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In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:
As someone who writes mostly in a "specialist" field of philosophy (in my case, philosophy of religion), I was wondering if anyone out there has good thumb rules about what kind of "specialist" philosophy to send to generalist journals and where. Obviously the material needs to be understandable to non-specialists, but maybe someone can say more?
Do any readers have any helpful tips/rules of thumb?
I would look at your diss bibliography and eliminate everything but specialist articles published in generalist journals. It will give you candidates, at least for recent articles.
I cannot speak to the specific case of philosophy of religion, but I can say something about philosophy of science.
Aside from the key specialist journals in philosophy of science – Philosophy of Science, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, and Studies in History and Philosophy of Science – a number of very good generalist journals do regularly publish articles in the philosophy of science that then go on to have an impact, including: Journal of Philosophy, Synthese, Erkenntnis, Nous, Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Review, Mind, and Philosophical Studies.
The lists are supported by some data, here:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10670-010-9214-6
There isn’t a general answer to this, it depends on the subfield and even the specific sub-subfield. In addition to the above suggestions, I’d look at who is currently editing (and who the associate editors are, if there are those) a journal and think about whether you have any info that they do or do not think your subfield is an important part of philosophy. I’d also look at the past couple years of published papers and see if there is anything from your subfield, and, as Bib says above, is the kind of thing you might cite.
Hi guys, OP here. Thanks for the answers about how to choose the right generalist journals for specialist papers. Does anyone have something to say about my main question (which the title obscures) – how to decide which type of material might work in a generalist journal?
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