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09/11/2012

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Kyle Whyte

I agree with Marcus' remarks. I would also add something else. Given a philosopher can always find problems, issues and concerns in any paper, I feel that it's never enough to just have a criticism of a paper. Anyone can do that. Instead, you need to have, right at the beginning of the discussion piece, or in some appropriate place, a extremely brief narrative of why your criticism is one that actually matters in some important sense, whether to the literature on that topic or to the internal coherence of the author's entire project, among other possibilities. I think that is key to getting in to a journal but also for holding out a good possibility that you'll have some impact.

Jenny Szende

One other format which might be worth considering would be a 'Research Note', which (again) only some journals publish. If you have
(1) a short piece (2-4000 words)
(2) on a narrowly defined topic
(3) which otherwise conforms to the format of a journal article (i.e. writing style and philosophical content are appropriate to the journal you are sending it to) and finally
(4) the journal publishes research notes, then it's worth a shot.

You might get an R & R or you might get an invitation to turn it into a longer piece (and reviewers comments, if you are lucky, that guide you in how to do so). The added bonus - as with discussion articles and replies - is that you are likely to go through an accelerated peer review process, in part because reviewers are thrilled to get such a short, crisp, to the point paper.

A last option for a short paper is Analysis, provided that the paper is sufficiently analytic. Their review time is incredibly short, but their rejection rate is also extremely high, so you'll get an answer very quickly (but likely no reviewers comments).

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