It is a well-known fact that we philosophers like to complain about the editorial policies of the journals in our field. The Synthese affair has taken problematic editorial practices to the next level, but there are many journals out there with what we could describe as 'sub-optimal' editorial performances. There is the top-notch journal which *still* does not seem to comply with the very basic principle of double-anonymous refereeing; there is the other top-notch journal which famously takes months and months (or shall I say years?) to get back to authors with a rejection based on a lousy 3-line report; and so on and so forth.
But there *are* a few excellently run journals, and everyone who has ever been involved with journal-editing knows that it is extremely hard to do things right: it's a mercyless, labor-intensive job (on top of the many, many other obligations we all have), where the good will of peer reviewers is entirely crucial. So, given the Synthese drama, I thought it would also be important at this point to highlight journals which have been making a significant contribution to the profession, not only in terms of the quality of the work published, but also in terms of how they handle submissions. If people feel like sharing their success stories with journals in comments below, please go ahead! It would be particularly interesting to hear about people who have had good experiences with journals even when their papers were rejected: clearly, a timely decision and good reports can be extremely useful and help the author improve the paper, and perhaps re-submit it elsewhere.
My recent positive experience with a journal has been with the Journal of the History of Philosophy. They are so incredibly efficient that I received notification even of the arrival of the hard copy of my submission! They are fortunate to have a super-efficient managing editor (Henry Southgate), which is a luxury that not every journal can afford (but then again, the Springer journals charge so much for the subscription that there's really no excuse they could offer with a straight face). I sent my submission in late January; by mid-April I received an update to inform me that they had received mixed reviews and had sought advice from a third reviewer. Less than a week later they got back to me with a conditional acceptance (fortunately, the third reviewer did like the paper!). But the real record was probably the time it took between me sending the revised version and the final acceptance: exactly one hour, no kidding!
JHP is (understandably) very proud of their statistics, which are published here. Their acceptance rate is very low, but the average time between submission and final decision is a little under 2 months -- quite impressive. They show in any case that it *can* be done, and such well-run journals can serve as an example and inspiration for other journals which are still struggling to get things right.
UPDATE: As Eric correctly notes (p.c.), my experience with JHP may not be entirely representative, and it would be incorrect to generalize from one single experience (although I did have another good experience with JHP a few years back). Still, I think it could be informative to hear from others about the journals they've been having good experiences with; it will be anecdotic evidence alright, but perhaps interesting nevertheless.
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