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Publishing in the same journal?

In our new “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:

Is it weird to have 2 of my first 5 publications in the same (top 20) generalist journal? To add context, my other publications are in specialist journals, and my reason for considering placing a second paper in the same generalist journal is that it seems (from a series of many desk-rejections) that it’s the only one that takes my specialty seriously.

I don’t think anyone is likely to bat an eyelash at this, though I seem to recall hearing at one point in the past that if a lot of your publications are in the same journal, it might look fishy for some reason.

What do readers think?

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12 responses to “Publishing in the same journal?”

  1. Philosopher of science

    I do not think that this is a big problem. If you have 5 papers and 4 of them are in the same general philosophy journal that is ranked about 20, then it might look odd. Certainly, for philosophers of science, having two (or even three) papers out of 5 in either Philosophy of Science or BJPS would not look bad. On the contrary, it would look rather good. I know others will disagree with this, but from my experience on hiring committees, it seems there is a tacit assumption that the candidate’s best placed publication is a strong indicator of their quality of research. So, in philosophy of science, if you never place an article in Philosophy of Science or BJPS, then I do not think you will be competitive for the better jobs in philosophy of science.

    Reply
  2. Daniel

    I try to spread my publications out over different journals but that’s just for fun. I can’t imagine anyone would look down on me for publishing a couple papers in one journal and I would never look down on anyone for doing this.

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    1. Charles Pigden

      I really don’t think the OP should worry about this. Two of my first five journal publications came out in the PQ (they are natural pair with related content) and I don’t think that this has done me any damage at all. On the contrary , two publications in a top twenty journal (I had one in another) were a significant plus so far as my colleagues were concerned.

      Reply
  3. Tim

    I don’t think its that odd, especially if they are spread out across a few years.

    Reply
  4. G

    Just an anecdote: at one time 2 of my 4 publications were in Synthese, and a senior person in the profession told me that this did not look good. I guess it depends on both the journal and the ratio.

    Reply
  5. icanhasynthese?

    Yeah you do need to be careful publishing too much in Synthese imo. It is by far the least discriminating of the semi-top/mainstream journals. Only three editors handling a massive volume of submissions and using very generous review rules: anything with two r+r reports or better, even very major ones, and you automatically get an r+r verdict. Little judgment exercised by editors due to said volume. I say this as someone with a few publications in the journal, 20+ papers reviewed for them and who has edited a journal special issue with Synthese too.

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  6. Michel

    There’s definitely an issue with some AOSes in some “generalist” journals. It’s tricky when your possible venues are narrowed like that. But I wouldn’t worry about it as long as you’re publishing elsewhere, too.

    The thing to worry about, IMO, would be being several years out with no pubs in very good specialist venues, but plenty in generalist venues.

    Reply
  7. PhD Candidate

    Michel, could you clarify your comment? I had always been under the assumption that generalist journals were regarded more highly than specialist journals (except for like the top 2 specialist journals in a given subfield).

    For example, if I could get a publication in either Phil Imprint or JESP, I would have thought most people would think Phil Imprint is more prestigious, even though JESP is among the best specialist journals in ethics.

    Reply
  8. Circe

    I second PhD candidate’s claim that Michel’s view of things here are odd.

    Reply
  9. Michel

    I mean, this will vary by AOS, because for some AOSes the big generalist journals are your de facto best specialist venues (e.g. metaphysics). But for others, they just aren’t, either because robust specialist venues already exist, or because they seldom publish in those areas, or both, and work published there is more likely to get missed (e.g. aesthetics, some areas of history, etc.).

    I’m not saying that generalist pubs will hurt you. I’m saying that, for a research job, publishing in a small pile of generalist journals but never the BJA/JAAC, for example, is going to look weirder the longer it persists. Imagine a Kant scholar who keeps publishing in the T20, but never in history journals; wouldn’t that look weird, despite the impressiveness of consistently doing so well with generalist venues?

    But yes, maybe I’m the one with weird intuitions. I certainly don’t have a research job, so I could be way off!

    Reply
    1. Circe

      Hi Michel. Since you mention BJA/JAAC, I can say that publishing in top generalist journals is perceived as much better than publishing in these venues. The people doing the best work in aesthetics have always prioritised publishing in Phil Review, JPhil, Mind, PPR, Phil Imprint, etc. and are routinely successful in landing papers there.

      Reply
      1. Michel

        Circe,

        As an aesthetician, I disagree; some of those journals very rarely publish in aesthetics, and while yes, several classic and very important papers are published in their pages, that’s a situation that was truer thirty or forty years ago than today, though there are some signs that the trend is reversing. But they are simply not the main outlets for research in aesthetics, and it just isn’t true that “the people doing the best work in aesthetics have always prioritized publishing [there].” It’s perhaps true of the situation prior to about 2000 (and certainly true of the eighties and earlier), but if you look at where major aestheticians since then have published, you’ll see that they very _rarely_ publish there. (There are lots of reasons for this, which we needn’t get into here.) It simply wouldn’t be true to say that, in any given year, the best papers published in aesthetics are published in those journals. It’s sometimes true, yes, but not with that frequency.

        And again, let me reiterate that I’m not saying you should prefer a publication in JAAC to one in Phil Review; I’m saying that if what you have five years out, say, are publications in JPhil, PhilStudies, Imprint, and Synthese, and none in the BJA/JAAC, then it’s starting to look weird. Those are not bad places to place your papers by any stretch–in fact, they’re great, and it’s fabulous that you cracked those journals!–but why are you not engaging with the top specialist journals, where your work gets more uptake and where, to be perfectly frank, the pool of referees is better? The longer that situation persists, the weirder it looks.

        So again, to be super clear, I’m not advocating not targeting top generalist journals. I do that myself. I’m just saying that some balancing is in order between the high-prestige generalist venues, and the specialist workhorses which will be your research bread and butter. Similarly, nobody is going to tell you that five pubs in PhilReview is bad; that’s amazing, and we’d want to know your secret! But if those were your only pubs, and you’re a little ways out from your PhD, then it’s starting to look a little weird.

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