By Stacie Friend, David Liggins, and Lee Walters
Philosophy journals are overwhelmed with submissions. We are all aware of the problems this creates. It makes it harder for authors to get timely verdicts on the papers they submit, it makes it harder for journals to reach those timely verdicts, and it means that many potential referees are overwhelmed with requests for referee reports.
The profession needs a solution to this crisis: a better way of doing things, and a way of switching to it from the way we do things now. We admit that we have no solution. Our goal here is more modest: to make some suggestions for how to make things slightly better.
First, let’s cheer ourselves up with some ways in which philosophy journal article publishing is doing relatively well. In contrast to some other disciplines, philosophy usually uses anonymous review: either double-anonymity (where the author and referee are unaware of each other’s identities) or triple-anonymity (where, in addition, the editors don’t know the author’s identity – this is the system we use at Analysis). (Sam Andrews has compiled some data on philosophy journals’ anonymous review practices: https://pjip.carrd.co/#spread). Outside of philosophy, triple-anonymity is rare: of the four triple-anonymous journals Oxford University Press publishes, three are philosophy journals. (In case you are wondering, the fourth is the Journal of Victorian Culture.) No system is perfect, but we think that anonymous review allows editors to make more objective decisions. Also, some disciplines allow authors to propose possible referees for their journal submission. But this runs the risk of creating mutual appreciation societies. So it’s a good thing it’s not the norm in philosophy.
Now for some suggestions for making things slightly better.
When you are submitting a paper:
Consider whether you really need to submit your paper to a journal. Would it be preferable to publish it in an edited collection, or just put it on your website? If the paper closely resembles your earlier publications, is there sufficient new material to justify publication?
Read the journal’s instructions carefully. For example, the Analysis website states clearly that we do not consider responses to papers in other journals. But we receive many such submissions every year. Frankly, authors who ignore journals’ instructions are creating unnecessary work for their colleagues – and wasting their own time as well.
Make the paper as brief as you can before submitting it. As Brian Weatherson has pointed out (http://www-personal.umich.edu/~weath/lda/article-length-section.html), philosophy papers are getting longer. We are unaware of any evidence that their quality is increasing so as to make up for this!
When choosing where to submit your paper, don’t assume that a journal is only interested in receiving papers like the ones they already publish. The reason they haven’t published papers on your topic may well be that none have been submitted! The Australasian Journal of Philosophy says on its website: ‘The current balance of the Journal’s contents is not prescriptive’ (https://aap.org.au/editorial-policy). We suspect that many other journals could say the same too. For example, there are many areas of philosophy in which Analysis receives few or no submissions. The journal used to have a narrower scope, but since 2016 Analysis has been keen to accept excellent short papers in any area of philosophy.
When you receive request to referee a paper:
Respond promptly, if at all possible. If you can’t referee, it’s usually very straightforward to decline. (And if you are too busy even for that, consider putting an auto-reply on your email account saying something like “Refereeing invitations not responded to within three working days should be taken to be declined”.)
If you can, accept the invitation and write a short report aimed at advising the editor on what verdict to give the paper; when it comes to alleviating the crisis, we think that this is better than accepting refereeing invitations less frequently and writing long reports. We said more about this here.
Accept the invitation even if you have refereed the paper (or an earlier draft of it) previously. Your expert judgement on the paper is still valuable even if it has already been given to another journal. Consider a small subfield of philosophy – one where only a handful of people know the literature in depth. Imagine that each expert in this subfield writes one negative report about the paper then declines any further requests to referee it. If the author keeps submitting it, eventually every expert in the subfield will have written a report on it, which is hardly a good use of philosophers’ time. And eventually journals will have to resort to non-experts to evaluate the paper. That means it runs the risk of being published in spite of its poor quality, and of taking up space that might have been occupied by a paper that really deserved to be published.
When you are invited to revise and resubmit a paper:
Don’t feel you have to adopt every suggestion made by the referees. If you are clear that a modification suggested by a referee would damage the paper, you can explain in your covering letter detailing the changes why you are not adopting it. Often, discussion between the referees and author should happen off stage rather than in the published text of the paper.
Try to resist the temptation to lengthen the paper by adding material along the lines of “An anonymous referee has said this … but in response to that, I say this…”. See if you can deal with the referee’s point by cutting material, or by rewording what is already there, rather than by adding commentary on the referee’s points.
When preparing your CV:
Unless your institution forces you to, do not list the word counts of accepted articles. In philosophy, there is little or no correlation between length and philosophical significance. A paper that is ‘substantial’ in one sense may well not be in another sense. Listing word counts only reinforces the impression that longer papers tend to be better. That has two problematic consequences: it adds to the pressure on journal space, and it adds to the pressure on everyone’s time, because longer papers take longer to read.
Rather than listing the journals one has refereed for, list all the refereeing work one has done. Thus ‘Analysis (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 x 2, 2020, 2021 x 3, 2022)’ rather than just Analysis. (See https://faculty.philosophy.umd.edu/pcarruthers/ for a CV like this – and an impressive record of refereeing work!) The practice of just listing names of journals means that the second and subsequent reports for the same journal make no difference to the CV. That tempts philosophers to increase the number of journals they have refereed for, rather than to increase the number of reports they have written – something that is not helpful to the profession. Our recommendation makes clearer the contribution that the referee has made, and gives credit where credit is due.
We are under no illusions that these suggestions will solve the crisis. But we think they will make the situation slightly better. And making something slightly better makes it better.
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