The Philosophers' Cocoon

In our August "how can we help you?" thread, a grad student writes:

A question on publishing. I get the impression that papers at top journals usually not only aim to provide strong arguments for some claim, but also to provide some narrative about the literature and the place of the paper in it. (For instance, a recent paper defends the claim that view A is supported by view B, and also tells a story according to which opponents of A have long objected to it by implicitly appealing to B, though it is debatable that they have done so.)

I was wondering (a) how important this kind of story telling is in getting a paper published, and (b) if it is important, what are some strategies for developing a skill for it.

My own sense, for what it is worth, is that it is crucial to tell a compelling but accurate story of how the paper fits into the literature and why it makes an important new contribution. In fact, I've heard this is true across fields, not just in philosophy. I've also reviewed a lot of papers, and my sense is that two errors are common: (1) Authors taking for granted that the problem they are working on is important when it's not necessarily clear to anyone but a hard-core 'insider' how this is the case, or alternatively (2) Telling a false, poorly researched, and/or exaggerated story. As a reviewer, I find both a bit frustrating. If, qua 1, I don't see the point of a paper, then it can be hard to recommend acceptance. However, I find instances of (2) even more frustrating. In fact, it seems to me something of a trend in the papers I've reviewed in recent years. For example, one of the more common story-telling maneuvers I've seen seems to be this: "Everyone who defends theory-type T thinks P. This paper is the first to argue that if T, then ~P." The aim here, of course, is to make it look like the paper is doing something spectacularly new and original. The problem, though, in my experience that it's nearly always the case that the author is ignoring wide swaths of literature of T-theorists who clearly aren't committed to P, as well as at least a few T theory papers that explicitly argue ~P. So, for this most part, I've found this a really poor story-telling strategy. A good story in academic research has to be an accurate one: one that doesn't oversell what it's doing by ignoring relevant literature.

This brings me to a couple of strategy suggestions. First, to tell a good story you have to read. Don't just read 3 Famous T-theorists who defend P and then treat them as representative of the entire T-theory literature. Instead, survey the T-literature and find out who is committed to P, who isn't, and who has explicitly denied P–and show in your introduction that your paper contributes something new that they haven't. Second, I suggest getting to the 'hook' first and to not get lost in endless exposition. Try to start the paper with a bang, stating in the very first sentence or two what the paper does. And while accurately situating your paper in the literature is important, do it concisely. Finally, I tend to think it's really important to spell out early and again in the conclusion of your paper the broader implications of your argument for future research. Does your argument merely make a small intervention with no broader implications (in which case, your contribution is a pretty small one), or does it have implications for how T-theorists should theorize or implications outside of T altogether? Provided again you tell an accurate story, that can make your article come across as important (and thus, important to publish!).

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?