Editor's Comment

252 Editor's Comment After six years of holding annual subscription rates at $3.00, SAF is compelled by rising costs to announce a rate increase effective with volume 7 (1979). Our graduated fee structure, however, will minimize the impact of this changefor individual subscribers; for them subscriptions will rise only to $4.00 per year, still among the lowest in scholarly publishing. The complete rate schedule, effective Jan. 1, 1979, is as follows: Individuals:$4.00 Foreign individuals:$5.00 Institutions:$7.00 To assist in keeping subscriptions at these figures, SAF will begin taking advertising with the Spring, 1979 number. Interested publishers should contact the Editor. Our readers will be pleased with the revival of Hemingway Notes, which will resume publishing as a semi-annual journal with the Autumn, 1979, number. The subscription rate is $3.00 per year. The Editor, Charles M. Oliver, has informed us that his emphasis will be on "new ideas posited by the new generation of Hemingway teachers and scholars," although all papers on Hemingway and his works are welcome. Potential contributors are advised that manuscripts should conform to the latest edition of the MLA Style Sheet and must be accompanied by a return envelope and postage. Write to Hemingway Notes, Department of English, Ohio Northern University, Ada, OH 45810. A number of factors combine to suggest that we comment on some matters concerning our manuscript evaluation process, publication schedules, and expectations in our relationships with authors. The "Guidelines for Authors and Editors of Learned Journals: Procedures and Protocol," published in Editors' News (Spring, 1978), 23-31; "A Dissenting Opinion," by Marilyn Gaull, published in the same issue (pp. 32-45); the continuing debate on anonymous evaluation in PMLA, in the MLA Delegate Assembly, in the MLA Newsletter (see especially vol. 10, No. 3 [Fall, 1978], 4-7), and elsewhere; suggests a substantial level of concern in our profession with these issues and a need for journals to periodically clarify their policies. Basically, we concur with the "Guidelines" statement in EN, a document which resulted from some years of discussion in the Conference ofEditors of Learned Journals, and we recommend a careful consideration of this statement by our readers and contributors. To address a few major points, SAF contributors should submit one copy of the manuscript along with a return envelope and postage. Manuscripts should conform to professional norms, should be documented in accord with the latest edition of the MLA Style Sheet, and should be the original document, not a photocopy. We welcome the inclusion of a cover letter and a vita, but these items are not shown to our readers during the evaluation process. We do not believe that anonymous reviewing is necessary or desirable, and we do not believe that racial, sexual, or institutional biases play a significant role in determining the fate of our manuscripts. However, those contributors who are concerned about these factors may be interested to know that our editorial consultants receive from us only the manuscript itself and an evaluation form which lists the last name of the author and 253 the title or subject of the article. Contributors who wish to place only their last names on manuscripts, with no institutional affiliations, are free to do so. They should be assured that additional information will not be provided to our editorial boards until a decision on the manuscript has been reached. On the other hand, those manuscripts which contain full information will not have this data removed. We seek in this policy to allow our individual contributors to determine for themselves the information they wish known during the consideration of their work. Our contributors should bear in mind that each year SAF receives roughly 500 manuscripts for consideration and we can publish only about 18. As these numbers indicate, competition for our pages is extremely heavy. Beyond this issue, we attempt to make a judgment on a manuscript within three months. The average evaluation period is now two months. Our contributors are advised, however, that at least three readers comment on every essay we publish and that mailing time, conflicting commitments, and normal professional responsibilities can delay the process a good deal. Contributors whose essays...