Refereeing

[David J Birnbaum]

On Fri, 6 Dec 1996, Genevra Gerhart wrote:

> So when can we institute refereeing?

Sounds like this is as good a time as any to announce the following:

Beginning with the 1997 annual meeting in Toronto, AATSEEL will
undertake on a three-to-five-year trial basis a series of revisions in
the organization of the conference. These revisions have been proposed,
after lengthy discussion within the program committee and consultation
with officers and members, as a response to long-standing problems with
the quality and administration of the conference, and the history and
rationale underlying them are described at length on the World Wide
Web at:

   http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~djb/aatseel/program_structure.html

Members who would like to consult this document and do not have access
to the World Wide Web may request a copy by email or regular post from
the Program Committee Chair (see the addresses at the bottom of this
message).

It should be emphasized that the proposed changes have been designed
not to restrict participation in the conference (which remains open to
all members who conform to the guidelines), but to help raise the
overall quality of all contributions.

1. To Propose a Panel. Any member may propose a panel by submitting a
panel declaration form to the appropriate division head by 15 January.
Members are encouraged to propose panels on specific and cohesive themes,
which will encourage the panelists to address closely-related issues.

2. To Submit a Paper. Members may submit papers in two ways: either by
coordinating a submission to a specific panel with the chair of that
panel (as has been the case in the past) or by submitting a paper to the
conference as a whole, to be assigned to an appropriate panel during
scheduling. In either case, members must submit their abstracts to the
division head (not just to the panel chair) by the deadline.  The
opportunity to submit papers to the conference as a whole, rather than
to a specific panel, means that members no longer need to find or
create panels for their papers, and it also means that members will no
longer be closed out of the conference because appropriate panels have
either not been proposed or become filled.

3. Abstracts. All submissions must be accompanied by a one-page abstract
(see the Guidelines for Preparing Abstracts, below).  Abstracts must be
submitted to the appropriate division head, with copies of abstracts
earmarked for particular panels also sent to the appropriate panel chairs.
Roundtable participants should submit a statement of how they will
contribute to their panels.

Please note that abstracts will be accepted only from paid-up members
of AATSEEL. Non-North-American scholars and non-Slavists may apply to
AATSEEL's Executive Director for exemption from the membership
requirement, which will be determined on an individual basis.

4. Anonymous Peer Review of Abstracts. All abstracts will be refereed
anonymously by reviewers selected by the division heads, and the
criteria for refereeing are described in the Guidelines for Abstracts.
All members are invited to nominate themselves or others to serve as
referees by contacting the appropriate division head. Referees need
not be senior scholars, but should have sufficient area knowledge and
conference experience to be able to evaluate submissions according to
the published guidelines.

5. Deadlines. There are two deadlines for abstracts: 15 April and 15
August. Abstracts received by 15 April and not accepted will be returned
to the author with suggestions for revision, and members are invited
to resubmit for the 15 August deadline. Members who do not require
early notification of acceptance or the opportunity to revise and
resubmit are welcome to bypass the first deadline and submit their
abstracts only by mid-August. Please note that the 15 August deadline is
firm, and no submissions can be accepted after that date.

6. Competition. There isn't any, and all abstracts that conform to the
published guidelines are guaranteed acceptance. The purpose of peer
review of conference abstracts is not to limit participation, but to
encourage all members to submit work that conforms to basic
professional standards. The guidelines, coupled with the
revise-and-resubmit option, are designed to assist members in preparing
abstracts, and members are encouraged to contact panel chairs or any
member of the program committee with questions about the abstract
process.

7. Multiple Participation. A member may appear on the program up to
three times: once as an author of a titled paper, once as a discussant
or roundtable participant, and once as a panel chair. (Secretaries,
whose only function has been as designated chairs for the following
year, will no longer be listed in the program.) Exceptions to the
multiple participation rule are that a) participation in "publisher's
forum" panels in any capacity is not counted toward a member's quota,
and b) a member presenting a single-authored paper may also present a
co-authored paper, as long as at least one additional co-author is not
otherwise presenting a paper, and is registered and present at the
conference.

8. Chairs and Secretaries. Members who submit panel declaration forms
will chair those panels, and are encouraged to recruit participants,
subject to the peer review process described above (refereeing is
applied at the level of individual papers, rather than panels).
Underfilled panels will be completed through consultation between the
chair and division head, and chairs will not need to compromise their
standards to save an undersubscribed panel at the last minute.
Undeclared panels created to accommodate papers not submitted to a
particular panel will have chairs appointed by the division heads.
Beginning in 1997, members will not be permitted to give papers on
panels they chair themselves; because division heads are responsible
for placing all submissions appropriately, it is no longer necessary to
create a panel just to have a home for one's own paper. Also beginning
in 1997, as noted above, secretaries will have no official status and
will not be listed in the program.

9. Abstract Book. All accepted abstracts will be collected, published,
and distributed together with the program at the conference, in order
to provide a permanent record of the conference and to help members
decide which papers to attend. Abstracts will also be published on the
World Wide Web prior to the conference.

10. Timeslots. Unless there is a specific reason for an alternative
structure, all panels will be divided into four half-hour slots,
allocated to either four papers or three papers plus discussion (either
with or without a discussant). If there are four papers, discussion will
follow each paper, and the paper plus discussion should not exceed half
an hour. If there are three papers, the papers may take thirty minutes,
with all discussion falling in the final half hour. If a paper finishes
early, chairs will pause until the next half hour. The purpose of this
division is to enable members to move between panels, knowing in
advance when specific papers will begin and end.

11. Uniform oversight of program quality and structure.  Division heads
will work together with panel chairs to ensure that all who wish to
read a paper and have submitted an acceptable abstract will be able to
participate. Whenever possible, division heads will not tamper with
panels that have been recruited or organized by chairs, although they
will have the authority to move papers from one panel to another, in
consultation with the panel chairs, as appropriate to the needs of the
conference as a whole.

12. We will continue the "publisher's forum" panels introduced this
year as an opportunity for authors to discuss their own textbooks. This
new venue means that authors should no longer use traditional academic
panels to advertise their own books; textbook-oriented research panels
are very welcome, but they should be both scholarly and scrupulously
non-commercial.

We wish to emphasize that this new system is being implemented not in
order to exclude members from participation, but to ensure that all of
us can be proud to participate in a conference whose quality and
professionalism will enhance both our reputation as scholars and the
overall reputation of our professional association. During this trial
period, members are encouraged to contact any member of the Program
Committee with comments and suggestions about the new mechanisms, and
about ways to improve further the quality and professionalism of our
annual meetings.
________________________________________________________________________

Guidelines for Abstracts

In view of the decision by the AATSEEL Executive Council and Program
Committee to expand the system of anonymous peer review of abstracts
for the annual meeting to all divisions, we thought it might be useful
to present some general guidelines for people writing abstracts,
especially those for whom the proposal of a paper to AATSEEL may be the
first experience with peer review of abstracts.

The goal of the review process is not to establish a principle of
competition for a limited number of slots, but, rather, to ensure that
all papers presented meet minimum professional standards and reflect
careful preparation in advance.  The peer review is intended to be as
objective and inclusive as possible.  Division heads, who are
responsible for review procedures, will make an effort to find the
widest possible representation by all segments of the membership
(academic subdivision, geography, seniority, school of thought [as many
PhD-granting programs as possible], and type of institution as
appropriate to the discipline [PhD-granting, non-PhD-granting, etc.]).
The system will apply uniformly to all conference participants.

An ideal abstract, like a good paper, should identify a problem
(linguistic, pedagogical, literary, historical, or cultural) that needs
solving or present a hypothesis that sheds light on the interpretation
of a text or body of texts. (A text need not be strictly "literary" and
could include, for example, film or opera, or even painting or music.)
A paper may identify a new problem and propose a solution, or may
identify a complete or partial solution to an existing problem.
Alternatively, a paper might indicate that a generally-held view has
unrecognized shortcomings, without necessarily proposing a
comprehensive analysis to replace the received wisdom.  Some papers,
especially in pedagogy, may provide critical descriptions and analyses
of existing, innovative, or proposed methods and materials used in
teaching languages and literatures.  Papers in literature may propose a
new analysis of a text, offer a new application of an established
critical theory or theories of textual analysis or interpretation, or
present a new theory of textual interpretation. It is important to
state your methodology or theoretical framework clearly; a reference as
brief as "relying on approach X", "applying the principles of Y",
"analyzing the problem within a Z framework", or "I am approaching the
problem from the point of view of A and B's theory of Q" will suffice.

Naturally, the further your work has progressed, the better your
abstract is likely to be.  Ideally, you will summarize work that is
already completed, but this is not required, or even expected.  More
likely, you will have the outline of your analysis in mind, but will
not have worked out all the details; this is also legitimate.  However,
if you have merely identified a problem you would like to examine when
you get a chance, on which you have not yet conducted any research, it
will be difficult to represent it convincingly.  The review committees
will be given the authority to reject largely hypothetical papers.

Abstracts should be brief and concise, presenting your hypothesis and
outlining your plan for defending that hypothesis.  Aim for
approximately one page, including examples and short, relevant
references, which should be used sparingly.  The full scholarly
apparatus, with footnotes and bibliography, is not necessary for an
abstract.  (References could include, for example, only the name of the
author cited and, if necessary, the title of the work cited in
parentheses.)  For linguists, data and examples in non-Slavic and
non-Western languages should be glossed.  When submitting abstracts by
e-mail, employ a clear system for Cyrillic or diacritic marks, and
indicate it explicitly with the abstract.

Printed abstracts must be anonymous, with a cover note including
author, address, and title of paper.  Headers will be removed from
electronic submissions before refereeing.  Receipt of e-mail
submissions will be acknowledged.  If you submit your abstract in other
ways and would like an acknowledgement of receipt, please provide your
e-mail address or enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope.  E-mail
submission is strongly encouraged.   Fax is discouraged because of poor
legibility, particularly in the case of further transmission to
referees.  If you submit an abstract by post or fax, the use of courier
or some other monospaced font is preferred, so that printed abstracts
can be scanned.
________________________________________________________________________

1997 Program Committee

PROGRAM COMMITTEE CHAIR

Professor David J. Birnbaum
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
1417 Cathedral of Learning
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Phone: 412-624-5712
Fax: 412-624-9714
Email: djbpitt+ at pitt.edu
URL: http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~djb/

MEMBERS AT LARGE

Professor George Fowler
Department of Slavic Languages
Ballantine 502
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
Phone: 317-726-1482 (home; try here first); 812-855-2829 (office)
Fax: 812-855-2107
Email: gfowler at indiana.edu

Professor Karen Evans-Romaine
Ohio University
Department of Modern Languages
Ellis Hall 220
Athens, OH  45701
Phone: 614-592-3728 (home), 614-593-2791 (office), 614-593-2765 (department)
Fax: 614-593-0729
Email: evans-ro at oak.cats.ohiou.edu

DIVISION HEADS

THEORY AND SPECIAL TOPICS

Professor Maria Pavlovszky
7548 Sycamore Grove Ct.
Indianapolis, IN 46260-3388
Phone: 317-726-1482 (home; try here first), 317-274-0062 (dept)
Fax: 317-274-2347
Email: mpavlov at iupui.edu

METHODOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY

Professor Benjamin Rifkin
Department of Slavic Languages
1432 Van Hise Hall
University of Wisconsin
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: 608-262-1623
Fax: 608-265-2814
Email: brifkin at facstaff.wisc.edu

CULTURE, CINEMA, AND DRAMA

Professor Eliot Borenstein
19 University Place #302
New York, NY 10003-4556
Phone: 212-998-8676 (work), 212-477-7198 (home)
Fax: 212-995-4163
Email: borenstn at is2.nyu.edu

TWENTIETH-CENTURY RUSSIAN lITERATURE

Professor Michael Gorham
Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures
263 Dauer Hall
University of Florida
P.O. Box 117430
Gainesville, FL  32611-7430
Phone: 352-392-2101
Fax: 352-392-1067
E-mail: mgorham at germslav.ufl.edu

LINGUISTICS

Professor Karen Robblee
Department of Slavic and East European Languages
The Pennsylvania State University
211 Sparks Building
University Park, PA 16802-5201
Phone: 814-863-8963 (office); 814-237-7046 (home)
Fax: 814-863-5561
Email: ker4 at psu.edu

PRE-TWENTIETH-CENTURY RUSSIAN LITERATURE

Professor Kevin Platt
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
Mason Hall, Room 201
550 N. Harvard Avenue
Pomona College
Claremont, CA 91711
Phone: 909-621-2337 (home), 909-621-8927 (work)
Fax: 909-621-8065
Email: kplatt at pomona.edu
URL: http://pages.pomona.edu/~kplatt/
________________________________________________________________________

Professor David J. Birnbaum     email: djbpitt+ at pitt.edu
Department of Slavic Languages  url:   http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~djb/
1417 Cathedral of Learning      voice: 1-412-624-5712
University of Pittsburgh        fax:   1-412-624-9714
Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA