Response from an academic journal to my commentary of an article they published. They liked it, but since it wasn’t wearing a suit and a tie, and I didn’t spent enough time and effort doing it, they prefer to leave their audience without it.
Dear Zury Asse,
Thank you very much for your submission. Unfortunately, after careful review, the editors of Basic Income Studies (BIS) have decided that we cannot accept “Four more arguments against the exploitation objection to Basic Income” for publication.
Although I believe that the reasoning in the paper is sound, BIS rejected it because it is not appropriate for an academic journal such as Basic Income Studies. It is more of an editorial commentary rather than a research article. It could be probably published in a nonacademic magazine or newspaper in its current form, but it would need considerable reworking to fit into BIS. We are interested in short commentaries on our research articles, if they make a short, pithy criticism. However, this paper is less of a comment on White’s paper than it is a sequel to it. White takes 17 pages to develop three arguments for basic income, and he carefully embeds each argument in the previous academic literature. Your submission takes only three pages to develop four more arguments for basic income and makes no attempt to show whether these arguments are new to the academic literature on basic income or not. I would suggest either that you redirect this paper toward a nonacademic publication or that you fully develop the arguments and thoroughly research how they fit into the existing literature on basic income.
We appreciate having had the opportunity to consider your work and hope that you consider our journal for future submissions.
Thank you,
Karl Widerquist
EditorBasic Income Studies
