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The reputation of journals like Synthese?

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

I’d like to know the recognition level of journals like Synthese. I saw that it’s ranked 11th in journal rankings, but unlike other journals, Synthese publishes a very large number of articles. I’d like to know how recognized this journal is for job hunting.

My sense is that Synthese has a good reputation (commensurate with published surveys/renkings), and that it publishes a lot of excellent work. But, like the OP, I have also heard a few people note how many papers the journal publishes.

Any thoughts from readers?

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18 responses to “The reputation of journals like Synthese?”

  1. Anonymous

    Synthese is widely viewed as a strong, top-10-ish journal. (Only at the snobbiest depts is it viewed less highly, e.g. some of the top 10-15 PGR depts that expect publications primarily in the top 4-5 journals for tenure). Even though it publishes a lot of articles, it’s worth noting that Philosophical Studies (also a Springer publication) is similar in that regard and it also has a comparably strong (probably better) reputation; and that big name philosophers publish in both journals.

    So unless you aiming to work only at a tip top dept or already do so and are going up for tenure (or have been advised by your senior colleagues against it), publishing in Synthese looks pretty good overall. (Things may be different to some, however, if you’ve only ever published in Synthese or ‘lower’ ranked journals.)

    Reply
    1. Daniel

      My sense is that Philosophical Studies publishes a lot less than Synthese; their websites list 6,674 and 10,562 articles respectively. So, Synthese does not publish twice as many as Philosophical Studies, but it’s not that far off.

      Reply
  2. anon

    Like Marcus, I am inclined to think Synthese has a good reputation as a philosophy journal

    The OP could already be familiar with this — but, in case they are not:

    de Bruin compiled a “meta-ranking” of philosophy journals based on data from: Brian Leiter’s ranking (“general philosophy journals, 2018), Scopus and Scimago (2019), Google Scholar (collected using Publish or Perish, data collection in 2021), Google Scholar (2019), and Web of Science (2019).

    Synthese ranked 4th on the meta-ranking

    Reply
  3. Michel

    Synthese took a hit in the late aughts/early tens, back when it was primarily a logic/PhilSci journal and had dubious policies with respect to special issues. It’s cleaned house considerably since then, and has expanded its scope to be pretty much a generalist journal. And I think it’s excellent.

    Yes, it publishes a lot of material. I think that’s a good thing, actually, especially when the quality seems consistently high. Certainly, as a submitter and a referee, my experiences have been positive, and I have a high opinion of the work in my subfield that’s been published there.

    Reply
  4. synthesiser

    Synthese is viewed as a good journal rather than a wow journal—there is really no case where having an additional Synthese pub on your CV would do you harm, I don’t think anyone believes themselves above it, but it’s not a particularly strong signal in & of itself that you’re *really* good at the publishing game the way a PhilReview or Nous pub might.
    Many very good, highly cited papers wind up in Synthese because there are only so many journals ‘above’ it, and referee decisions are often basically arbitrary; you just took a position that a referee personally disagrees with, even if you gave reasons for doing so. Synthese probably wouldn’t be my first pick for most material, but that’s because I’m junior—if I had tenure, it well might be for some papers for the comparative quickness & reliability of publishing a paper there.
    And in the end, for most people in the profession, especially those with subfields that translate less well into Nous/PPR pubs, a Synthese pub is equivalent to about their career best. It’s pretty rarefied air, the 70 or so PhD granting departments mostly, where this isn’t the case. So as I say, maybe not the publication that *helps* the most, but a paper winding up there is still a perfectly good outcome.

    Reply
  5. AGT

    I don’t see any obvious negative connection between quality or reputation and the number of articles published (say, per year). After all, if we follow the – I assume – underlying logic, what matters is the percentage of submissions published (aka acceptance rate). In itself, the fact that Synthese publishes a lot does not mean its acceptance rate is low since it also, presumably, receives a lot of submissions. So, if the logic is that reputation and quality correlates with selectivity, then Synthese, despite its relatively high number of published articles, might still be a very good and highly reputed journal.

    But this is just on the side. Synthese IS a good and reputed journal. Simple as that.

    Reply
    1. High Volume, Okay Selectivity

      Synthese has a 36% acceptance rate (from APA Journal Survey) which seems unusually high, which might explain certain perceptions that it’s good but not that good.

      Reply
      1. synthesiser

        Just want to add as a caveat, APA survey acceptance rate is across the board rather severely inflated due to response bias—people are more likely to report their successes or drawn out R&Rs than boring desk rejects. For instance, Canadian officially reports their acceptance rate as 8%, while APA has it at 13%; PhilReview per their live statistics page accepts 1%, while APA has it a bit over 3%.

    2. Anonymous

      Surely Synthese’s acceptance rate can’t really be 36%. That figure is based only on people who bothered to report their results, and almost no one does that in ordinary cases. Probably only a few happy accepted authors went there to post. By that logic, GradCafe says Stanford’s philosophy PhD acceptance rate is as high as 23.5% 😛

      Reply
      1. Anonymous

        I mean the math should be pretty straighforward: last year, they received around 3500 submissions(based on reviewer requests and my own submission number) and maybe accept 10-15%. My personal view is that Synthese is a strong but not stellar journal, which plays a rather central role for many subfields in philosophy of science/mind. Maybe, it is less of a go to place for mainstream metaphysics, epistemology, or ethics. For my own papers, the quality of reviews was usually good and I had to fight hard in the R&R’s. As always, the degree of quality control can vary for special issues, which in my view invite for horsetrading games, but the same definitely also goes for Phil Studies or other journals in the same ballpark.

  6. Charles Pigden

    I am going to tentatively suggest that this may be a silly question. It presupposes that Search Committees are hung up on nice or even imaginary distinctions between the prestige rankings of different journals. I think and certainly hope that this isn’t true. So long as your stuff is published in a reasonably respectable journal, then for most Search Committees it is the quality of the work that counts. If you have a good article in Synthese and your competitor has a worse one in (for example) the slightly more prestigious AJP then the tiny prestige differential between the two journals is not very likely to do you down. Since Synthese, I would expect, is plenty ‘good enough’ for most Search Committees, the question you need ask yourself is whether it publishes your kind of stuff, the kind of article that you enjoy reading and the kind of paper that relates to your concerns. A useful heuristic in deciding where to send a paper is whether you like reading the journal in question. If you don’t like them they are unlikely to like you, and if you like them they are more likely to like you (though obviously, there are no guarantees). So in deciding where to send a paper, I think the right strategy is a) to be a satisfiser rather than a maximiser when it comes to journal prestige and b) to submit to the journals that *for you* are worth reading. A Synthese bird in the published hand is worth at least two birds in the unpublished bush of Mind or the Philosophical Review.

    Could I be wrong about this? Are there some Search Committees who really are as ridiculously snobby about journal rankings as the OP appears to think? Perhaps. But if so, this suggests another problem with the OP’s question. It does not have a determinate answer. The criteria used by Search Committees (and perhaps the criteria used by tenure committees, though this really beyond my ken) are so messy and diverse, indeed so chaotic, that aside from a few banalities there isn’t anything very useful be said about the best strategy for getting a job or, more specifically, the best *submitting* strategy for getting a job. Indeed this seems to me a frequent problem with the ‘How Can We Help You?’ Questions. They don’t have determinate answers, either because there *are* facts of the matter about which strategies (tend to) work best but the facts are difficult to discern or because there really aren’t any facts of the matter in the first place, since the underlying processes are so chaotic and random.

    Here are some sites which address this issue:

    https://leiterreports.com/2013/01/08/members-of-search-committees-what-do-you-actually-do-in-reviewing-files/

    http://blog.apaonline.org/2016/02/09/advice-for-applying-for-academic-jobs-in-philosophy-indian-university-bloomington-part-6-the-offer-and-reflections/

    Reply
  7. Anonymous

    4 out of 5 times I send something to Synthese, they somehow manage to find two qualified and at least somewhat sympathetic reviewers. This has not been my experience at other journals. Perhaps editors elsewhere could do more to learn from them. I’m a big fan of editors trading notes. I think too many people want to derive “best editorial practices” from the armchair. They could, instead, look at and learn from existing institutions that appear to be working quite well!

    Reply
  8. Anonymous

    I have published a number of papers in Synthese. It is a fine journal. The important thing is that the papers get read – one paper I have in Synthese has been cited 250 times (says Google Scholar), another over 50 times, another over 35 times, and about 25 times. There are many good papers in philosophy of science published in Synthese. If your area is philosophy of science, of course, aim to place papers in BJPS and Philosophy of Science. But there is no shame in publishing in Synthese. Personally, I recommend avoid special issues.

    Reply
  9. Anonymous

    I recall that someone in a different thread mentioned that one should avoid publishing “overwhelmingly” in journals like Synthese. I think this is a good suggestion. While I wish this was not the case, the truth is that someone would devalue your research if, say, 2 out of the 3 publications are in Synthese. (I was not aware of the amount of papers published in Synthese before and always regarded it as the top of the “2nd-tier” journals when my papers got rejected from the top ones. And I suffered from this when I went up for tenure.)

    Reply
  10. Anonymous

    Re: Synthese versus Phil Studies, every time I sent a manuscript to Synthese I received good reviewer comments (both rejections and acceptances) and in a timely manner. The one (and only, given the experience) time I submitted something to Phil Studies I received a rejection after two years (also no replies to my queries about the manuscript status) and I could not really tell that the negative reviewer had read the paper. I heard similar stories from other people. In informal conversations I heard people say Phil Studies is more prestigious, but given the waiting times horror stories I don´t see how it would be a good option for people on the job market. I also heard people complaining about Synthese publishing too much, but I think it is just reflective that many philosophers still uncritically associate insanely high rejection rates with quality. I often use articles from Synthese in my work and rarely find things of interest in the “top generalist” journals, but I guess that largely depends on the area.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      I want to second the point about the negative interactions with Phil Studies vs. Synthese! I have had largely positive experiences with Synthese (as both an author and a reviewer) and exclusively negative ones with Phil Studies. As an early career person I’ve decided to never bother with Phil Studies again unless I hear that they’ve really cleaned up their act. I expect the top 4-5 journals to be a bit mean/prickly and insanely slow, but Phil Studies isn’t ranked nearly high enough to be acting the way they do (in my opinion!).

      Reply
    2. Anonymous

      For what it’s worth, here is my anecdotal experience. I had a paper under review at Phil Studies for 19 months, only to have it rejected by a Reviewer 2 who wrote a dismissive, few-sentence report in exactly one day (the tracking status went from ‘reviewers assigned’ to ‘completed’ in 24 hours). By contrast, my single submission to Synthese took only 3 months and resulted in an R&R with two highly constructive reports.

      Reply
  11. Circe

    Synthese has (or had a few years ago) the following policy: two R+R’s or better equals overall revision verdict. That policy is incredibly lax compared to other journals, making it relatively easy to publish there and explaining the high volume of acceptances. There are only 3 editors handling hundreds of submissions at a time. They exercise only minimal judgment. Whether that is a merit or drawback of the journal, I have no views on. But their acceptance rate is certainly higher than average, though nowhere like 36℅

    Reply

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