One of the most misunderstood things about academic life is publication. Everybody knows “publish or perish.” Everybody. But nobody knows, or understands, how damn long it takes to get a paper done. They think we are ridiculous: after all, they wrote perfectly good papers in six hours the night before the paper was due! So we only teach twice a week and we write three papers a year at six hours each. Gah! Slackers.
John Whitehead explains the process in gory detail here. My question: he actually gets his page proofs in on time? Really?
Go read.
freud, who i don’t think ever pub’d a refereed article, would have the obvi explanation: the system is designed to discourage publication. it fulfills the secret wishes of the vast majority of people who don’t want to write. or don’t want to write so that anyone notices