Recently, I received two journal rejections within 4 days; it must be some kind of record. I could of course despair and take it personally, which is what I used to do at early stages of my career. But now, with sufficient publication success in the past to assure me that I am not a hopeless case when it comes to publications (or so I hope!), I try to look at rejections from a more positive, constructive angle. Readers who were interested in this post of mine of a few weeks ago, on how to go about selecting journals to submit your papers to, may find my current thoughts on how to deal with these two rejections useful.
The first of the two rejections was somewhat frustrating. It came from a very fine, highly selective journal, but it was based on only one referee report, and a referee who seemed to misunderstand the main claim of the paper quite severely. (S/he identified an equivocation that I’m pretty sure is simply not there.) But at the very least, the report suggested that I hadn’t been clear enough concerning the main claims of the paper. The truth is that this paper defends a somewhat controversial thesis; the referee commended the paper as well written and well structured, but seemed simply not to find the main thesis particularly appealing.
What to do in such cases? Should one give up on the paper? This is not what I will do, among other reasons because I truly believe in the main thesis, even if (apparently) I still haven’t managed to present it in a sufficiently convincing way. I’ve had a similar experience when defending a controversial interpretation of Ockham’s supposition theory some years ago, and it took me some time (and some rejections…) to get the ‘rhetoric’ of the paper right (eventually the paper was published in the Journal of the History of Philosophy). But when I was writing predominantly historical papers, I was being overall more successful with getting them published. This may mean that I am a better historian than a systematic philosopher (might well be the case…), but I’m getting the feeling that the criteria for what counts as a good historical paper are more ‘objective’ than for systematic papers.
Sure, there are objective criteria across the board: is the paper well written and well structured? Does it refer to the relevant literature? Does it make a novel, non-trivial claim? But I’m getting the feeling that papers addressing systematic issues are more prone to receiving reports whose gist is basically “I don’t like the main thesis of the paper”. It seems that some of the most influential recent papers in philosophy had a long struggle up before finding a home – Clark and Chalmers’ extended mind paper being a good example, but also work by Jason Stanley comes to mind.
So, first lesson: if you are defending a somewhat controversial claim, you have higher chances of coming across referees who simply ‘didn’t like’ the main thesis of the paper. So you should improve on your ‘rhetoric’ but not necessarily give up on the thesis/the paper. After all, you happened to come across one or two people who did not like the paper; it is too small a sample to draw any conclusions on the strength of the thesis (which again outlines the limitations of the peer-review model in general).
The second rejection I had was very different, and here I want to name the journal, Erkenntnis, because the work they seem to have put into this submission is truly impressive. Less than 4 months after submission date, I’ve received 3 very thorough, detailed reports, 2 of which recommended rejection but with possibility of re-submission (the third sounded more like an R&R). (As a journal editor myself, I am well aware of how difficult and how rare it is to receive such detailed referee reports, especially in such a timely manner.) The referees make a number of very important points, and one of them points out that I failed to include some highly relevant literature, which I was simply unaware of (this is a fairly new topic for me). So in this case, the rejection is still somewhat disappointing, obviously, but I consider myself to be truly lucky to have received such thoughtful feedback on my paper. I will now go back to it with the referees’ comments in mind, and I intend to take up on the invitation to submit a thoroughly revised version of the paper to Erkenntnis later on.
I want to close this post with a few comments on the ‘Rejection, but with invitation to re-submit’ verdict. In my work as an editor for the RSL, I am making quite regular use of this possibility; we often get papers which contain lots of valuable material, but there are too many problems so as to warrant an R&R verdict. With an R&R, there is the expectation that, once the problems are properly addressed, the paper is likely to be accepted, which means that a very high percentage of R&R’s eventually turn into acceptances (as it should be). But sometimes the issues with the paper are not easily mendable, even if the material is interesting and original, and could be turned into an excellent paper. So overall, I find the ‘Rejection, but with invitation to re-submit’ option more honest than an R&R that may eventually lead to a rejection (because the problems with the paper are not so easy to fix).
Anyway, I’d be curious to hear more in the comments below on how experienced philosophers deal with journal rejections, as this is an inevitable part of the profession, and thus something junior folks can certainly benefit from.
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