The Most Important Publishing Advice I've Received

I just presented a paper of mine Andrew Altman and Kit Wellman's NEH Summer Seminar on Liberty, Equality, and Justice. I have been working on this paper for well over six years (it is revised material from my dissertation), have written over 60 full drafts of it (no exaggeration), have gotten close to publishing it once, and have received very encouraging comments on it from several journals that rejected it. On top of all this, when I've presented it, I've had people tell me it deserves to get out in print. Despite all this, the paper is still in "no man's land." I've been flummoxed as to why it keeps getting turned down, and at a complete loss in terms of understanding what more needs to be done to get it accepted.  I feel like I've been running head-long into a brick wall over and over again with it.

I think I may have finally learned what the problem is, thanks to some advice I was just given by Andrew Altman (later seconded by Rosamond Rhodes).  I would like to share his advice with you all, because in retrospect the advice seems obviously correct but I had been completely blind to it because of how contrary it was to everything I had thought I'd learned about doing philosophy well. I wish I had learned what Andy and Rosamond told me 6 years ago. Better late than never, I suppose. Anyway, I hope that by sharing it with you, I might help at least one of you out there avoid similar frustrations.

I had believed my task, in getting the paper published, was to get every detail of my theory and argument worked out (so as to convince reviewers that what I am doing in the paper is really, really sophisticated and fully developed). This makes sense, right? It's what we're taught to do in graduate school. Don't fudge things. Address every salient issue. So, this is what I did in the paper. I developed and defended a framework for thinking about nonideal justice, and then filled in all of the details, defending specific accounts of various issues within the framework.  All makes sense, right? Wrong! Here is how Andy put it to me: the more controversial moves you make in a paper -- even if they are sophisticated moves -- the more things a reviewer has to disagree with.  In other words, "The larger the blanket, the more holes you can poke in it." 

Andy's advice, then, was to make the paper less detailed.  Yes of course, he said, I still need to demonstrate mastery over the material to reviewers -- but the important thing is to tread softly, introducing the new framework I want to defend at a very general level, suggest possible ways of filling in the details to readers, and then issue promissory notes to fill in those details later.  The basic idea is: get the reader/reviewer on board with the general framework, and explicitly leave many details for later. Again, this is contrary to everything I thought I was supposed to do. We're supposed to answer philosophical questions, right? Yes, but not all at once.

Andy's advice hit me like a ton of bricks. I must confess that I had long been surprised how certain "famous" papers ever got published where they did. One example is Rawls' initial paper, "Justice as Fairness" in Phil Review. The shocking think, to me, about Rawls' paper is that it didn't really seem to me to have an argument. No, Rawls simply presented a new framework for thinking about things. I have to confess that I always thought there was no way the paper would get published today, given how focused on arguments we all are -- but, then again, I've continued to read papers in top places that puzzled me (that seemed too elementary, too vague in the details). And here's the thing: I thought all of this was bad philosophy. I couldn't see why such things got published. Now I know how it happened. I had the wrong standards in mind. I was applying "Platonic" standards of philosophical argument (viz. Get every detail right!, etc.), whereas publishing in journals is a matter of satisfying reviewers and editors.  Again, their standards are in many ways quite different.  Don't get every detail down (at least not in one paper).  The more there is going on in a paper -- even if, again, what is going on is sophisticated -- the more problems people can find. 

In short, thing I learned is this: when it comes to publishing, less really is more.  Many people had told me the paper "tries to do too much" -- yet I hadn't received any determinate advice on how not to make it do too much. Andy got through to me. I will forever be grateful for the lesson. It was not what I wanted to hear -- I had to rewrite the paper from the beginning yet again (just finished!) -- yet, for all that, it was what I needed to hear. Thank you, Andy. I hope some of you find the lesson helpful, as well.

Comments

[Argo]

it sounds like what matters in publishing papers is that editors and reviewers like the paper, not the actual contents. perhaps I am still blinded by the former standards - work out every detail (sounds admirable, really!), but I can't see how this "less is more" approach can be superior in any way but perhaps only saving space. if it is to avoid some not really important nitpicking, then sad is the whole affair where such nitpicking is considered a prospect fine enough for pursuit.

[Marcus Arvan]

Argo: The approach is contrary to my nature (I want to get all the details down and done), but I'm beginning to appreciate the point of journal standards. People like you and I, we want to take big, bold steps. But wrong steps can be embarrassing. Journals and reviewers want each paper to take small (but important) steps. This can be frustrating, but I see the sense behind it. Academics and scientists are by nature conservative. Big bold, intricate steps are easier to take in books, after one has shown that the small initial steps are promising. Anyway, it is what it is. We might like the standards to be different -- but I, for one, am sick of running into brick walls. I want my paper to get out there. If I have to walk before I can run I will walk.

[Robert Seddon]

Of course, not every reader has abundant tolerance for papers that refine the ideas of earlier papers: e.g. http://crookedtimber.org/2005/10/04/journals-and-political-philosophy/#comment-106823 on Pettit. So perhaps one should walk but not saunter; but then again, the comment refers to published work...

[Kyle Whyte]

Once again this seems like a weird dimension of philosophy that isn't necessarily present in precisely the same way in other fields. I'm thinking of some sciences where there is a distinction among perspective articles, review articles, and full-blown research articles. Perhaps philosophy needs some distinction between the two sorts of articles that Marcus is talking about, especially given that it seems we probably value both kinds, and it's unfortunate the publishing world may just value the one.

[Kyle Whyte]

I would also add, and sorry to press the science connection, that Marcus' account seems to track the role of the introduction, literature review, and other initial sections of science type articles. Some of my work is really social science and I publish in social science journals. Having gone through the review and publication process quite a few times, at this point, I can see how what Marcus says is true. The introduction/literature sections of the articles I've worked on, or reviewed, are really supposed to persuade the reader to accept the entire set up and purpose of the paper, in the most general sense possible. A lot of work goes into doing this right, and reviewers see it as the main thing to target if they want to reject the paper. The discussion section at the end is where you describe the more controversial conclusions you may want to make, but leaving that for the very end makes it so that it's clear you're aware that your results do not necessarily justify these conclusions and that they are really supposed to be the subject for further work and hypotheses. So there's no illusion that you're presenting these as the entire purpose of the paper, even if, personally, that is true.

[David Morrow]

Although I'd never thought about it before (or really followed it), this advice makes sense to me. Reviewers and editors are often looking for reasons to reject a paper. The more details you give, the more chances the reviewer has to find such a reason.

There's a less cynical reason, too. When one philosopher reads another's work, he or she rarely thinks that it's *exactly* right. In order to fit the view/argument into their own perspectives, different people usually need to fill in the details differently. If a paper fills in the details as the author would, it may not fit as well with the reader's ideas, and it's more work for the reader to excise the expendable details than it is to fill in the blank spaces. So in some ways, a less detailed paper might be more philosophically helpful to the reader.

So, by all means, get all the details down. But delete them before you send the paper to the journal, because the details that work for you won't work for everyone else, even if the "big ideas" do.

[Marcus Arvan]

David: I think that's exactly right. I think your "less cynical reason" is more or less what Andy had in mind. I hope I didn't imply a more cynical reading. I certainly didn't mean to!