Provisional Good-ish News

So, I've had this essay out for review at a Fancy-Pants Journal for lo, these many months. I'd stopped myself from inquiring about it because the last I'd heard, they were waiting on an overdue report and I figured no news meant at least I wasn't rejected, so I'd let the thing lie. But since it's been six months, I figured I should check in just to make sure it hadn't disappeared into the ether. At any rate, it's been through one level of review (apparently there are multiple levels), the editor of the journal then decided those reports meant that it was good enough to proceed to the next level of review (see - told you it was Fancy-Pants, because dude with all of these levels of review! I had no idea there'd be all of this crap), and apparently the first report from that level of review recommends to publish, and they await the second report. I suppose that the reports may end up disagreeing, so this isn't actual good news yet, but it gives me hope that this thing will ultimately see the light of day sometime in the next year or two. I just hope the thing doesn't stall out with the second reviewer, meaning that I need to revise and resubmit or that I need to submit it elsewhere and start the process over from scratch.

I decided to post about this in part because I think it's useful to make the timeline for publication more transparent than it typically is. My experiences have been so varied with this - the Collection Article that Languishes continues to languish, and it's about 4 1/2 years since I presented the conference paper on which it was based. In contrast, I've had other articles that made it from inception to publication within like 9 months. In this particular case, the thing's been under review for like 6 months (in part because I submitted it at the start of summer, which is not good timing, we should all note), and I expect I won't hear anything definitive until the start of the new year, and if I hear positive news, I suspect the thing won't be out until 2010. This isn't terribly stressful for me because I'm not at an institution where publication rules the day, but I imagine if I were on the market without a permanent job, or if I were at a research-intensive institution, the time involved in getting things to publication would probably have me in a constant state of anxiety. I mean, I suppose I'd have more out at a given time than I typically do now were that the case, so perhaps I wouldn't be so focused on each individual article, but still. I suppose the moral of the story is, thank god I wasn't counting on this particular article to shore up my tenure case. At the pace things are going, I'll be lucky to hear what's up with it before the decision is made.

In other news, my prospects for JWIBSNA, if he wiki is to be believed, have diminished. Apparently calls for writing samples have gone out, and I've not received one. Obviously it's still early, and it could be that they're not making those requests all at the same time, or that they're not making them of all candidates. Whatever the case, feeling like I'm potentially out of the running actually makes me feel better and not worse - for it means that I've got one less thing to be angsty about.