In our July "how can we help you?" thread, Incoming PhD writes:
I'm preparing my first article for submission and I'm struggling to cut my paper down to the word limit at journals I'm interested in submitting to. Part of this, admittedly, is lack of experience: there are undoubtedly components to my article that a more experienced author would intuitive know to cut. And some of the excess word count results from unnecessary long sentences, extraneous citations, etc. That's obviously stuff I need to cut. But I also feel like there's a point where I, as an author, should just say that I'm done and move on to the next thing.
When should one throw in the towel, admit they probably won't get their article down to the maximum word count, and just submit to journals whose word counts they reach (even if those journals are less good fits/less likely to accept)?
This is a really great question. Allow me to share some quick thoughts, and then open things up for discussion.
Let me begin with the general issue of how long any given paper should be. In brief, my view here is that a paper should be exactly as long as it needs to be to get its job done–no more and no less. Some papers need to be 6,000 words long. Others need to be 10,000 words long. Others still need to be 15K. Here's why. A number of years ago, I published a 17,000-word article, 'A New Theory of Free Will.' Before sending it out for review, I sent it to a couple of established friends in the discipline, who both suggested–purely on the basis of how long it was–that I should cut it down to two or three separate papers. I believed then, and still believe now, that that would have been a mistake. The entire point of the paper is that the theory advances should be taken seriously primarily because of how much it accomplishes: specifically, how many diverse physical and philosophical phenomena it promises to explain better than alternatives. So, I kept the paper long, published it in the form I thought it should be published, and am glad I did.
My second point is related to the first. My dissertation supervisor once told me that at some point in one's career, one will undergo a transformation. Early in your career–particularly in graduate school–there are good reasons (based in lack of experience) to defer somewhat to others who have more experience than you. Since the reader who posed this question is just entering a PhD program, I think this is probably what they should do: show the paper to some more experienced people, and ask them what (if anything) they think should be cut down. In fact, I think this is generally good advice: don't just ask other people in the abstract whether and how you should cut down your paper. Show your paper to a few people and see what they think! That being said, as one advances in one's career, I also believe one should learn to see oneself as capable of making these kinds of decisions. At some point, one should become 'one's own philosopher.' Some philosophers think journal articles should be short and narrow. Others of us prefer longer, more ambitious work. As you advance in your career (particularly after you've received your PhD), you should by all means decide what kind of philosopher you want to be–as it's your career, not anyone's else's!
All this being said, I think it's very easy to delude oneself into thinking a given paper needs to be longer than it actually needs to be. So, here's a tip I've found helpful: use journal word-limits as a challenge to see what you can do. Here's what I mean. Many years ago, in my very first undergrad philosophy course at Tufts, I turned in an 8-page paper to Dan Dennett–a few pages longer than the course's 5-page limit. Dan said, "This is great, but I want to see you cut it down to no more than 4 pages without losing any content." I was sort of in disbelief, as I didn't think I could possibly do that–but he turned out to be right: I got it down to 4 pages, and it was a vastly better paper. Because this lesson always stuck with me, I've long done something similar with journal articles. When drafting papers, I try not to worry much about editing or keeping things concise. I just write things up. Oftentimes, however, this results in drafts that are quite long. Suppose, then, that I draft up a 12-15,000 word paper (which is pretty common for me). Here's what I do next. Because I know that quite a few good journals have 10K word limits, I'll save the initial 12-15K version, but then revise it to see if I can get it down to 10K words without losing anything essential. This is nearly always (though not always) possible. Supposing I get it down to 10K words, here's what I'll usually do next. Because I know that a lot of good journals have limits around 8K words, I'll save the 10K version and see if I can get a new version down to 8K words without losing anything essential. Oftentimes, this is possible–but other times, I'll worry that the 8K version may have cut out something important. What I might try, then, is to submit the 8K version to a journal or two, and then if referees have a problem with what is missing (saying the paper needs to address the very issue I cut!), then I'll decide that the 10K version is better and tend to shoot for journals that accept papers of that length.
In other words, I've found it helpful to save multiple drafts of papers, with each version progressively cut down to shorter journal word-limits. It's often quite a challenge–but I've found that it's not only a great exercise: it also results in multiple versions of a given paper to try with different journals!
Finally, given that this reader is just beginning a PhD program, I think it may be helpful for grad students and other early-career authors to be aware of the kinds of 'common mistakes' people at their career-stage tend to make. For example, throughout my career, my sense has been it's common knowledge that grad students and early-career authors have a tendency to engage in too much background exposition. The reason for this, I take it, is fairly straightforward. In grad school, you need to show your professors and dissertation supervisors that you understand the literature–so it's common to write papers that begin with a bunch of exposition trying to 'prove your bona fides' to your reader. However, this isn't really how journal articles work. Journal articles are generally expected to get to the point quickly. Why? Because, at this point, it is generally assumed that you know the background literature. Sure, a good journal article should begin with a bit of stage-setting: maybe a page or two. However, whatever background exposition you provide should be just enough to motivate the paper without ignoring relevant literature (which, alas, in my experience is a big problem in philosophy).
But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? For those of you with experience publishing successfully, how do you go about deciding how long to make a paper, and whether and how to cut things down to journal word-limits?
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