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Grappling with the shortage of highly regarded philosophy of religion journals?

In our November “how can we help you?” thread, a reader writes:

I find it pretty frustrating that there are relatively few journals that publish philosophy of religion, and only few of those are highly regarded. If a paper is rejected from Faith and Philosophy, you have one more shot at Religious Studies, and then it’s down to the lower-tier journals.

Aside from them, Oxford Studies only takes like 10 articles once in two years, and the “generalist” journals seem to desk-reject almost everything that isn’t heavily in a “core” area of philosophy and instead primarily in philosophy of religion.

One thing that’s frustrating is that getting unlucky with a bad reviewer can almost doom a manuscript in philosophy of religion, whereas in “generalist” philosophy you have about 15 more tries until you need to try with less prestigious journals.

A second thing is that unless someone goes for lower-ranked journals just for the sake of variety, a CV in philosophy of religion will just have a long list of publications in Faith and Philosophy and Religious Studies, and an occasional one in Oxford Studies. I feel like this looks weird.

Does someone have advice for dealing with this, or a different outlook?

Not sure–though I suspect some other philosophical specializations may be similar.

Does anyone have any helpful tips for the OP?

Posted in

22 responses to “Grappling with the shortage of highly regarded philosophy of religion journals?”

  1. Anonymous

    I wouldn’t give up hope on generalist journals. I’ve seen Phil Studies and Analysis do several:

    Recent Phil Studies examples: https://philpapers.org/rec/SEATNS,https://philpapers.org/rec/MOOTNA-7, https://philpapers.org/rec/SCHBAA-22.

    Recent Analysis examples: https://philpapers.org/rec/HENDHO-3, https://philpapers.org/rec/MOOTGI, https://philpapers.org/rec/MOOITP-2

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      Ergo too:

      https://philpapers.org/rec/ELBGAT
      https://philarchive.org/rec/RONNCI

      I feel like these Ergo examples are also more purely PoR, they don’t heavily discuss the kind of stuff you see in generalist journals to make a point in PoR – they’re just PoR.

      Reply
  2. Anonymous

    I know that International Journal of Philosophy of Religion, Sophia, and the European Journal for Philosophy of Religion rank below the three OP listed, but are they so far beneath them that they don’t really matter?

    I guess I would wonder about the Journal of Analytic Theology too, as well as journals which are a bit more religious studies orientated, like the Journal of Religion.

    (I’ve also heard decent things about TheoLogica over in Europe, but they are not as well known yet.)

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      Isn’t EJPR predatory now?

      Reply
  3. Anonymous

    As someone who has an AOS in philosophy of religion, I think there’s a bigger problem. Even if you land a journal in a top philosophy of religion journal, it doesn’t seem to hold much weight. Few jobs are looking for people who have an AOS in philosophy of religion. Granted, you could have another AOS and publish a few articles here and there in philosophy of religion journals. However, even then, I think the search committees would mainly look at your other journals outside of philosophy of religion and make a judgment based on those, so there’s not much of an advantage to having philosophy of religion papers in my view. The best case scenario is to publish some philosophy of religion papers in top generalist journals, but even then, I do wonder how much weight that carries. I’d also be curious to hear others’ thoughts and would love to be wrong about some of these points.

    On the other hand, if you don’t have job market concerns and mainly want people to read your papers, I don’t know if it would necessarily hurt you so much to have papers in less prestigious venues like IJPR. Fewer philosophers may hear about it, but personally, I wouldn’t ignore a paper on a topic I’m interested in just because it’s not in Religious Studies or F&P.

    Reply
  4. Anonymous

    Have you considered looking at journals billed as “theology” journals? Many of them also seem willing to publish philosophy of religion type stuff and maybe some religious studies journals do so too. Of course, for some of these journals you’d have to pay attention to religious affiliation, but not with all of them.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      I feel like theology journals are worth less on a CV than IJPR and the others, no?

      Reply
  5. Anonymous

    I write in phil religion, and I would say don’t lose hope. I’ve had my papers that are solidly phil religion sent for review at places like Mind, Philosophical Quarterly, and Ergo. The only thing to watch out for, though, is that you sometimes do get pretty antagonistic reviews back from general journals–more than I’ve gotten back on non-phil religion papers.

    Reply
  6. Anonymous

    [I’m afraid this comes off as much more snarky than I intend. But I do mean to challenge some of the assumptions of this sort of discussion, promoting the different outlook OP was looking for.]

    One thing I’m not clear about from OP’s OP: Why do they care about journal rankings?

    Isn’t there a contradiction between wanting to publish in highly selective journals and then complaining about rejections? (FWIW IMO there is *so much* good work being done in philosophy in general, and more people trying to publish, so there is no way to get to low acceptance rates except with “unfair” rejections. This is a feature, not a bug, if you want the sort of hierarchical system OP seems to want.)

    For perspective, acceptance rates at good philosophy of religion journals seem to be higher than at comparable journals in other specialties. (RS =50%, BJPS =7%. That is kind of like there being 5 or 6 additional journals accepting papers in the specialty, though both publish about 40 articles per year.)

    Perhaps there is self-leveling remedy anyway: If good philosophers of religion have to publish in journals #4-6, say, then enough good work will appear there that those journals will increase in reputation. Problem solved. Hurray for the invisible hand!

    I doubt that anyone is looking at a cv for too much uniformity of journal placement. In a tenure and promotion file, that is easily addressed by giving journal rankings, and saying all your publications appear in the top journals in the field. (Looks weird to whom, for what?)

    Reply
    1. AGT

      RS (I suppose: Religious Studies) 50%? Where does that number come from? Nor from the journal’s website, as far as I can tell. It sounds absurdly high to me.

      Reply
      1. Anonymous

        According to the APA’s survey, it has a 39.22% acceptance rate though for the last few years its been 50%. I do not know how accurate these are, especially for specialty journals. https://apasurvey.philx.org/journals/977?utf8=%E2%9C%93&from_year=

    2. AGT

      These surveys are based on self-reports. I don’t think they show the true picture. The publisher should of course release this information…

      Reply
  7. Anonymous

    Really, the situation is worse than described, since F&P isn’t going to publish a good bit of what philosophers of religion cook up.

    That said, I agree with the comment above: try more generalist journals. While I haven’t had luck with them (as I succumb to the situation you describe, and send most things to RS), I have never had anything desk rejected from a generalist journal. In fact, I have only received desk rejections from phil religion journals, e.g., IJPR.

    Reply
  8. Anonymous

    On the issue of looking weird … I think you should aim to publish in an area outside philosophy of religion. That would address your concern about only publishing in two journals (the two philosophy of religion ones you mention). Further, there are VERY few schools that need a specialist in the philosophy of religion exclusively. Indeed, where I worked before, we hired someone who had competence in philosophy of religion. But he had also published in Ancient philosophy, Philosophy of Math/Science, and more. That is the sort of profile many 4 year colleges are looking for

    Reply
  9. Yujin Nagasawa

    The anonymous poster above mentioned a 50% acceptance rate for RS. If “RS” refers to Religious Studies, the actual rate is much lower. Our most recent data from 2024 show that we received 287 submissions over the year and accepted 44 of them, resulting in an acceptance rate of approximately 15%. This figure includes submissions to special issues. This year, as of today, we have already received 366 submissions. Given this substantial increase, the acceptance rate is likely to decrease further. Yujin Nagasawa (Editor, Religious Studies)

    Reply
  10. Anonymous

    I stand corrected. AI has ruined internet searches.

    Reply
  11. Anonymous

    I’ve published PoR pieces in Ergo and APQ and, as others above have noted, have regularly had pieces sent out for review at places like Analysis, AJP, and Phil Studies. So it’s definitely possible to publish PoR in generalist journals.

    FWIW, my sense is that Journal of Analytic Theology, IJPR, and AGATHEOS are all worthwhile places to publish in–even if they are a tier below RS and F&P (some seem to think JAT, at least, is on the same tier)–given that some of the top philosophers of religion (imo) have published in all of them. I do think there are certain PoR journals that, for those in the know, would not look good on a CV, but none of those mentioned are in that category (I’m also skeptical many hiring commmittees are even aware of the PoR journal rankings!). In fact, I’ve talked to philosophers not directly working in PoR who are under the impression that IJPR is the best, mainly because they’ve heard of it. So all that to say, I think there’s other options out there besides F&P and RS.

    Reply
  12. Anonymous

    Ironically, the only journals that have desk rejected my papers in Philosophy of Religion were RS and IJPR. All of the generalist journals I’ve submitted Philosophy of Religion pieces to sent them out for review.

    The only generalist journal I’m aware of that simply does not consider Philosophy of Religion pieces is Synthese.

    Reply
    1. Chris

      Synthese has certainly published in philosophy of religion in the past, so I’m surprised to hear that their new editorial policy is not to consider PoR articles. If I were you I’d check with the journal

      Reply
      1. Anonymous

        I submitted a Philosophy of Religion piece to them about a year ago, and they responded with this: “Synthese, however, is not its proper home as the journal does not publish papers in philosophy of religion.”

      2. Chris

        Synthese published this philosophy of religion paper in 2025
        https://philpapers.org/rec/LIGIPF

  13. Anonymous

    Slightly off-topic side comment: Don’t rely on the APA survey for journal acceptance rates. It is based on self-reported data and there seems to be a heavy selection bias. I think the survey typically overestimates real acceptance rates by 2-3x, sometimes more (a rough guess based on journals that publish their actual acceptance rates).

    Reply

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