Legal Commentary

Here's an interesting one. I received an offer on my Klein piece (finally!) from a main journal at a school in low/mid-50s (going by US News). The terms of the offer were: 1) Respond within seven days or 2) Respond within 12 days (i.e., an extra work week to shop) if I agreed to trade only into journals from schools ranked in the Top 30 of US News (which I interpreted to include specialty journals).

This is an interesting play on the journal's part. Since most journals claim (at least to me) that a week is not enough time to do an expedited review, those extra five days are attractive to the author, because it increases the likelihood of the piece being read on the expedite request. Assuming many authors opt for the extra time, the journal then puts itself in position to not lose pieces to journals from schools in the 30s and 40s. It also keeps authors from lateral trading just to extend the deadline and give the higher journals more time to read. The result is a better chance to publish "better" (note the danger quotes) articles.

Is this a good strategy? Something other similarly ranked journals might consider? Am I wrong in supposing that most authors would take the extra five days?