AIC

In Conservation DistList Instance: 14:4 Wednesday, July 12, 2000, I
wrote:

>I would like to thank Kate Roberts and Barbara Appelbaum for their
>responses to my post of last week.  I stand partially corrected by
>Barbara about the content of the JAIC; conservators do have to
>submit more articles to it which are treatment oriented if that is
>what they want to see in print, or to encourage others to write
>articles.  I no longer submit articles to the Journal due to the
>rather poor reviewers comments I have received in the past and
>rejections of my treatment articles.  I have heard from many others
>with similar remarks, so will argue that while we do have to write
>more, there has to be the will at the Journal to publish.

I have been reminded that none of the papers I submitted to JAIC
were technically rejected in the early 90s.  They were returned to
me for rewriting and resubmission with recommendations from the
reviewers.  I chose, instead, to have them published in other
journals, based on the content of these editorial comments.

This does bring into focus the essence of my argument which is that
the reviewers' comments seldom contributed to the improvement of the
articles, rather they and the comments of the editors were not
informed or constructive and did not encourage.  But more
important--and this is what I hear from other conservators who have
submitted in recent years--there was a tone of hostility to the
subject or methods.  I have no argument with sarcasm, but I do feel
that the quality of review comments has degenerated as well as the
knowledge of the reviewer.

I particularly respect the tradition of the editor and reviewer, as
this tradition harks back to the origins of journals when letters
where sent from scholar to scholar with comments added by each hand
they passed through.  Strangely, this tradition is returning in
ancient form in some journals today (eg Contemporary Anthropology
where reviewers comments are published at the end of articles) and
in some internet "journals".  This allows for a diversity of opinion
which many believe (certainly in some of the highly technical
computer science fields) necessary for how fast the high tech
sectors are advancing.  All of this goes to reinforce what I said in
my first post on the AIC meeting, that we need more publications,
more diversity of opinion and more encouragement of the practicing
conservators to write and publish.

Niccolo Caldararo
Director and Chief Conservator
Conservation Art Service


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 14:5
                   Distributed: Monday, July 17, 2000
                        Message Id: cdl-14-5-008
                                  ***