Text Box: This article is Part 2 of an edited discussion taken from the critical criminology list-serve. Like Part 1 in the last issue of the Critical Criminologist, it was spawned by Bruce Arrigo’s article “Critical Criminology’s Discontent: The Perils of Publishing and the Call to Action” The Critical Criminologist 10(1): 10-13. The contributors here were Bruce Arrigo, Ellen Leichtman, Ray Michalowski, Steve Russell, Martin Schwartz, and Jeff Walker. Stuart Henry did editing and assembling. Ray Michalowski I want to thank Bruce for, not only his article on publishing critical work, but for helping energize this discussion. I also want to thank Marty for his comments, and to add a few thoughts to them. 1. Yes, we have to be careful to distinguish what problems are specific to critical criminology, and what problems are inevitable for any work that cuts against the grain of a dominant paradigm. Reviewers and/or editors do not have to be hostile toward "critical" work in criminology, or be part of a plan to keep it out of high profile journals, for little of it to appear. All they have to do is not understand the epistemology and the language of critical work to find it "simply not argued at the appropriate level" (a quote from a review I received a few years ago). Possible route to some amelioration: It can be useful to suggest a list of potential reviewers to the editor when submitting to a journal that does not normally publish work of the type being submitted. Sometimes this works  if the editor is open to multiple perspective. If the editor does not, then they will, of course not listen, and may even actively seek reviewers known to be hostile to your work (don't ask how I know this). My co-authors and I have had experience in both directions, but clearly we have benefited from having directed editors toward people who might be knowledgeable about the epistemological and theoretical framework our work is based in. 2. Regarding quality: I have been reviewing manuscripts for both high profile journals and what I would consider often, equally good, but less sanctified ones for more years than I care to count. This has led me to the following observations regarding the matter of the relationship between quality and publication. a. Most manuscripts I have reviewed are not ready for publication at the time of submission. b. Manuscripts written from a critical criminology perspective are typically further away from being ready for publication than manuscripts written from more mainstream perspectives and/or based on quantitative models of inquiry. The reasons for this I suspect are: (I) There is less of an agreed upon standard for how to do critical work as compared to the highly developed and relatively rigid format for quantitative work. This openness is good from the standpoint of allowing for creative critical exploration. On the down side, when Text Box: standards are unclear, it is easier for people to believe they have met them. I think this is why I have reviewed a number of critical articles whose intellectual rigor is less than we would expect of a paper ready for publication. (II) Some critical work relies on historical analysis and social scientists tend to do bad history by relying primarily and often uncritically on secondary sources. (III) The journal article format is often a bad fit for critical work. Historical, theoretical, and qualitative analyses done well often requires more space than the standard theory-methods-data-findings-conclusion "success model" used for quantitative work. The forced truncation of the development/presentation of critical ideas and analyses hurts the apparent quality of critical work in some cases. c. Editors seem more likely to give outright rejections, rather than [revise and resubmits] to underdeveloped critical manuscripts than equally underdeveloped manuscripts that fit the quantitative model. This too, I think is related to the lack of clear models for evaluating critical work. Without a clear model it becomes harder to see just how it could be "fixed." I find that my reviews of quantitative manuscripts, for instance, tend to be 12 pages, while my reviews of critical manuscripts are often in the 2-5-page range. My own experience submitting work is that few mainstream reviewers devote this much time to manuscript evaluation, meaning that an editor receives reviews that recommend less than outright publication, but little guidance as to what to tell the author to do. In that case rejection becomes the path of least resistance. d. In my reviewing experience critical work that is revised and resubmitted is less likely to cross the threshold to publication than revised quantitative work. This is just an extension of the reason above: without clear directions of how to improve the work, it is harder to gratify reviewers on the second go around. It is also harder to revise critical work. It is much easier to add another statistical test, or respond to criticisms of potential multicollinearity than to rethink an entire theoretical argument so as to make it more logical and/or clearer to the potential audience. There's a theme here. Quantitative work is more likely to get published in higher profile journals than qualitative work because: there quantitative work can appear to be "proven" according to a paradigmatically established standard, and quantitative work (regardless of how critical the substantive implications) does not challenge the orthodox assumption of the nature of "fact." Which brings me to another point. I think part of the strategy is for critical criminologists to become more proactive as reviewers in the mainstream journals. Offer our services. Ask to be a reviewer on critical crim articles in our areas of expertise. Talk to editors. The more people who Text Box: Critical Criminology and the Mainstream: Issues in Publishing Critical Scholarship, Part 2