Submission to a higher power

I’ve picked a vocation (physician) and avocation (poet) which have a lot in common. Here I’ll leave aside the rareified literary and spiritual aspects and talk instead about the practicalities of self-promotion: getting stuff out there, submitting the carefully polished pantoum*or the clever villanelle – or the report of a study which one slaved over for years. 

The two venues, the scientific journal on the one hand and the literary journal on the other, each have something to teach us about the best way editors and writers can interact. (They have plenty to tell us about the worst ways, too, but let me be positive today.)

Poetry journals…

usually acknowledge explicitly that their decisions on acceptance or rejection are by necessity made subjectively. Not laboring under the scientist’s delusion that they are pure empiricists, they are cheerfully prepared to admit that a lot of acceptance is luck.
thus differ one from another in matters of style as much as strict criteria of quality. 
usually have frequent special issues with interesting and well-known guest editors.
throw launch parties with snacks

Scientific journals, for their part

provide, through their reviewers, copious and often helpful comments on the submission. 
are conveniently searchable through well-indexed databases (providing you are an academic with access to them)
cater to an international audience
are at least supposed to consider submissions while blinded to the authors’ identities

The best journals in both categories should combine all these virtues…what do you think?

 

*which I’ve never written