{"id":52054,"date":"2020-04-29T00:13:42","date_gmt":"2020-04-29T07:13:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=52054"},"modified":"2020-04-29T00:13:42","modified_gmt":"2020-04-29T07:13:42","slug":"why-are-journals-so-obsessed-by-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/why-are-journals-so-obsessed-by-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"Why are journals so obsessed by theory?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

I recently heard about a rejection letter from a Chinese economics journal<\/a> that was a bit too generous with the sugar vis-\u00e0-vis the pill. \u201cIf we were to publish your paper, it would be impossible for us to publish any work of lower standard,\u201d the editor wrote, several decades ago. \u201cAnd as it is unthinkable that in the next thousand years we shall see its equal, we are, to our regret, compelled to return your divine composition.\u201d<\/p>\n

For most of us, however, rejections tend to be much more prosaic. My recent submission to the flagship journal (impact factor 2.817) of a once-popular social science discipline, for instance, was summarily dispatched on the grounds that it \u201cdoes [not] seem to contribute in any substantial way to the generation of new knowledge or the development of theoretical frameworks\u201d.<\/p>\n

That old chestnut. In a 2011 article<\/a>, the editors of the American Management Review<\/em> conceded that the most common reason for giving articles the elbow was the absence of \u201ca theoretical contribution to the literature\u201d. However, they also admitted that most authors \u201ccan\u2019t figure out what a theoretical contribution is, let alone write one\u201d.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re not wrong. A friend emailed me once about a research article he had been struggling to write: \u201c[What\u2019s]\u2026a contribution? A contribution to who? What constitutes a contribution? Can you remember any contributions that you have read? Why not?\u201d<\/p>\n

My hunch is that even the august minds who edit journals don\u2019t have a clue what a theoretical contribution is. Robert Merton, a stalwart of American sociology, wrote in the 1960s<\/a> that \u201clike so many words that are bandied about, the word theory<\/em> threatens to become meaningless. Because its referents are so diverse\u2026use of the word often obscures rather than creates understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fetishisation of theory does have practical payoffs for editors. For one Swedish academic, P\u00e4r J. \u00c5gerfalk, the charge of \u201cinsufficient theoretical contribution\u201d can be employed as a neat rhetorical brush-off for submissions that editors do not like the look of but \u201ccannot quite put their finger on why\u201d. Judging manuscripts against this vague gold standard renders editorial verdicts simultaneously opaque and irrefutable \u2013 and ever more open to professional backscratching.<\/p>\n

I remember an article<\/a> in Times Higher Education <\/em>back in 2005 that recounted what a journal editor said to someone he had asked to review a submission by a leading light in the field, after being informed that this someone was a close friend of the author. \u201cWe both know we are going to publish it anyway. This is really just a formal exercise, so could you just go through the motions?\u201d The luminary\u2019s reaction? \u201cThe editor had kind of given the game away. Now I know I can send him any old rubbish and get it in.\u201d<\/p>\n

For others, though, the opposite is true. There is evidence<\/a>, for instance, that female authors have to clear a much higher bar to get published; in one case in 2015<\/a>, a referee suggested that two female scientists would benefit from a male co-author.<\/p>\n

Even when editorial obsessing over theory is sincere and reasonably well defined, it is misguided because it risks killing originality and promoting hackneyed thinking instead. The social psychologist Michael Billig\u2019s latest book, More Examples, Less Theory: Historical Studies of Writing Psychology<\/em>, concludes that \u201cin its oversimplified triviality [theory] constitutes an untruth\u201d. This echoes the complaint in 2007<\/a> of the American management studies academic Donald Hambrick that \u201cthe blatant insistence on theory\u2026in everything we write, actually retards our ability to achieve our end: understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

We are probably too far down this rabbit hole to get out of it again. That would require courage on the part of editors to go against orthodoxy, which is rare. But it isn\u2019t entirely absent. \u00c5gerfalk, for instance, dared to question, in a 2014 editorial article<\/a> in the European Journal of Information Systems<\/em>, whether an insufficient theoretical contribution is really such a bad thing. For him, descriptive findings can advance and develop knowledge, so he implores editors to welcome theory-light papers that focus on empirical contributions and defer any theoretical analysis to other researchers at some later point in time.<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t be the first person, moreover, to argue that these descriptive stories can, in themselves, make theoretical advances. As Billig shows in More Examples<\/em>, I am treading a path that, while a little overgrown, is well worn.<\/p>\n

Take the early 20th-century German philosopher Ernst Cassirer, who dedicated his vast, underrated body of work to revealing how art, myth and poetry intensify reality, whereas scientific abstraction impoverishes it. Cassirer, in turn, is echoing the founder of modern psychology, William James, for whom \u201ctheory mutilates reality\u201d.<\/p>\n

Both thinkers hold that good description is the best way of explaining and understanding \u2013 and not merely in the humanities and social sciences. Cassirer was keen to cite Robert Myer, the 19th-century founder of thermodynamics, who took on the \u201cmetaphysical mutilators\u201d by arguing that if something is described from all sides, it is explained. The work of science is done.<\/p>\n

It could even be that the best way of making an original, theoretical contribution to knowledge is to avoid trying to do so. As Goethe once wrote: \u201call that is factual is already theory\u201d. But that theory would no doubt be rejected if he submitted it to a modern journal.<\/p>\n

Author Bio: <\/strong>Michael Marinetto is a senior lecturer in management at Cardiff Business School.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently heard about a rejection letter from a Chinese economics journal that was a bit too generous with the sugar vis-\u00e0-vis the pill. \u201cIf we were to publish your paper, it would be impossible for us to publish any work of lower standard,\u201d the editor wrote, several decades ago. \u201cAnd as it is unthinkable […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":52055,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[86115],"tags":[12748],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-52054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-rejection"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhy are journals so obsessed by theory? - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/why-are-journals-so-obsessed-by-theory\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why are journals so obsessed by theory? 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