In our new “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:
I have been having difficulty getting my work published. I spent a long time writing large, grand papers that tried to do two or three systematically related things. I got one such paper published but otherwise just spun my wheels and got everything rejected. Often, these papers would seem appealing to editors but would then be rejected by referees for not having enough detail in the argumentation. This is a natural consequence of trying to do too much in one paper.
So, now I am taking a new approach: breaking these ideas down into smaller, bite-sized papers that can each include more argumentative detail.
The problem? Now these papers are getting desk-rejected because the editors think they are uninteresting or unambitious. In one case, I had a large 15k word paper which I submitted to Phil Review a few years ago; after an R&R, it was rejected but there was one portion of it which both referees agreed was ‘genius’ (a direct quotation from one of the reports). So, I took that part out and built a shorter paper around it, offering it up as a solution to an objection that has been raised in the literature… this paper just got desk rejected from a far less prestigious journal because it ‘does not break new ground in the way we want at this journal’ (I’m paraphrasing, not quoting directly).
I think maybe my problem is that I have gone from overpromising and underdelivering to underpromising and overdelivering. Anyone have tips on how to how to strike the right balance here? Any heuristic or strategies that help you determine the right scope for a paper? Also, any strategies for helping to advertise the most important contributions of a paper most effectively in the introduction? Is publishing really as much of a lottery as it feels like? Any advice is appreciated.
I had a lot of trouble publishing early in my career and recall facing a similar quandary: I was often told in grad school and by referees that I was “attempting to do too much” (i.e. writing papers that were too ambitious), and that I should instead make “one very narrow point.” But when I tried that, it didn’t work either: I still had trouble publishing, and by my own estimation the narrow papers were “too safe.”
I wish I had some really helpful tip(s) for the OP, but unfortunately my own experience is that it mostly just takes a lot of trial and error to figure out “what is likely to fly” with editors and referees. Getting outside feedback can help a bit in my experience–but funnily enough, I often got a lot of positive feedback on work from mentors and peers on things that still didn’t fly with referees. So again, I sort of had to suss things out via a lot] of trial and error (journal submissions, rejections, R&Rs, and finally … some acceptances). But maybe there are better tips that I can provide?
What do readers think? Do you have any helpful tips for the OP?
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