Alexander Lennon: accepted articles should be prescriptive and make an argument

Foreign opinion

This is a special interview for the RIAC with Alexander Lennon. Mr. Lennon is the editor-in-chief of CSIS’s flagship journal, The Washington Quarterly, focusing on global strategic trends and their public policy implications. In this interview Mr. Lennon talks about the requirements for submitted materials, the main reasons for non-acceptance of materials, and gives advice on how to write a publishable paper.

Foreign opinion

Interviewee: Alexander Lennon, editor-in-chief of The Washington Quarterly, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Interviewer: Maria Prosviryakova, RIAC

How to get your research published in the foremost international journals

This is a special interview for the Russian International Affairs Council with Alexander Lennon. Mr. Lennon is the editor-in-chief of CSIS’s flagship journal, The Washington Quarterly, focusing on global strategic trends and their public policy implications. In this interview Mr. Lennon talks about the requirements for submitted materials, the main reasons for non-acceptance of materials, and gives advice on how to write a publishable paper.

“I would be delighted to receive submissions from Russian scholars (I view it as our core mission to publish diverse perspectives on issues of global strategic significance) but, to be honest, I can not recall ever receiving a single unsolicited submission from a Russian scholar. Though, we have published articles by scholars such as Dmitri Trenin, Alexei Arbatov, and Vladimir Orlov, [who are members of TWQ’s editorial board].”
Alexander Lennon

The Washington Quarterly, published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is an essential source of incisive analysis of global strategic changes and their public policy implications. Mr. Lennon, I would like to ask you about the requirements for submitted materials.

Most of the articles that we receive are submitted electronically now. Typically the first draft will be 5 000 words or so. It is may be 18-24 double-spaced pages. We define the interest for The Washington Quarterly as the diverse perspectives on issues of global strategic significance. By diverse perspectives in this case we mean people with view points from different countries, from different professions. It is something that stimulates the debate particularly on the feature topics for what we are looking for. We have a particular background in the history of the journal in arms control and non-proliferation issues. We certainly do a lot on great power relations. So, it covers a wide range of global security affairs as the topics that you would submit in that range of about 18-24 pages.

There is very little quantitative analysis for us. It is different from an academic journal as an academic journal would have a peer review process. Policy journals generally don’t go through peer review process; manuscripts are reviewed by the editorial staff - myself and other people that work for the journal. And we typically will pick about 10-12 articles (closer to 10 lately) per issue that we publish in the journal. So, sometimes whether the journal accepts it or not may just depend on whether you happen to be submitting a piece at a time when there is a stiff competition or a time when it is just a low in good submissions that come otherwise. So, there is a little bit of variability or luck that is involved in that case.

What is the rough ratio of submitted to accepted pieces?

That is hard to say as I do not put eyes on every unsolicited piece. We have three ways that pieces are submitted to us. There is a very small handful of pieces that we will solicit or that we will invite a highly established or high profile author. That may be 1 out of every 10 that appears in the journal.

There is a full unsolicited, which are the full drafts that I mentioned before and that may be about a quarter of everything that is published through that process. I would say that may be 1 in 30 of what is submitted actually gets through to publication. That may say more about the quality for the submissions than about how hard it is to come through.

Then the third way is people who have written for us before. They will often submit a one-sentence idea or a topic or thesis sentence to the editor. And that allows us to get to them early - before they spend a lot of time drafting a lot of words - and guide how the product should look to maximize its chances of being accepted in that case. Some journals do it that way, but others don’t. Others will require much more formal process. It just depends on the individual journal.

How many of them are from other countries than the United States?

We generally have about half of our authors are either based outside the United States – sometimes you might have an American based in China – or more often we have somebody who is of Chinese, Japanese, German or French descent. Probably about 50% of the people reside outside the United States. We haven’t looked at the statistics of authors’ origin; it is just where their residence is more.

What are those countries?

The main ones that we are looking for - because we do so much on great powers debate - is a fair amount of Brits, French, German. We have a very high number of Chinese – because of my particular background and networking groups that I have been in over the course of last decade or so working with Chinese scholars. So, I have a little bit of a personal relationship with a number of scholars from there. Japanese as well. Our editorial board actually is about half international members, and there is one from each one of those countries. There are probably 3 or 4 different authors based in India that we have worked with through our editorial board member in particular that has pointed us in the right direction. We said that we were looking for an Indian perspective and he said that it was either himself or he recommended others to us that could fill that role.

What are the main reasons for submitted materials to be rejected?

The principle one is because somebody is doing a review of an issue and not making an argument on an issue. During the last 12 months I got a lot of pieces on U.S.-Russia relations or U.S.-China relations; and they are not fundamentally making an argument about what is driving the reason for changes in the relationship, why the “reset” worked. It was more of a report on what the “reset” did, how it came about, what the components of the “reset” are , but it is not saying how it was perceived in Russia, how it evolved in the United States, whether it did or didn’t work.

The fundamental thing for an article for us is that it has got to make an argument that explains why something evolved or how it is perceived overseas. More often or not it makes a recommendation for how to improve relations, the likelihood that an issue will be solved, whatever the case may be. But being something that is prescriptive and makes an argument rather than descriptive and explains what has happened over the last 12 months is the principle difference between being accepted or not.

What research strategies do you find most valuable?

It is not quantitative for us generally. It is more qualitative research. More often or not people can try and explain how different governments are viewing issue. So, sometimes it can be based on anonymous interviews they have done with government officials; sometimes it can be based on deciphering government documents or speeches; sometimes it can be based on interviewing analysts who can help explain another country.

For example, one of the principle criticisms I always give American authors is: “Don’t have an article written by an American based in Washington telling the Russians what they should do differently in the policy. Have something that explains, particularly from the Russian perspective, how Russia views an issue or how the United States might change its policy to make it more acceptable to Russia. But do not try and tell another government how to change their policies, unless you are trying to explain another country’s perspective about how the United States can change it.”

So, one of the differences that we are often looking for is how you can explain the perception of another country. Only about half of our audience are American, so what we are looking to do is to stimulate global debates through the words of global analysts and trying have different countries’ perspectives rather than just being an American journal.

What topics and analysis does The Washington Quarterly encourage? What perspectives would be especially interesting for The Washington Quarterly to receive from Russian scholars?

I have been running the journal for about 12 years now. Well before I took it over, it was an arms control and nonproliferation journal. So, it has the history of works on Iran and North Korea. We are doing a little bit more on Pakistan on those issues now, as well as on the state of global nonproliferation, such as the Prague Initiative from a few years ago or Global Zero (whatever you want to call it). We are doing some work on the Euro crisis (but I am staying away from it a little bit, because it is a bit more of an economic debate); certainly, on U.S.-Russia relations in general; and on the rising powers of the BRICS (Russia to some extent, but more on China, India and Brazil). Having Russian perspective on these issues would be big for us, because we do not see a lot of it.

Is there any feedback or interaction with the author regarding their submitted material for correction and improvement? Or do you just reject material for not fitting criteria?

No, it is extremely important for us to work with non-American authors. So, I can’t say for every journal, but The Washington Quarterly works with authors who are not necessarily native speakers to help with their ideas in English. They have to review the piece to make sure we are not misrepresenting it. So, during the editing process it goes back and forth. Something that is not grammatically correct, particularly, from someone who is outside the United States, is not a non-starter for us. We will work with the author, particularly if he provides a perspective from a non-American view point. It is worth our time and energy to go through and work with them, if the piece is accepted for publication, to make the grammar right. It doesn’t matter for us whether a piece comes double-spaced or single-spaced, it doesn’t matter what the font of the piece is; it doesn’t matter if it grammatically perfect; what matters is the quality of the ideas and whether we see the potential to work with the author to put it in the right language, so that it is understandable to the readers and to bring that view point out.

How long does it take from submitting material to having it published?

Generally for us it is about 4-6 months, depending on when the piece comes in. If a piece is on a particular hot topic and if we have a space in an issue, we can publish it. More often or not we know what the main articles are going to be about 6 months in advance and then we fill out the other half of it, anywhere from 2 to 4 months out.

What would be your advice on how to write a publishable paper?

I think the principle one is – as I mentioned before – making an argument. There is a tendency to write in academic prose, and what I mean by that is: people will introduce the topic at the beginning, explain all the background in the middle and deliver the punch line or the conclusion at the end. What is much more normal or accepted in policy writing is: make the argument in the first 2-3 paragraph introduction, support it through well-organized middle and then derive the strategic implications or policy recommendations at the end. That way you are making an argument, defending it and explaining its implications, rather than asking a question, explaining a whole series of history that might or might not be related to the answer, and then delivering the one analyst conclusion from it. Pieces that make an argument rather than pieces that describe what is happening is much more likely to get published.

Mr. Lennon, thank you so much for this interview for the Russian International Affairs Council.

Sure, I am happy to.

Ilene Cohen

Executive Editor of World Politics, an internationally renowned quarterly journal of political science.

- How often do you receive materials from Russian scholars? How is it compared to materials from other international scholars (say, from China, France, England, Eastern Europe)

Almost never. We do receive and have published the peer-reviewed work of scholars from England, France, and Eastern Europe, occasionally from China.

- What is the ratio of submitted to accepted materials?

We accept about one out of seventeen submissions.

- What are the main reasons for submitted materials to be rejected?

There are really only a few Russian scholars whose work is of the quality that might be published in World Politics. It does in part have to do with starkly different scholarly traditions. I should mention that there is one Russian scholar who has won an APSA prize—Grigory Golosov at European University in St. Petersburg.