The Philosophers' Cocoon

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

I submitted a paper to a journal back in 2022-23. It went through two rounds of review and in the end I got 4 distinct referee reports, including one that was almost 6,000 (!) words long. The editors did not give me any direction about how I should deal with such unwieldy reviews (at the time I was a postdoc and had less publishing experience). But during the 3rd round of revisions, I felt defeated and gave up. Now, with some time and distance from the paper, I would like to return to trying to get it published again. The debate has not moved on since my paper and I believe it still has something to contribute to the conversation. I do feel quite terribly about the whole ordeal. How should I go about doing this? Should I write to the editors about a paper that was left in limbo from a few years ago (though the editors have since changed)? Should I just start over, rewrite the paper to update it, and submit to a different journal? What obligations do I have towards the original journal?

I empathize with the OP, as I had a paper like this a few years ago. I ultimately let the journal know that I had elected not to revise, as I couldn’t quite figure out how to proceed. In the OP’s case, I guess I don’t think it could hurt to ask the editors if they’d still consider revisions. But maybe it also depends on how confident the OP is that they can complete the revisions at this point (and what kind of time frame they think it would take)?

What do readers think?

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

If I already have multiple publications in the top 2 journals in my specialty, does it make sense to send something to the next journal down the list in my subfield instead just for variety or some other similar consideration?

This is a good problem to have. Not sure why one would “shoot lower” in a case like this, but maybe shooting for top generalist journals is a good alternative?

What does everyone think?

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

Is the readership consideration still relevant when choosing which generalist journal to submit to?

I know that in the past it used to be worthwhile to publish in journals that had more subscribers because you could expect more people to find your article when flipping through the pages of physical copies of the journal. Nowadays, from what I gather, most people only “browse” the specialist journals that are relevant to them, and no one opens up generalist journal websites casually looking for new stuff to read. Instead, people find stuff on depositories like PhilPapers with helpful search engines, and there isn’t really much a difference between journals aside from the prestige. Is this true?

I’m not sure–though I suspect as with most things there may be considerable variance in terms of people’s journal-reading practices.

Do any readers have helpful insights to share?