Tim Unwin - Africa is indeed rich - sharing more widely December 4, 2010

Hi Tim

Ref your paper that I was sharing with John yesterday: Tim Unwin - Africa is indeed rich http://dadamac.posterous.com/tim-unwin-africa-is-indeed-rich

I note that you say in the blog that the paper was rejected by all the journals to which you sent it. (I would be interested to know more about that, I wonder what the journals were and who the readers are. I wonder if they will com across it in other ways.)

Anyhow I imagine you mean academic journals, and I imagine there are two main reasons for rejecting papers

1. Not sufficiently academic 
2. Not sufficiently relevant/appropriate for the readership (in the view of the editor and/or reviewers)

Obviously, as in your case academic quality is not an issues, it must be about perceived relevance/appropriateness. It would seem there is a mismatch between your opinion and that of the editors and/or reviewers about the interests of the readers. (I confess to assuming that if I did know more I would probably be in agreement with your opinion.)

Who do you want to be reading it? I wonder if we should try to find other ways to share it with them.

It seems a bit buried at present (NB I found it because I happened to see a tweet from you yesterday about ICTD2010 so I decided to check if you'd tweeted anything else about it recently, and when I went to your twitter page there was an old tweet about a blog, and in the blog was a link to the paper - which is a pdf - one of those horrid double-spread ones that I find such a nightmare to read onscreen). There have to be better ways to make it visible.

Posted to  Dadamac's Posterous by Pamela McLean

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