Everyone hates those journal article submission portals.

And that might be because they hate you, too.

I recently co-edited a journal special issue that didn’t use a submission portal. Authors sent their work by email. Peer review was requested and returned by email. The final manuscript was submitted by email. It was like it was 2004 again. And it was wonderful.

Everyone hates those journal article submission portals. For good reason. Months or years of research, careful thinking, crafting an argument, all those painfully checked figures and citations. And then you have to navigate the fucking portal.

It seems even worse when it is a book review. I carefully read this book (which some publishers have decided you only need in PDF, which is EXTREMELY RUDE). I thought about the book, wrote thoughtful words intended to help both the author and the field. And now there is the worst type of fucking form.

Image: I asked ChatGPT to create an image of a medievan scholar screaming in frustration at their computer. I like how Chatty decided that medieval scholars used 1990s desktops. Old-fashioned, I guess

One portal insisted on me formulating my password in a precise way which I did and then it still wouldn’t let me login, stealing 45 minutes of my one precious life before I gave up and insisted on emailing it. They often demand information that seems unnecessary, or which you don’t know. The uploading might be clunky or the requirements confusing. They frequently point you to lists of author requirements elsewhere at a moment of the process where taking in such details seems beyond all reason. It always takes longer than you expect - and longer than seems reasonable. See above re one precious life. And then a tiny error might lead the system to unsubmit your work, making you do it all over again. Sometimes repeatedly.

For people in jobs made incredibly stressful with impossible expectations and coerced by diabolical academic workload policies it is profoundly injurious. For those many scholars working outside academia, it adds a different kind of stress.

Book reviews editors tell me they are unable to recruit reviewers these days, unless they promise the reviewer they won’t have to use the portal. As soon as I heard this I thought about doing the same.

I mean I hate all forms. But most forms I just do. For example, I had to pay an instalment on my tax the other day, requiring me to login to MyGov and the tax office and fill out a form. I just did it, like a grown up freelance researcher. Most people do.

But something about these journal submission portals is just particularly awful.

I kinda think it might be because they are express an absolute antipathy to scholars. Every step in steeped in suspicion. Just how many words exactly do you think you need to say this? Why did you use an email that is different to the one you used to login, are you sure it is you? Are you a robot? ARE YOU SURE? It is the author’s responsibility (noting the absolute impersonal manner in which you are now ‘the author’) to blah blah blah your time has no value to me, the portal.

One would think you’re trying to steal the portal’s first born child or something, when all you are doing is trying to publish some research. Which, after all, is an important public responsibility.

You can understand it though. We hear about unconscionable practices by authors and journals all the time. Fake research, AI-produced papers, research produced under conflicts of interest that serve commercial or self-serving purposes, and predatory journals (yesterday I was invited to send my work to Materials Science in Additive Manufacturing, which apparently aligns perfectly to my research). The portal is trying to protect the integrity of the scholarly system by being systematically super-suspicious of every single author.

Then there must be the experience of dealing with academics, who are not known for their humility. Nor, in some cases, their manners. I can totally imagine thinking of them as fucking authors, and building a system that treats them thusly.

However, if one’s business model depends on the unpaid cooperation of a group of unherdable cats. Well. Perhaps putting out some milk might make things run a little more smoothly.