Organizations and Markets

An Ancient Rejection Letter

8 June 2011 at 2:36 pm Peter G. Klein 4 comments

| Peter Klein |

Via Josh Gans, here’s the response from Geometrika: A Most Prestigious Journal with Really Special Referees to poor Ptolemaeus, regarding his submitted paper, “An Argument that the Earth Is Round, and a Method to Determine its Circumference.” Sadly, the reviewers were not impressed, one feeling that “the idea that the Earth is round is both (i) too simple and well known to be really surprising and worth of publication, and (ii) utterly deceptive, misleading and wrong.” The editor’s skillful close:

I am sorry to bring you what must be disappointing news. Please keep in mind that we can only publish less than 8 percent of submissions. I also hope that the brilliant comments of the referees will help you to revise this paper for a submission to a more appropriate eld journal, such as Forms of Miscellaneous Objects or Maritime Inquiries.

On the bright side, I feel that you must now be in the mood of refereeing a few papers for our great journal. I will not tell you, which, if any, of the attached papers is authored by referees 1 to 3, but you can of course guess. I would have liked to receive your reports on these papers by yesterday, so you can also consider this letter as your rst reminder notice for these reports.

Entry filed under: - Klein -, Ephemera.