There has been quite a bit of discussion about problems with philosophy publishing. Marcus has had a number of very interesting posts on various problems or issues with the system (see, for example, here, here, here, and here), and he has been advocating for changes based upon practices in other fields (see, for example, here and here).
In this post, I was hoping to hear more from the Cocoon’s readers about their views of article publishing (let’s leave monographs and edited collection to the side this time) from the perspective of a writer (not a referee or editor this time). What do you think works? What do you think is broken? Are your views based upon your own experiences, those of friends, research (like this paper that Marcus recently discussed), blog posts on the Cocoon and elsewhere, something else entirely?
I should also note that I am not asking about larger issues related to writing (such as whether philosophers publish too much or too early, whether pedigree should trump publishing more or less than it does, etc.). Here are some of the things I am asking about:
- Do you think that our system has a big problem with scooping?
- Do referees too often know who has written a paper because they have seen it before?
- Is the process undermined by referees googling titles?
- Many journals don’t have triple-blind review, and so the editor may (whether knowingly or not) base decisions upon the identities of authors. Is this a major problem?
- Is the entire process just a lottery, since there are no agreed upon standards (or if there are any, referees consistently fail to apply them)?
- Do journals take too long to reach a decision?
- Do journals too often select referees in a problematic way (based upon prestige or something)?
- Are referees too rude?
- Do referees too carelessly read articles, rejecting them without understanding?
- Do journals prefer boring work too often?
- Does implicit (or explicit) bias against authors come into play often?
- Do referees (and editors) treat unpopular ideas (or certain sorts of unpopular ideas) unfairly?
I am sure there are many issues I haven't mentioned, but you get the idea. Of course, we might all agree that each of these is a problem to some degree. But some people think some of these problems are massive, while others think they are blown out of all proportion.
What do journals do well? I won’t list another set of questions; I am sure you can come up with your own. I do wish to ask readers about something noted in an article on publishing in economics:
Many respondents praised the positive side: that the refereeing process guides the best work to the best journals, matches unusual papers with appropriate publications, induces improvements in the papers themselves—and preserves the reputations of famous economists by keeping their bad work unpublished. For example, Edward Lazear and Sherwin Rosen indicate that their three-year ordeal with the Journal of Political Economy over "Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimal Labor Contracts" was worthwhile: Lazear thanks the referee "for the pain and suffering that he put a young professor through. It was time well spent." Jean Tirole notes, "One of my best papers was rejected once, but it was entirely my fault." Takashi Negishi's experience was similar. "As far as my own papers are concerned, in most cases I thought editors and referees were right for rejected papers, so that I did not try other journals." Amartya Sen agrees: "I was on the whole lucky with submissions but those that were rejected were deservedly chucked!" (pp. 176-177)
I am especially interesting in the claim that peer review “preserves the reputations of famous economists by keeping their bad work unpublished.” This is something I hadn't really thought about before. Does philosophy peer review do this well? Should we care? Would a more open system (of the sort Marcus has advocated for) lose something important in this regard? Or would this simply encourage more care before making work public?
My views are far more nebulous than those of others—I don’t yet have the clear convictions to advocate for any other system, nor even to make general claims about the current state of the problem.
My own experiences have been mixed. I tend to target journals that are known for reasonable turn-around times. Often my papers receive fairly quick responses. I have had two papers that in one way or another were lost. One was lost before it was even sent out to referees (I found out one year after I had submitted it, when I began pestering the editor). To the editor’s credit, he was honest and apologetic about the whole thing. On another occasion, the paper had somehow gotten forgotten after the referees had submitted their reports but before I had been given a verdict (and again came to light only when I pestered them).
My reports have, in general, been pretty helpful. In fact, I think I have only ever gotten two reports that I thought fell significantly short. In one case the report was absurd, was clearly written by someone who had no deep knowledge of the area I was working in, and advocated rejecting the paper because it didn’t consider a super idiosyncratic view that was unrelated to the project. A second was simply rude and unhelpful (although nothing compared to what I have seen others receive).
I will say that I think there should be more room for different sorts of articles. In particular, I wish there were more places that accepted reply articles. I really like reading this sort of work. More places for long and short pieces would be nice too. Finally, I think all journals should practice triple-blind review. Are there any reasons for a journal not to do so (I mean this as a serious question–perhaps I am just missing something)?
What say you all?
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