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Thursday, August 5, 2010

Are Editors Actually Reading Submitted Content?

I have submitted an article on allergy eye drops recently, and after "only" ten days (I was afraid summer time and allergy season might be over by the time the get back to me) I have received an offer. 

As I was looking at the offer and pondering whether to accept it, I noticed that the title of my article had been changed.  It is claimed that the reviewing editors are 'highly trained' and might change a title to make the content more searchable. 

Fair enough. 

But the new title made (a) no sense in itself and (b) was in no context with the body of the article, i.e. the new title was misleading in that it promised something the article did not provide. 

I decided to decline the offer.  I figured my name would be next to this title, and I could not stand for such a hack title.  I wondered if the editor had actually read my article, and, if so, how he or she could come up with this title.  My guess was that my article had not really been read in its entirety, which I can understand to a degree as they must go over thousands of articles. 
I supposed the editor probably just checked for a better keyword phrase, so I conducted a google search with the new keyword phrase and: bubkes!  What a surprise.  Could it be because the suggeste title did. not. make. sense?

I changed the title back and resubmitted the article.  I am guessing it will take another ten days or so before I hear back...  *sigh*

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