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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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35 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. Anonymous

      Synthese is not a top 10 journal by a long shot. It is way too easy to publish in. The only reason Synthese is viewed so highly is because people do not know how easy it is to publish in. Synthese used to be a very competitive journal, and most people still think it is. For instance,
      Number of submissions received annually

      2013: 549
      2012: 520
      2011: 472
      Percentage of submissions accepted

      2013: 5.6%
      2012: 6%
      2011: 6%
      But, our recent data suggests that Synthese acceptance rate is around 36%. Probably a bit lower.

      Reply
      1. Anonymous

        which “our recent data” are you referring to? The 36% number doesn’t seem accurate to me at all, so it would be good to back it up. I hope you’re not referring to the APA journal survey; if you are, you sadly need a statistics / data literacy primer.

      2. Anonymous

        The APA data is much too innacurate to make guesses about acceptance rates – they list Phil studies at 20% which (going off their submitted vs accepted papers) is about twice what it should be. A bunch of other journals on there have published acceptance rates which are at least 50% less than on the APA website e.g. Ethics.

        I also just don’t think it makes sense to conflate acceptance rates with how good a journal is, or how good it’s perceived to be. Everyone on this thread expressing positive opinions about Synthese is largely going off the quality of the published work and positive experience with the journal. Synthese clearly *is* viewed as a good journal, and clearly around the top 10, regardless of its acceptance rate. Especially given that the OP’s question is about job hunting, job panels are just going to go off its perceived reputation, which is as a good journal.

      3. Anonymous

        This is for the first reply I got.

        You can either use the APA or common sense comparisons. Saying the “APA is inaccurate” is not a good response. Yes, it can be inflated, but no highly selective journal that has a lot of responses has a 36% acceptance rate on the APA. They’re maybe a few percentage points off.
        Secondly, as I mentioned before, other journals (even more general than Synthese) get about 800 submissions (ex Mind, PR, Philosophical Quarterly), and even if we assumed Synthese got 1500 submissions a year, a conservative estimate, their acceptance rate would be 33.33%.
        I don’t care what “seems accurate” to you. It’s obvious their acceptance rate is quite high.

      4. Anonymous

        This is for the second reply I got. I do not know why you guys are intent on either lying or just doing no research before you type a response, but Philosophical studies does not have a 10% acceptance rate. They publish around 150-160 (167 in 2025) articles and get around 750 submissions. Their acceptance rate is about 20-22% right where APA predicts it would be.
        Secondly, yes the APA can be significantly off. But, again, what you do not see is any highly selective journal having a lot of responses and a 36% acceptance rate. It makes sense when a journal does not have that many responses and an insanely low acceptance rate you may see 8% instead of 4% for ethics.
        I find it hilarious that you are saying don’t conflate acceptance rates with how good the journal is, but fail to recognize Synthese is only viewed as a good journal precisely because it used to have insanely low acceptance rates. As I shared before on this thread, the acceptance rate was once 5.6-6%. Synthese built up it’s prestige. That’s why it is viewed as a top 10 journal. People think the new Synthese that publishes a ton of articles is like the old one which publishes only the top things. Yes, maybe Synthese will help you trick a job panel into believing it is similar to a paper in the Philosophical Quarterly, but as people get more educated on what the acceptance rate is I think you may lose the ability to do this.

      5. Anonymous

        While journal prestige is not all that matters, I don’t think anyone sensible would view a Synthese pub as even roughly equivalent to a pub at AJP or PQ.

      6. Anonoymous

        I’m not sure where you’re getting your statistics from so perhaps they’re more accurate, but in an email from Phil Studies last year when I submitted I was told that they received over 1300 submissions, which puts their acceptance rate well below the APA survey.

        Regardless, you’re the one that has stipulated that Synthese built its reputation on the back of having low acceptance rates. The replies in this thread make clear that’s not the only reason people rate the journal – people like the work it puts out, and like dealing with them. FWIW, I have never submitted to Synthese so I don’t have a dog in this fight, I just think it’s strange to conflate how good a journal is with its acceptance rate.

        If you think the discipline should be more elitist than it is and just care about acceptance rates however, then sure, you’re right.

      7. Anonymous

        But this is useless because their replies are not comparative. I’m sure other journals which are lower ranked would have similar satisfaction levels via the feedback they give and the work they put out. It doesn’t not mean we should consider those journals as T10.
        The prestige of a journal is directly tied to its acceptance rate. The philosophical review would not be the best journal if it accepted 10% of manuscripts submitted. Prestige is directly tied to acceptance rate. There is no WOAH in getting into Synthese because it’s acceptance rate is like 25-40%. This whole “top journal” thing is elitist in the first place.
        There are plenty of fine journals that publish great research, but they are not prestigious. Synthese is one of those journals.

  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.

      2. Anonymous

        Then why isn’t this being reproduced with other journals with low acceptance rate. Sure, you expect them to be slightly inflated. For instance, Analysis at 9.3% when it is below 8%, or Nous at 11.3% when it’s 7%. What you do not see is journals at 36%. with a reasonable sample (316) surveyed. Synthese acceptance rate is probably above 25%. Let us be honest. It’s just not a competitive journal.
        The prestige Synthese has is largely from it previously being very selective.
        Number of submissions received annually

        2013: 549
        2012: 520
        2011: 472
        Percentage of submissions accepted

        2013: 5.6%
        2012: 6%
        2011: 6%

        Synthese is no longer nearly this selective.

      3. Anonymous

        Also wanted to mention that the person who said Synthese gets 3500 submissions every year is talking out of their ass. It’s a specialized journal (although quite general), and journals like Mind,PPR,, PR get 600-800. We will use Mind because it actually publishes throughout the year. Journals like the Philosophical quarterly get 800. So, it’s likely Synthese also gets about 800. Being VERY generous, let us say Synthese gets 1500 submissions. Under a conservative estimate that is still a 33.33% acceptance rate.

  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
    1. Anonymous

      What is wrong with two r&r = major revisions? Especially if the r&r are encouraging. I do understand that some journals have very limited space, but if a journal has the capacity of Synthese, then the policy is fine. Moreover, the 3 editors need to pay more attention only to the papers submitted as not part of special issues. There are the editors of the special issues exercising more careful attention and judgement (and the EICs delegate). Unless you want to say that there should not be special issues at all (or there should be less), which is a separate discussions…

      Reply
      1. Anonymous

        I don’t think the person you’re responding to was criticizing Synthese, just pointing out that two reviews saying r&r would not automatically warrant an r&r at many journals and probably would result in a rejection at several others

      2. Circe

        I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it. My point was only that it explains the relatively large number of papers published there and the high acceptance rate. Unless something has changed recently, guest editors abide by the same policy–all they do is steer papers through the review process, somewhat ‘algorithmically’. There is little leeway for judgment (perhaps for good reason…)

    2. Anonymous

      Lol why do you believe their acceptance rate is not near 36%. If fact, you should be surprised if it isn’t. Journals like Philosophical Quarterly, Mind, PRR, PR get about 600-800 submissions every year. Even if we assumed that Synthese gets 1500 submissions, their acceptance rate would still be about 33.33%

      Synthese is riding on prestige it built up before it started publishing so many articles. Synthese used to be a very selective journal. The only reason it is ranked so highly is because old ass philosophers are not up to date on what the acceptance rate is.

      Reply
  12. Anonymous

    I would like to talk a bit about the idea that ‘prestige = acceptance rate’. I thought that prestige was connected to reputation, which often overlaps with acceptance rate.
    By the way, a person above said that whoever said that Synthese has 3000 submission was “talking out of their ass”, and that Synthese doesnt have more than 1500 submission, because more important generalist journals receive less than 1000 submissions. I checked the last reviewer invitation I got from Synthese for a paper submitted in 2025. I received it in early February 2026, and it was submission number above 3200 for 2025. So yes, Synthese receives more than 3000 submissions a year. Am I missing something?

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      Well, you are assuming submission number of the paper exactly corresponds to the number of papers received (some systems skip numbers, reserve numbers for special issues, retracted manuscripts may get number, withdraws may get numbers, etc.). There are many known reasons why this would not be the case. Given that Synthese is not huge of desk rejects, I highly doubt that they would have the capacity to review that many papers. I have to agree that it would be kinda insane if Synthese had so many more submissions than other philosophy journals

      Reply
  13. Anonymous

    Also: acceptance rate is only a rough (often imperfect) heuristic for prestige. This is especially true in certain areas. Many prestigious science journals have higher acceptance rates because the relevant community has more agreed upon standards. So a logic journal might have a higher acceptance rate than some generalist philosophy journal but the articles in the logic journal are viewed as being of stronger quality. Perhaps journals such as Synthese – which focus more on philosophy of science, are viewed my some as better quality than certain other journals with lower acceptance rates
    The bottom line is that you have to read the essays! Acceptance rates seem like a blunt instrument. For all I know many philosophers avoid sending their best stuff to journals with the lowest acceptance rates, for various reasons one can imagine.

    Reply

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