Editorial Work

Academic journal papers are almost never anonymous. Transatlantic conven­tions and increasingly ruthless inter-university competition have come to dis­place the traditional British view that publicity is embarrassing, and that bragging is an unpardonable sin.

When an editor sends out a paper to referees, she hopes for a clear cut and reasonably timely verdict on the quality of a submission. Best of all, she wel­comes a report that will assist the author(s) even when, perhaps especially when, that verdict is a recommendation to reject. Without breaking confi­dences, your author is delighted to report that John Vickers is an outstand­ingly thorough referee. He dislikes the thought of work pending; he invariably replies speedily and decisively. Granted, he is not alone in these virtues, but it grieves one to state that there are many others who lack them. The worst kind of referee report, which editors receive too often, might run like this:

I am sorry it has taken me so long to work through this paper, and to give you my recommendation. I wish I could put my finger more precisely on why I am not very impressed by it. Some of the paper is familiar or obvious, but other parts are hard going. The derivation of equations could be explained a bit better, in my view. The authors could benefit from studying several recent Discussion Papers written on related subjects. A suitably revised version might just pass muster, but I confess to being somewhat unenthusiastic.

No editor ever gets a report like that from Vickers.

In cricketing terms, referees are the fielders, submitters do the batting and editors bowl.

Economics. He has also co-edited books. The first was Strategic Behaviour and Industrial Competition, which he co-edited in 1986 with Martin Slater, and Morris and Sinclair, his undergraduate tutors (Morris et al. 1986). A year later, The Economics of Market Dominance appeared, which Donald Hay and he co-edited (Hay and Vickers 1987). Two years after that, Vickers and Vincent Wright edited The Politics of Privatization in Western Europe (Vickers and Wright 1989). The bowling and the batting were both of high standard in all three. A special issue of the Journal of Industrial Economics came next, in 1991; this was on vertical relationships, which he edited with Michael Waterson (Vickers and Waterson 1991).

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