Last November, a paper of mine got an impossible-to-do R&R by an academic (ethics/political philosophy) journal – it amounted to a de facto rejection, except if I was willing to write a very different paper. The paper had been rejected before, and I was at a point where I wasn’t sure what to do with it. The 5 referee reports (all very elaborate) wildly differed in what they found lacking in the paper. Several referees wanted me to write another paper, but they all suggested something very different. The reports also differed a lot in what they found plausible and implausible in the paper. It demotivated me, and then I did the most stupid thing a scholar can do – to leave the paper sitting there, not working on it, not having a plan at all about what to do with the paper. [click to continue…]