashiru:

Is it possible that this journal is also circulated in e-format for wider audience; your clarification is very important and appreciated.

For instance, you may want to sent some of the previous editions via this forum, especially since you got sponsorship and affirmed that it is not for profit.

many thanks

olumide 

 

------------------------------------------------------------

Let us go ahead. The struggle for a better world never ends - Victor Valle

---

From: Dele Ashiru <ashir...@yahoo.co.uk>
To: "usaafric...@googlegroups.com" <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, 2 September 2013, 13:25
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Unilag Journal Of Politics: Call for Papers-Some Clarifications

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[Michael Afolayan]

One has to be in Nigeria to appreciate the position of the gentleman, Dele Ashiru. While it would be regarded a "no-no" on this side of the Great Divide to elicit money for submitting and publishing a standard academic paper, it would be difficult, it not altogether impossible, to see how a high quality, peer reviewed journal could be produced in Nigeria without the financial support of the authors, whether the journals are "e-" versions or paper copies. Until we have home-grown promoters and financiers of quality higher education culture, these kinds of conditions for submissions and acceptance of academic papers would prevail; they may just need to be controlled and strictly monitored.

My two cents . . .

Michael O. Afolayan

USA

---

From: Olumide Olaniyan <olum...@yahoo.co.uk>
To: "usaafric...@googlegroups.com" <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, September 2, 2013 7:44 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Unilag Journal Of Politics: Call for Papers-Some Clarifications

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

Sadly enough, paying to publish is now a common practice in the sciences
in the U.S and UK.

I remember a conversation with Prof. Tunde Zack-Williams on this

subject, early this year with respect to social science journals.



Tunde is more informed on this than I am, so I hope he can



give some more info on this.





GE



..................................................................

Publication fees
From OpenWetWare

Publication fees by journals
Scientific journal publication fees in US dollars
Journal [http://openwetware.org/skins/common/images/sort_none.gif] <http://openwetware.org/wiki/Publication_fees#> Fee in USD [http://openwetware.org/skins/common/images/sort_none.gif] <http://openwetware.org/wiki/Publication_fees#> Comment [http://openwetware.org/skins/common/images/sort_none.gif] <http://openwetware.org/wiki/Publication_fees#> Source [http://openwetware.org/skins/common/images/sort_none.gif] <http://openwetware.org/wiki/Publication_fees#>
BMC Biochemistry (BioMed Central) 1485 open access [1]<http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcbiochem/ifora/#h1general>
BMC Biology (BioMed Central) 1775 open access [2]<http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/apcfaq#howmuch>
BMC Medicine (BioMed Central) 1775 open access [3]<http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/apcfaq#howmuch>
Genome Biology (BioMed Central) 2065 open access [4]<http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/apcfaq#howmuch>
NAR Nucleic Acid Research 2670 open access, cheaper for members [5]<http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/nar/announce_openaccess.html#Publication%20Charges>
PLoS Biology 2850 open access [6]<http://www.plos.org/journals/pubfees.html>
PLoS Computational Biology 2220 open access [7]<http://www.plos.org/journals/pubfees.html>
PLoS Genetics 2220 open access [8]<http://www.plos.org/journals/pubfees.html>
PLoS Medicine 2850 open access [9]<http://www.plos.org/journals/pubfees.html>
PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases 2200 open access [10]<http://www.plos.org/journals/pubfees.html>
PLoS Pathogens 2850 open access [11]<http://www.plos.org/journals/pubfees.html>
PNAS 1700 average costs, paid access estimate of average<http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020105> PNAS<http://www.pnas.org/site/misc/iforc.shtml#charges>
PNAS 2900 open access, cheaper if institution has PNAS subscription estimate of average<http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020105> PNAS<http://www.pnas.org/site/misc/iforc.shtml#charges>
Nature Communications 0 only with subscription; open access costs extra [12]<http://www.nature.com/ncomms/authors/submit.html#Costs>
Nature Communications 3570 open access option; subscription option free [13]<http://www.nature.com/ncomms/authors/submit.html#Costs>
PLoS ONE 1300 open access [14]<http://www.plos.org/journals/pubfees.html>

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

RNA
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Instructions for Contributors: Publication Costs

Page charges. To help defray the cost of publication, corresponding authors who are members of the RNA Society will be charged $25 per page;

corresponding authors who are not Society members will be charged $50 per page. Authors unable to meet these charges should include a letter

of explanation upon acceptance for publication; inability to meet these charges will have no effect on acceptance and publication of submitted papers.

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each additional color figure plate. Corresponding authors who are not Society members will be charged $450 for the first color figure and $350 for

each additional color figure. Price estimates are supplied upon acceptance of the paper. In cases where the authors cannot cover color art fees,

but it is clear the figure must be presented in color, such fees may be waived at the discretion of the Editor. A letter explaining the circumstances should be sent to the Editor.

Open Access Fees. For authors who wish to have their work immediately accessible to the entire community (Open Access), RNA Society

members will be charged $1500; corresponding authors who are not Society members will be charged $2000.

Article Reprints. A link to an Article Reprint order form will be included with the proofs.



________________________________
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Michael Afolayan [mafo...@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, September 02, 2013 10:22 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

No one is saying that they can't charge a production fee to cover production cost. But why do they have to charge a review/handling fee at the front end of the process? Why not simply charge a production fee post-review? Dele Ashiru has offered at least two responses and clarifications and he still hasn't made a convincing case for charging a fee that has to be paid when submitting an article. The idea of paying reviewers to perform a service that is part of their academic service remit is unacceptable. Paying them from funds extracted from those who submit articles for review is egregiously unethical. Even in Nigeria. What is wrong is wrong, even in Nigeria. Invoking the familiar challenges of the Third World just won't cut it. If a potential reviewer can't do the review, find another who will. If a reviewer won't meet the deadline, send reminders or find a replacement. That's what editors and managing editors do. Why have a journal editor who cannot find reviewers for articles without extorting money from authors with which to "incentivize" reviewers? The entire process is corrupted when the reviewer knows that the author is paying his review fee. This is a simple ethical matter.

The more I think about this controversy the more I realize that the journal in question and its commercialization of the review process mirrors the monetization of all aspects of Nigerian life. Even things that used to be sacred provinces of community and humanistic service have now caught the bug of commercialization. What kind of neoliberal capitalist disease is ravaging our academy? I know that this trend is not specific to Nigeria as the Western academy has been struggling to fend off the invidious implementation of corporatist ethos and policies. But this instance is egregious and should be critiqued with the appropriate vehemence. Instead of rising above this morass with creative fund raising and sustenance strategies as has been suggested, the editors of the Unilag Journal of Politics seem to have embraced it. However reluctant this surrender may have been initially, it is now clearly central to the journal's operations, hence the editors' aggressive defense and rationalization of it.

There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.


---Mohandas Gandhi

[IKHIDE]

It is not particularly helpful to say around here each time we are talking about Africa's issues, that the same issues exist in the West. We know that! Stop being patronizing and condescending. For many years, many of us screamed ourselves hoarse about the travesty that is education in Nigeria. Many were in denial, reading us tired tripe from the screeds of liberal orthodoxy. The chickens have come home to roost. Orisa, if you cannot help us, don't hurt us. This is serious stuff, we are talking about the lives of generations of Nigerian children. Ruined. Who cares what happens elsewhere?

Sometimes you begin to understand why Africa is so messed up. Nonsense.

- Ikhide

[Felix Kayman]

I have read a variety of comments on the original call for papers and the follow-up clarifications offered by Dele Ashiru. What I observed is that most of the comments are critical, and justifiably so, of the approach adopted the department in promoting their journal. However, beyond these criticisms, I am waiting to read about offers from senior scholars and interested stakeholders in the diaspora who are willing to support the department in improving the quality of its academic journal. One way that I thought someone would assist is to request the UNILAG's department of political science to submit a grant application for some funding to cover the cost of production of the journal, as a form of support for the department. This is different from just asking them look for available grant support. I am sure that they must have applied for funding support from different places before resorting to this present approach, after all we are told that the journal was originally launched with a ford foundation grant. Another way in which diaspora colleagues could assist the department is to offer their services (free of charge) as reviewers under the relevant themes of the journal. Additionally, there may be a department in any of the institutions across the pond that is willing to host, again free of charge, the journal online, by making available spaces on their institutional servers, and a contact person to manage the updates.

It is easy to criticize the method adopted by the journal's management, and I agree with those criticisms; but what would be more helpful, more constructive ultimately, is to propose sustainable approaches that the journal can carry forward. After all, out of similar journals that exist across universities in Africa, they have brought themselves forward to this platform...

Thanks,

Felix

[okey iheduru]

From the reactions and responses from the editor and sympathizers of the Unilag Journal of Politics one can deduce one thing: THEY JUST DON'T GET IT A ALL, I'm afraid. First, Professor Ashiru continues to claim that "8) The journal is highly rated as this could be verified from the quality of papers published therein."  There can be no better confirmation for my earlier claim that most of the colleagues I encountered during my two-year stay in Nigeria had never heard of global standards or best-practices for judging the quality of academic or scholarly publications. Would Professor Ashiru please tell the world the citation counts of any article published in this "highly rated" journal? Where does each of his contributors rank among the most important contributors to knowledge development in Political Science in Nigeria, Africa and globally? Who are his reviewers, and what are their institutional affiliations and scholarly profile? Can he tell us how many citation counts of any article published in this "highly rated" journal that he can find in Google Scholar--which also lists scholarly work published by Nigerian scholars IN NIGERIA? Are there ways of remedying the situation? Absolutely, but it requires thinking outside the dangerous box that is the prevailing academic culture of dance of deceit in Nigeria.

Strategy One: Stop wasting scarce resources on "Departmental Journals" which are considered third rate publication outlets anywhere in the world. I may be biased because I teach in a Tier I Research University, but I'd like to know how many people on this list outside Nigeria who can confirm that their departments publish departmental or field journals? How much weight is given to articles in such publications?

Departmental (and university-based) Journals developed in Nigeria when we had one or two departments (of say, Political Science) in the entire country. Any such journal for most disciplines was likely to attract the best works and did indeed become hallowed outlets for serious scholarship. University of Ibadan, University of Nigeria and Ahmadu Bello University had a handful of those, most of had died by mid-1980s when the rot set in. We now have over 127 universities plus over 100 Colleges of Education and Polytechnics, and nearly a dozen of centers and institutes that do one kind of Political Science research or the other. Sadly, none of these institutions or centers is talking to each other. Instead, they are busy churning out "highly rated" rag sheets that colleagues in the neighboring university down the road may never have heard of, let alone read. In Nigeria, once a "tradition" is instituted, even otherwise well-informed people will continue to perpetuate and defend it per omnia secula seculorum despite evidence that it's time to scrap it.

Another example, an apposite digression, is the tradition of final year undergraduate projects/thesis. Every lecturer will tell you it is a useless exercise--most of the projects are plagiarized or written by lecturers; nobody has the time to read them but students get grades; parents fork out a lot of money for the projects; departments are running out of space for them; they are never indexed so that anybody can track subjects of interest; and more importantly, they create a huge environmental foot print, if you consider the number of trees that go into the wasted paper and the degradation that is caused by wasted ink. Yet every year, our universities go through this motion and nobody asks: Wait a minute, why are we doing this? Student projects or thesis were introduced at UNN when they had 200 students (founding class). Later, all universities copied this innovation in helping students develop critical thinking and writing skills--the hallmark of American liberal arts education--and it worked well, up to a point, perhaps in the mid-1980s. Now that you have over 38,000 students at UNN, should every one be required to write a thesis?

Strategy Two: Revive the Nigerian Political Science Association and make it a truly national forum and/or outlet for serious scholarship. Get its moribund journal back on track and publish only quality work, blind, peer-reviewed without upfront fees. Especially, the book review section should be an avenue to disseminate and critique recent or on-going scholarship within and outside the country.

The resort to Departmental journals is symptomatic of a national malaise driven largely by inferiority complex and inability to compete on a level playing field. We are retreating from national engagement to village and "autonomous community" micro-politics. And the Mercy-Industrial Complex is happy to goad us to this path to national perdition. How many departmental journals does Ford Foundation fund in the United States? Perhaps they have done so in the past, but I believe that seeking grants for a national-level journal will create a more credible platform for showcasing Nigerian scholarship. The sad truth is that foreign funding will ALWAYS run out, leaving the recipient poorer and devastated, while the Program Officers of the foreign aid agency will have beefed up their resume for the numerous projects they have shepherded in Africa. Just take a look at their glossy annual reports. The tragedy is that they have turned even our academics into hunters for this White Man's "egunje", and we like to huddle together in our micro-units to share it. The veteran socialist, Edwin Madunagu, defines a Nigerian NGO as an organization run by an educated man and his wife with access to a telephone and fax machine chopping the White man's money.

Strategy Three: Once you have gone national, try online or e-journal option, as suggested by several contributors. Expand the membership of the Editorial and Advisory Board; it should not be a "Parapo" thing, please!  Additionally, try affiliating with reputable academic and scholarly journal publishers outside the country, like Taylor & Francis/Routledge, Wiley, Cambridge University Press, etc. None of these publishers will talk to you if you refuse to wean yourself off of the prevailing clannishness. They could care less about our desire to turn all our universities, including the older ones, into Bantustan or ethnic universities. POLITIKON, the journal of South African Political Science Association is published by Taylor & Francis, and it is just as African as it is, indeed, "highly rated.: Same story with Social and Economic Studies in the Caribbean.

Strategy Four: Solicit technical and financial help or support, from the Nigeria/African Diaspora. Many people are willing to help, but they must have CREDIBLE PARTNERS in the home institutions. Why should I support Unilag Journal of Politics if by all its appearances (editorial & management team, reviewers, authors published, etc.) it smacks of an ethnic or clannish affair?

Have you noticed how knowledge and cultural workers from some sections of the country nowadays routinely gather in their comfort zones and dish out "Best" this, "Best" that awards to their own? In fact, in one of the universities I visited on an NUC accreditation, we were alerted to the fact that a section of the country was awarding too many PhDs to themselves and that many of these half-baked doctorates are eventually forwarded as candidates during competition for Federal appointments requiring the PhD. So, what to do? Manufacture your own PhDs so that you don't miss out at the feeding trough. I wish these "turn-by-turn" charlatans will go back to the First Republic: To match the East one BA Hons. for one BA Hons., Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello established their own equally excellent universities to compete with the University of Nigeria. I digress again.

I'm by no means claiming that I know all the answers or that any of my suggestions will work. Nonetheless, it's important to begin to think outside the box, my brothers and sisters. Our problems are largely self-inflicted; only we can retrace our steps back to reality.

Regards,

Okey Iheduru

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

This is a reality check, Ikhide. Nothing more than that. We cannot hide our heads in the sand and pretend that
journals across the globe are not asking for funds. Now do they have checks and balances or not?
That is the question. If so what are these? What should we do to introduce and maintain

accountability and professionalism in the publication of articles.



Is it better to pay to publish in a journal at home or one abroad?
That is another question.



Should we criminalize a Kenyan or Gambian Journal for

accepting funds to publish, and glorify a British Journal that does the same.



Should we 'demote' a scholar that published in a local pay-to-publish

Journal and 'promote' one that published in a US pay-to publish Journal.

If so what are the guidelines for the local Promotion and Tenure

committee members?



Then there are the legal ramifications.I can see lawsuits in the horizon

from those who discern some form of discrimination and unfairness.



As scholars we have to be aware of the evolving practices in the field -

particularly since publications from all over the world may be included in

the portfolio of a scholar seeking promotion.



Having said all this, I want to emphasize that Africa Update WILL NOT introduce

pay-to -publish mechanisms as long as I serve in the capacity as Chief Editor.



Professor Gloria Emeagwali











________________________________________
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of IKHIDE [xok...@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, September 02, 2013 4:18 PM

[kenneth harrow]

isn't the problem both a conflict of interest--paying, ultimately, for
the one who reviews your piece--not to mention the appearance of
conflict of interest? surely it could be done another way.
ken

>> I have followed with keen interest the controversy which my initial post on Unilag Journal of Politics: Call for Papers have generated. While I share the sentiments of great many scholars who have reacted to the post about the propriety of �paying� to ventilate research findings, I think it is important to make the following clarifications at least for posterity:

>> 1) The Journal started with a grant from the Ford Foundation to the Department of Political Science, University of Lagos.
>> 2) When the Funds from Ford dried up, the Editors resorted to self help in order to keep the journal alive by asking contributors to pay for assessment and production.
>> 3) The money is often paid to assessors as honourarium to encourage them read and return manuscripts within the stipulated deadline.
>> 4) Ridiculous as this may sound, this is the reality and tragedy of knowledge production and dissemination in Nigeria

>> 5) For the avoidance of doubt, the Journal is not �cash and carry� as insinuated by some commentators. The payment of fee is not a guarantee that the paper will or must be published.

>> 6) Manuscripts are blind peer reviewed by established scholars in the field and their assessment is sacrosanct.

>> 7) Indeed, papers submitted by colleagues in the Department and Faculty have been rejected following assessors comment of �poor quality� even after the payment of fees.

--
kenneth w. harrow
faculty excellence advocate
professor of english
michigan state university
department of english
619 red cedar road
room C-614 wells hall
east lansing, mi 48824
ph. 517 803 8839
har...@msu.edu

[Chambi Chachage]

You may find this (related) take from a librarian interesting (apology for cross-posting):

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Frank Conlon <con...@U.WASHINGTON.EDU>
To: H-A...@H-NET.MSU.EDU 
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2013 11:05 AM
Subject: H-ASIA: Refereed journal with processing charges - response

H-ASIA
Septebmer 12, 2013

Refereed journal with processing charges - response

(courtesy Robert Moore)
**********************************************************************
From: Robert Moore <RMo...@Rollins.edu>

I post here some comments from our librarian, Jonathan Miller, 
in response to Ted Bestor's post:

  I am glad to see this being discussed. It is a huge topic, not particularly conducive to a short e-mail. But here are some thoughts.

  The serials crisis (a huge rise in periodical subscription prices for libraries in an era of relatively stable or falling library budgets) was largely caused by prices of STEM journals published by international commercial publishers. Rising prices did not reflect rising costs, but market power. Journals are not fungible, a library could not swap a cheaper subscription for a more expensive one because each journal, and indeed each article, is unique. Further, libraries subscribed to journals at the request of faculty, but faculty did not feel the pain of increased subscription costs.

  This, and the disruptive technologies of the Internet, spawned the Open Access movement,  which aims to provide access to the scholarly journal literature at no direct cost to the reader. Obviously, it still costs money to produce that literature, so if the reader (or their agents, libraries) do not pay, who does? There are various answers, but one is that authors pay. This is a reimagining of a traditional aspect of scientific publishing, in which some authors have, for many decades, paid fees to subsidize the production of articles. Some publishers have now realized that, if they can't charge the reader, they might be able to charge the writer.

  Author fees have worked well for highly prestigious journals in which authors want to be published, and for authors who are able to finance such fees through grants. If there is not much grant money in a field, or no tradition of using grants for such publication fees, the system doesn't work very well.

  Small societies get stuck in this vortex for a few reasons:

*        If they contract with a major commercial publisher to produce the journal, they may lose control of subscription prices and thus find that libraries are cancelling subscriptions (and thus reducing the society's readership) without much ability for the society to change course.

*        They may get caught in a squeeze as libraries feel forced to cancel niche titles to pay for more prestigious, higher priced, journals.

*        They may not be able to keep up with technological change -- from print to digital publication - and thus get cancelled by libraries that are seeing declining use of print journals.

Personally, I think there is a bigger issue here that scholarly societies need to think about. Let's go back to basics. What is the purpose of a scholarly society and its publications? I would argue that societies are institutional expressions of scholarly communities. They seek to ensure ongoing communication (both between scholars and practitioners and over time) within and about their discipline. This is ultimately what a scholarly journal is -- a record of a scholarly conversation in which one sees a discipline develop over time.) A society will probably also have aspects that encourage this conversation amongst contemporaries -- conferences, meetings, etc. In the traditional world of print journals with paid subscriptions societies have often used  journal subscriptions from entities outside their scholarly community -- libraries, corporations, interested amateurs, etc. -- to subsidize the other work of the society or to subsidize the subscription cost for members.

When the subscription model breaks down the society is faced with a crisis. How to fund not only the production costs of the journal but also the costs associated with maintaining the scholarly community. At the same time as they face this problem, they also face the same disruptive technologies of the Internet, which are enabling people - including scholars -- to communicate and find and develop a sense of community in new ways (H-Net being a prime example.) These form a  double whammy that adds up to an existential crisis for scholarly societies.

I think the question you need to ask is what value does this scholarly society and its publications add and who is prepared to pay? The answers will be multiple and varied, but libraries and readers are likely to be paying a smaller proportion of costs in the future than they have in the past.

I don't know what the answer is but I applaud Dr. Bestor for joining the conversation.

Jonathan

Jonathan Miller
Rollins College
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From: kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 3, 2013 1:21 PM

>> I have followed with keen interest the controversy which my initial post on Unilag Journal of Politics: Call for Papers have generated. While I share the sentiments of great many scholars who have reacted to the post about the propriety of “paying” to ventilate research findings, I think it is important to make the following clarifications at least for posterity:

>> 1)    The Journal started with a grant from the Ford Foundation to the Department of Political Science, University of Lagos.
>> 2)  When the Funds from Ford dried up, the Editors resorted to self help in order to keep the journal alive by asking contributors to pay for assessment and production.
>> 3)  The money is often paid to assessors as honourarium to encourage them read and return manuscripts within the stipulated deadline.
>> 4)  Ridiculous as this may sound, this is the reality and tragedy of knowledge production and dissemination in Nigeria

>> 5)  For the avoidance of doubt, the Journal is not “cash and carry” as insinuated by some commentators. The payment of fee is not a guarantee that the paper will or must be published.

>> 6)  Manuscripts are blind peer reviewed by established scholars in the field and their assessment is sacrosanct.

>> 7)  Indeed, papers submitted by colleagues in the Department and Faculty have been rejected following assessors comment of ‘poor quality’ even after the payment of fees.

>> 8)  The journal is highly rated as this could be verified from the quality of papers published therein.
>> 9)  Finally, flowing from this controversy and in line with some suggestions by those who have reacted to the post, the Editorial team may want to review the question of payment or the modalities of payment and make such public for the benefit of all. This may include a commitment to publish well researched quality papers in the Journal whether the author agrees to pay or not.
>> What must not be lost is that we solicit for scholarly contributions from you all for the survival of the Journal and we are open to suggestions and criticisms.
>> Thank you.
>>
>>
>> 'Dele Ashiru.
>> Department of Political Science,
>> University of Lagos,
>> Lagos,Nigeria.
>> +234-8026274712, +234-8019119573.
>> http//:www.politicalscienceunilag.org
>> http//:www.unilag.edu.ng
>> --
>>
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--
kenneth w. harrow
faculty excellence advocate
professor of english
michigan state university
department of english
619 red cedar road
room C-614 wells hall
east lansing, mi 48824
ph. 517 803 8839
har...@msu.edu

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