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How do editors’ philosophical tastes affect the review process?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I’m deciding between two journals for a manuscript. Journal A has slightly higher prestige, and publishing there would probably look more impressive to colleagues. Journal B is at about the same level, though not quite as shiny in reputation. The key difference is that the associate editor at Journal A seems to have a philosophical outlook that clashes with mine and has published pieces broadly hostile to the position I defend. The associate editor at Journal B, by contrast, has written on closely related topics and appears to share some of the basic theoretical commitments of my manuscript.

My question is: how much does an editor’s own philosophical taste or theoretical orientation actually affect the fate of a submission? Are they more likely to desk-reject a paper or pick referees hostile to it if they disagree with its core commitments? Or am I just overthinking this? I’d be grateful for any thoughts or experiences others might have.

I'm curious to hear people's experiences, particularly editors if they are willing to weigh in.

Does anyone have any helpful insights to share?

Posted in , ,

10 responses to “How do editors’ philosophical tastes affect the review process?”

  1. Not my usual handle

    No direct comment on the OP’s dilemma except to say that he or she should not get so hung up about minor differences in the prestige of venue. A published bird in the hand is worth a slightly more prestigious unpublished bird in the bush.
    However there’s one piece of relevant advice that I was given 37 years ago which has stood me in good stead ever since. ‘If you don’t like a journal – if you find most of the papers boring or misconceived – then the journal is unlikely to like you. Conversely if you DO like a journal, then that journal is MORE likely to like you. Submit accordingly.’
    Almost all my (non-invited) articles have been accepted by the first or second journal that sent them to, usually the first. (Of course , having made this brag I may be visited with fairy punishment for hubris. To avoid the wrath of the philosophy gods I am not posting under my own name.) To what do I attribute this success? Partly to the quality of my stuff, partly to good luck and partly to following the above advice and only submitting to journals that I find reasonably congenial.
    To particularise, I have had only one shy at Mind (which I don’t much care for) got rejected and have never submitted there since, partly because I was put off by that rejection and partly because that rejection tended to confirm my colleague’s advice. But you can have a successful career without publishing in Mind. My paper was accepted by another top-fifteen journal and now has 43 citations.
    Moral: Go for the journals with a congenial ethos. Don’t disdain prestige altogether but don’t get too hung up on it. As for worrying about the predilections of associate editors – dunno.

    Reply
  2. Corvus splendens

    Inclined to think, that in OP’s case, even if editors’ tastes do matter beyond mere questions of journal scope (also interested to hear what others say on this!) it’s not clear that those tastes can be inferred from the information available. Editor A may turn out to be delighted to have a point of difference from their usual fare while Editor B turns out to weep into their coffee at another submission that feels like more of the same kind of thing.
    Usual caveats about career stage and need for publications applying, I’d be inclined to just go forward with the journal with the shorter average decision time in the first instance, get it submitted, have the other journal as the next on my hitlist, and get on with developing my next paper etc.

    Reply
  3. Daniel Weltman

    Maybe this matters more for other subfields but as someone working in political philosophy and in ethics it has never seemed to me that it could conceivably be worth caring about things in this level of detail. The only time anything like this has ever crossed my mind is noticing that Philosophical Studies seems to publish stuff on secession relatively often (given that it’s a very niche topic with few people publishing on it at all). This might sound like good news for me: I wrote an undergraduate thesis on secession, then my PhD dissertation on secession, and I’ve published multiple articles on secession, so I take myself to be pretty well-informed about the topic and thus in a position to write more on secession. But Phil Studies desk rejects my secession submissions more or less immediately. So much for the theory that they are more amenable to secession in a way that might be relevant to my decisions about where to submit a paper!

    Reply
  4. Jolly Jumper

    I have several papers that gained many desk-rejections. I got them published when I found the right editor who likes my style and my topics.
    Most papers get desk rejected since there are so many submission so editors reject what they do not like themselves.
    So especially if you have a tricky paper on a niche topic that does not get past editorial screening, it might be worth to find a journal with the right editor.

    Reply
  5. agreed

    Totally agree with the commentators so far!
    Submit to the journal that you like reading more and that is better managed!

    Reply
  6. OP

    OP here. Thanks for all the suggestions! Since I enjoy reading Journal B more, and it has a better turnaround time, I think I’ll submit to Journal B first. I’ll see how it works out.

    Reply
  7. Quirky

    I had an out-of-the-box paper that got desk-rejected at a few boring journals until I did my homework and found out which journals are more open to quirkier papers, and it got accepted immediately at a really good journal
    I don’t know about the influence of particular editors’ philosophical views though

    Reply
  8. so it goes

    @Quirky: Could you say a bit more about journals open to out-of-the-box papers? I have some intuitions, but I haven’t seen much discussion of the topic, and as someone who tends to write such papers, it would be good to know.

    Reply
  9. Quirky

    @so it goes: In my case I went with Ergo because of an impression I got from some comments on this blog and others. I also heard that PPR are relatively “daring”.
    Another important factor was that I saw that the associate editor I was likely to get for my paper at Ergo seemed liked the kind of guy who would appreciate something out of the box from stuff of his that I read.
    I’m curious if others have more to say

    Reply
  10. so it goes

    @Quirky Thanks! Yeah I’d love to see a thread on this. Nous papers often strike me as unusually creative, though that could just be the ones I read, and in my subfield, I’d add JESP to the list. I’m not sure what others think though.

    Reply

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