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Do publications in lower-ranked journals hurt job candidates?

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

I am wondering whether publishing in a lower-ranked but still established philosophy journal can actually hurt an early career job candidate. Suppose the journal is roughly in the 20–30 range in one of the journal meta-rankings, and the paper is outside the candidate’s main AOS.

Obviously, publishing the paper in a more prestigious journal would be better. But could a publication at this level actually count against a candidate, especially for research-oriented jobs? For example, could it negatively affect how search committees perceive the quality of the candidate’s research, or would it generally just count as a modest positive?

Any thoughts from readers?

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18 responses to “Do publications in lower-ranked journals hurt job candidates?”

  1. Anonymous

    Early in your career, when you have few publications, where you publish really matters. I have sat on hiring meetings where people dissect the various publication venues of applicants. There are two rules that seem to be appealed to most often in these discussions: (i) one is only as good as the best journal they have published in, and (ii) one is as bad as the worse journal they have published in.
    The first rule, (i) above, enables one to eliminate all those who are not publishing in the best of places. (so such a rule may tolerate a publication in a lower tier journal, provide one has one in the highest tier as well) The second rule, (ii) above, enables one to eliminate all those who published in a lower tier journal. (such a rule means you are damned for life if you ever bother publishing in journals below a certain rank).
    For the most part (with all the usual qualifications), if you are publishing in journals that the committee are unaware of, then it is very likely that where you publish will work against you. People will say: “never hard of it”. Indeed, in one department meeting I heard a job candidate described as a “bottom feeder” because of where he had published. They were fine journals, but not in the top-20.
    If you want your work read, cited, and to have an impact on scholarship, then try to place your papers in the highly regarded journals.*
    *note: I do have a paper in a lower tier journal that has been cited 140+ times. But that is anomalous.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      Anonymous, thank you for sharing – may I ask what sort of school you teach at?

      Reply
      1. Anonymous

        I am at a research university, but not in the USA. (though I have had an appointment in the USA as well). Our administration refers to us as “researchers” (teaching is held in low regard … actually, more accurately, no regard). I am known in the specific areas in which I publish but larger unknown to the rest of the world.

  2. Charles Pigden

    Given the insane snobbery that apparently prevails in some US departments , there may be a few places where a publication in 20-30 range journal would do you damage, but generally speaking the answer is ‘no’. A paper in a top thirty journal will be *at least* a modest positive and probably a *major* positive with the vast majority of hiring departments.

    Perhaps I am misreading the OP here, but he or she seems to be worried that publishing outside their original AOS is somehow infra dig. Again there may be bonkers departments with an aversion to non-AOS publications but I hope and think that they are uncommon. Publishing outside one’s original AOS is a sign of *breadth* and breadth is valuable in small-to-medium departments a) because they will probably need you to teach a wide range of courses which means that breadth is at a premium, and and b) because it makes you more valuable to your colleagues since they will be able to discuss their research with you in the reasonable expectation of intelligent feedback. They can’t do this with a narrow specialist. Furthermore what starts out as a non-AOS side-hustle can metamorphose into a major AOS. Two cases in point. For both Brian Keeley and myself the Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories was a side-interest on which we happened to have a good idea for a paper. Decades later we each have multiple publications on the topic and about half of Brian’s citations and a third of mine are citations to our research in this area . So in most places (I can’t honestly say in ‘all’) having a non-AOS paper in a top thirty journal is something to *brag* about not something to downplay or conceal.

    Reply
  3. Anonymous

    The short answer to “But could a publication at this level actually count against a candidate, especially for research-oriented jobs?” is (unfortunately) probably yes. This is partly because for most research-oriented jobs there will likely be 50+ applicants with multiple publications in the top-10 or so journals, and with no publications in lower reputation journals. Everything is comparative in such settings, and there is (for some on search committees) a desire for all and only publications in the best journals (in large part because they want you to get tenure should they hire you, and publishing in a much lower ranked journal won’t help with that).

    But of course, not all jobs are research-oriented jobs, and even with those there are some very different kinds of departments where this would not matter, and could even help. And also, it matters a lot how such a publication fits in with your overall CV and scholarship… if you also publish in top journals, or come from a strong PhD-granting department, or have an amazing unpublished writing sample that everyone can recognize as being of Mind or Nous quality, then a lower ranked journal publication is balanced against those factors to give them a whole picture of who you are, what your scholarly ambitions are, how likely your work is to be read or impact your subfields, etc.

    Reply
  4. R1 prof

    “If you want your work read, cited, and to have an impact on scholarship, then try to place your papers in the highly regarded journals.*
    *note: I do have a paper in a lower tier journal that has been cited 140+ times. But that is anomalous.”

    Papers in Nous, PPR, Mind, PR, and JPhil routinely end up with less than a dozen citations 10+ years after publication. Maybe publications in these journals are more often read and have an impact outside of citations, but don’t kid yourself – publishing in these places doesn’t make it more likely that your work will be cited than publishing in many other places.

    Reply
    1. Charles Pigden

      Echoing R1 prof and responding to Anonymous #1, I am not sure that it is so very anomalous to have highly cited papers that aren’t in top twenty journals. My most cited paper to date is (485 by my reckoning) was in The Philosophy of the Social Sciences. This may be big in its field but I get the impression that the field itself is not very high status which probably puts it outside the top thirty in terms of overall prestige. My second-most cited paper, (and for many years my first) with 304 citations to date, did not appear in a journal at all but in in Peter Singer’s Companion to Ethics. My third most cited paper (231 individually verified citations) appeared in Episteme and it is not until we get down to number four (with 175 citations) that we hit a paper in a top twenty journal (the AJP). I have seven papers with over 100 citations and six in clear top twenty journals (PQ and the AJP)) but there is an overlap between the two groups of only one. I have two recent papers (2023 and 2024) which are already generating a healthy number of citations (17 and 15 respectively) one of which is in Social Epistemology and the other in Inquiry. I don’t think either of these counts as a top twenty journal.

      Moral: There may be a correlation between appearing in a top twenty journal and being widely read and highly cited but my guess is that it is pretty rough. So is a probably a good idea (other things being equal) to place your papers in high-ranked journals if you can but you should not make a fetish of it.

      Reply
  5. Anonymous

    I think it largely depends on what else you have published, and on the kinds of jobs you are applying for.

    Philosophers are often hesitant to trust their own judgment about a paper’s quality and instead rely on external proxies such as journal rankings. This is certainly not ideal (those proxies are very imperfect) but it is somewhat understandable when committee members are evaluating work far outside their own subfields. If they are not up to date on the relevant literature, they may not know whether the question a paper addresses is especially pressing, or how significantly it advances an existing debate, even if they can get a rough sense of the argument’s quality by reading it. (That is even if they get around to reading it…I don’t think it’s realistic to expect committee members to read every paper published by every candidate. Early in the selection process, a proxy for quality may be all they have to go on).

    Where publishing in lower-ranked journals can hurt, I think, is when someone looks at your CV and immediately thinks, “I would never publish in these journals,” or, worse, “No one in our department would normally publish in these journals.” The job market is extremely competitive, and that can become an easy reason to move an application toward the bottom of a very large pile.

    Of course, judgments like “No one in our department would normally publish in these journals” vary considerably from department to department. Journals that are perfectly standard venues at one institution may be regarded as unusually low-ranked at another. And if your CV also contains publications in highly ranked journals, that can largely eliminate the concern.

    What you want to avoid is a situation in which a search committee looks at your publication record and concludes that you are unlikely to publish in the sorts of journals that are normal for their department – or that you would be at risk for being denied tenure, when the time comes.

    None of this is meant to suggest that lower-ranked journals do not publish excellent work. They often do – sometimes better work than much higher-ranked journals publish. But I do think there are circumstances in which publishing in journals ranked 20–30 in the field could hurt an application on the job market.

    Reply
  6. Anonymous

    If you worry about publishing in non-top tier journals, then you are not someone those super elite departments would hire. Stop worrying about them. Try to publish as good as you can, as much as you can, and build a profile where some reasonable place would find interesting.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      Second this! I really hope people can just try to do the best and most interesting research than worrying where their papers end up.

      Reply
    2. Anonymous

      Right, exactly. Honestly, I have never worried about where my papers end up. Once I finish a paper and ready to submit, I usually focus on which journals are a topical fit and give me the best experience in the process (quick turnaround, excellent referee pools etc). Some of my students would tell me that they want to shoot for PhilReview or something like that, with a slightly apologetic attitude for their ambition. I do encourage that but wouldn’t give a second thought on whether it is too ambitious. Top journals have excellent credential function, but I wouldn’t myself see or judge a paper in my fields through the lens of a journal so I don’t care too much.

      Reply
  7. Anonymous

    I don’t understand why these rankings are treated as definitive. Journals like the Southern Journal of Philosophy, Dialectica, and Thought might not be considered top 20, but no one would question a paper published in any of them. Am I wrong to think this way?

    Reply
  8. Assistant prof

    It depends on the job. R1 jobs and similar positions want research leaders, and while there certainly can be reasons for publishing in lower-quality journals, this isn’t typical behavior for the candidates they’re targeting, so it can raise concerns if there isn’t a good reason for it. Lower-ranked departments may be much more concerned about your ability to put out enough papers in reputable journals to earn tenure, and they’ll probably just be happy to see more publications.

    There are also some differences across subfields. If you’re in core M&E, top publications are increasingly expected. If you’re in a field that doesn’t place as many papers in top journals, things may be more relaxed.

    Reply
  9. Anonymous

    I think some commentors are losing sight of the OP’s concern. Of course many good and highly cited paper are published in lower ranked journals, and many papers published in high ranked journals are seldom cited. But the OP is concerned of the effects of publishing in lower tier journals early in their career (I assume, when they are still trying to get their first TT job). Few early career people have many (or any) citations to their papers …. those come with time. So aside from reading a paper and judging it yourself, search committees have little to rely on besides journal ranking. And people should not fool themselves that all 200 applicants will have their writing sample read. Again whether your sample gets read depends alot on what type of job you are applying for. I got the sense that my previous colleagues at a 4 college read very few writing samples. I would fall off my horse if they read as many as 10. There was no time for that!

    Reply
    1. Charles Pigden

      Okay so taking Anonymous’s point (by the way, it would be facilitate discussion if contributors adopted difference monikers since it is hard to distinguish one Anonymous from another) the question to be addressed is this:

      Can having a non-AOS publication in a top thirty but non-top twenty journal actually harm your prospects if you are a young philosopher on the job market?
      Answer: No (so it would be insane to leave it off your cv) though it might not do you as much good as a paper (whether AOS-related or otherwise) in a higher ranked journal.

      Subsidiary point 1: Don’t worry about publishing outside your original AOS. I know *and I know of* LOTS of people who have done this with considerable success, of whom I am one. Your AOS should be a springboard not a strait-jacket. Your areas of specialisation represent your current chief areas of interest and expertise and may well shift or expand in the course of you career, often with beneficial effects. (If you start publishing in some area it soon *becomes* an AOS.) Having a non-AOS paper is evidence of breadth and breadth is at a premium in small-to-medium departments.

      Subsidiary point 2. It is not anomalous to have highly cited papers that were not published in top twenty journals. Neither is it anomalous to have papers in top twenty journal that are relatively under-cited. Of my i100 papers only one was published in a top twenty journal, perhaps two if you count ETMP. Conversely, only *one* of my papers in a top-twenty journal (of which I have seven) has over a hundred citations.

      Final observation. It is a mistake to get hung up on nice distinctions of academic prestige. Other things being equal, it is , of course a little better for a young philosopher to have a publication in a top twenty rather than a top-thirty journal. But the emphasis should be on the ‘little’. Even if we accept that some members of some search committees are using prestige-of-venue to sort through a long list of applicants, they are not likely to drop you off the list because of a top thirty as opposed to a top twenty publication, especially if you *also* have top twenty publications. And just to be clear, – and this goes to Assistant profs comments – this is not the remark of a research-indifferent or a research-unambitious philosopher. Like R1 prof, I am an R1 prof in a department that sets a high value on research.. We care deeply about our collective research profile. We have biannual meetings in which we discuss our research projects with view to keeping each other up to the mark. (In this we are fairly successful. According to Google Scholar, our average per person citation rate at the beginning of this year was 1856.) When recruiting we are on the look-out for research potential as well as teaching ability. . But that does not mean that we are the kind of idiotic venue snobs who would be put off by a non-top-twenty publication.

      Retraction: I suggested above that Inquiry was not a top-twenty journal. Maybe it wasn’t when I first published in it nearly forty years ago, but it scrapes in at the bottom of the top twenty according to some rankings.. Others have dropped off the list, for example Philosophy.

      Reply
  10. Anonymous

    Marcus, can you break out a question for a follow up post? (I’m not the original poster and don’t want to hijack this thread.) My follow up question is this:

    Say that a candidate has 15 publications in Various Tippy Top Journals, and 1 publication in No-name Low-Prestige Journal (say, because it’s on a topic that the top journals don’t care about). We’ve heard reported in this thread that that 1 outlier publication could actually hurt the candidate for some research jobs. From the perspective of appealing to premier research jobs, would it be smart for the candidate to simply leave that 1 outlier publication off their CV? Is there any reason not to do that? If they do make that choice, should they represent their CV publication list as “Select Publications”? Or does that not really matter?

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      I’d also be curious to hear others’ thoughts on this

      Reply
  11. Anonymous

    These sorts of discussions always depress me since it seems wrong that Philosophy, of all disciplines, should take artificial and arbitrary journal rankings as somehow a meaningful signal. I’d be willing to say that papers published in “top” journals are almost always quality. But our journal acceptance rates in Philosophy are ridiculously low (just tell your science colleagues about them), and as a result MANY quality papers are published outside the “top” journals. (An analogy: I used to run the office that handed out teaching awards. The awardees were always deserving, but lots of other people were, too.)

    To think that publishing in the top journals is a requirement at (actually, before) the *beginning* of a career is truly weird. It buys into the myth of genius, for one thing, and it causes our junior colleagues to contort their work and themselves in pointless and harmful ways. If someone could point to an objective difference between papers in the 7th, 17th, and the 27th journals, maybe I would change my mind. But the rankings are always “reputational surveys,” not blinded objective quality assessments of individual papers, so I strongly doubt that any such objective difference exists. Further support for this position is the very random-seeming results one gets sending the same paper to different journals. Luck and vibes play a very significant role in what gets published, and where. (And let’s try not to commit the fallacious reasoning that since some journals only publish 5% of what gets submitted to them, that those journals contain the top 5% of papers.)

    For a junior candidate for a tenure track position, if a paper outside your AOS is your only publication, that could be a problem, whatever journal you are in. But if it is a “bonus” alongside other solid publications in your AOS, there should be no problem in almost any case. And for the cases where it would be a problem, I would ask you to consider whether you really want to work at a place, or among people, where decisions are made in that way.

    Reply

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