Word-count Blues

I received an encouraging rejection the other day from a really great journal. Basically, the comments were: the paper is well argued and on a good topic, but a topic that is, nonetheless, a bit too narrow for the journal. Fair enough -- can't complain about that I suppose. But here's the problem. There are only a few journals out there for which the paper is a natural fit, the paper is about 13,000 words long, and the journals for which it is a good fit tend to have word limits of around 8,000 words (though one journal -- the one it is perhaps the very best fit for -- has a 10,000 word limit).

The most natural thing to do I suppose (the only thing to do?), is to try to cut the paper down. The problem, though, is that even though the paper is 13,000 words, it's a pretty darn "lean" 13,000 words. I just don't see how I can (A) do the things the paper needs to do, while (B) cutting out 3-5,000 words. I just don't see it. 3-5,000 words is a lot of words to cut out, and the way I see it, the only places to do it are at the level of a couple of cases I decribe in detail (which are really important to the paper), or in the part of the paper in which I raise and respond to objections (which is also really important, as there are a number of obvious and important-to-deal-with worries about my position). 

So I'm rather stuck. What to do? And why in the world do so many journals have such strict word-limits? Although a few journals say "we don't ordinarily publish articles longer than X words", most of them (and just about all of them in the area my paper is in) say, "we absolutely don't consider papers longer than X."  Hrumph.

Comments

[Moti Mizrahi]

Hi Marcus,

Don't you if you've tried it already but Ergo (http://www.ergophiljournal.org ) doesn't seem to have a word limit (at least, their website doesn't say anything about word counts).

[Carlo Ierna]

Without further information about the journals in question, I cannot say whether this is a serious option for you, but I once split a paper in two parts and published it as two articles (explicitly titled as parts) in subsequent issues of the journal.

[AGS]

Could you have a colleague read the paper specifically with an eye towards what can be cut? An outside perspective might help you to trim things down, particularly if you know someone whose own writing tends towards the terse or concise. If you can't bring in an outside voice, it might be helpful to think about how you would present the paper at a conference. Assume you have 30 minutes and you are forbidden from actually reading the paper. What points make your talk? What things get left for possible exploration in the Q&A? That might provide some hints to what is less essential.

[Kris McDaniel]

In my experience, I am almost always able to cut, but it gets progressively harder to do it.

Here's some tips. Warning: they are excruciating to follow, but I've found they work.

Tip one: Read your paper backwards. Start with the last sentence first and go from there. Tip two: have your computer read your paper out loud.

I almost always find ways to trim after these exercises, but they are miserable. I think the reason that they work is that they force me to read my paper in a new way -- which opens my eyes to new ways of expressing the same content.

YMMV.

[Marcus Arvan]

Thanks for the comments, everyone.

Carlos: not an option, unfortunately!

AGS: I suppose getting someone to read it might help out - perhaps I'll give that a shot (though, again, I feel like the paper is *very* lean as-is).

Kris: Thanks for the tips. Nothing like them has ever occurred to me. I do think I could probably cut out some stuff, but 3-5,000 words just feels impossible while preserving all of the necessary content. But who knows - perhaps I'll get back to you with the results!

[Kris McDaniel]

If I can follow up a bit more on my suggestions... when trying to cut words -- or as I prefer to think of it, express the same ideas better -- one has to watch out for the trap of thinking, "I just don't see how I can make *this paper* any briefer". If you focus on the whole paper as a whole it is really easy to get intimidated and overwhelmed by the prospect. But the tips I suggest force you to refocus on much smaller and manageable parts, which hopefully will lead you to ask yourself, "Can I make this sentence shorter? Can I make this paragraph shorter?"

It's only when I think I'm at the final draft with respect to *content* that I do this. Every time I've done this I've been shocked at how much I manage to trim. This probably shows that I suck at induction and also that I am less concise than I wish I were.

[Marcus Arvan]

Kris: sounds like a good way to think. I'll give it a shot!

[Lewis Powell]

Is it possible that your paper is trying to do too many things? Perhaps it is secretly two 8,000 word papers disguised as one 13,000 word paper.

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi Lewis: unfortunately, that's not what's going on. The paper defends one point and one point only, and the reviewers said it does a very good job of defending that point. They just said it wasn't a good fit for the journal.

[Dan Dennis]

Sounds like you could spend ages making it shorter and less clear - not every paper can be shortened. And is it really a good use of your precious time? If you have had encouraging feedback from a great journal then maybe try another great journal with a high word limit - Mind, PHilosophers Imprint, Philosophical Review all fall into this category if I remember correctly. If the paper is in ethics, 'Ethics' is up to 15,000...

[Dan Dennis]

Though sounds like it would be helpful to add a few words to your paper explaining why the question you address is important - so the paper is less likely to be rejected as being too narrow...

[Marcus Arvan]

Thanks for your comments, Dan. The problem is that the paper is on an applied issue, and there are only a handful of good journals that seem to publish papers on topics like mine (Ethics occasionally publishes stuff on applied issues, but not often). Anyway, I think it's on an important public issue, but it is a *very* narrow one. There may be a way to add a few sentences explaining why the argument probably has implications for other applied issues in the field, though -- so thanks for the advice!

[Marcus Arvan]

Kris: thanks again for the tip - it worked! Got it to under 10,000. Still not short enough for some journals -- and it'll be real hard (if not impossible) to get it down to 8K without losing important content -- but I was able to cut almost 3K words with your technique!

[Carolyn Mason]

I also tried Kris McDaniel's reading backwards tip. 3 pages backwards and I have already cut 100 words. It is painful, and it doesn't read quite as well as (I thought) it did, but I have not cut any key content. Thank you Kris! And thank you Marcus for the blog.