My Journal of Quantitative Criminology article “The Impact of Leadership Removal on Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations” is now in print. For the abstract and other discussions of the research see here, as well as the posts tagged “Mexico,” “drug trafficking,” and “leadership removal“.
Here is a timeline of the research and publication process:
- Read an article in the Economist about DTO leadership removal, December 2010
- Preliminary research for a graduate seminar in time series analysis at the University of Houston, Spring 2011
- Draft of paper incorporating other research on organized crime and political violence for a seminar at Duke University, Fall 2011
- Revised manuscript rejected from a security studies journal after R&R, Spring 2012
- Revised manuscript rejected from a political violence journal after R&R, Late summer 2012
- R&R from JQC, Summer 2013
- Accepted for publication in JQC, December 2013
- Published online, March 2014
- Published in print, December 2014
All in all, a four-year project, with no significant changes to the manuscript in about 18 months previous to the print publication. The paper absolutely improved thanks to feedback from reviewers and quality, but I think you will agree that this is a very long feedback cycle.
