A decision letter from the editor, handling our Canadian case-based paper, had a ‘reject’ in it, but also comments from two reviewers (none from the editor).
After a first reading, some of the comments seem very helpful (must say, though, we are not our best us when reading comments in a reject for the first time; they sort of have to sink in): choices/re-choices we probably must make, readings we probably should engage in, nuances leading the reader the wrong way that must be changed etc.
However, we couldn’t also help feeling that we were not really read for who we were claiming to be, feeling a bit like lost miners. If allowed:
Scene 1: The feeling when submitting the paper – we have drilled and blasted, created cavities, and a lot of waste for sure, but managed to sort out and crush (it’s a metaphor, remember) that high-qualitive material that could be sent up to the Dream factory above ground where the findings in the shape of a small but genius little pellet was produced and sent away through the electronic manuscript submission system, a pellet that beyond any doubt would change contemporary thinking about the world of work in mining.
Scene 2: The feeling when receiving reviews and the reject – we drilled and blasted in the wrong area, the cavities were apparently created two hundred meters to the side of where we blasted (and didn’t appear until recently), for some reason we managed to sort out and crush mostly waste, not iron ore, though we did send the crushed waste to the Dream factory okay (hey, high-five!), where the pellet produced in the end was more un-shaped than round, way too porous for others to handle, fell apart too easily when put under pressure, way too light to carry any weight.
Scene 3: The feeling when getting back into re-writing the paper – unknown, to be written, we’re now on vacation.
Framing scenes 1 and 2 in a song, but not one of our own, we quote two verses from the seven dwarfs and their mining song “Heigh-ho” (from the movie Snow White and the 7 dwarfs), where the end of the second got us a bit hooked:
We dig dig dig dig dig dig dig in our mine the whole day through
To dig dig dig dig dig dig dig is what we really like to do
It ain’t no trick to get rich quick
If you dig dig dig with a shovel or a pick
In a mine! In a mine! In a mine! In a mine!
Where a million diamonds shine!We dig dig dig dig dig dig dig from early morn till night
We dig dig dig dig dig dig dig up everything in sight
We dig up diamonds by the score
A thousand rubies, sometimes more
But we don’t know what we dig ’em for
We dig dig dig a-dig dig