If you are an academic philosopher, and you are like many other philosophers I know, the following situation may be familiar to you. You have this paper you invested in a lot. It has received very positive responses at conferences. People will come up to you after their talk and tell you they loved it so much. Yet, you struggle to place it in a journal. The journal rejections might be desk rejections without explanation. Or they might have detailed reviewer comments that may even strike you as fair. Indeed, you might say, nodding as you read the rejection, the argument was not really that tight in section 3. The move to x was unmotivated in section 4, and so on.
What is going on? I used to think it was due to two factors (1) behind the veil of anonymity, people are more nasty and less charitable, and (2) people at conferences are just being nice/polite. This undoubtedly explains part of the phenomenon. But I now think that these explanations are insufficient. For one thing, I have received fair, clearly-written and polite rejections to pieces that received praise at conferences. For another, I can now distinguish better (I hope!) polite conversation from genuine enthusiasm.
My explanation now is as follows. Maybe the mindset of a conference audience and a journal reviewer is fundamentally different. A conference audience member is looking for interesting new stuff. Stuff that challenges her, ideas that might give her a new look on things.
On the other hand, a journal referee is often looking for reasons to reject. Indeed, some highly competitive journals specifically instruct referees to be extra-critical. Rejection requires specific reasons, which for philosophers often come in the form of (serious, fatal, etc) objections.
Now the paper that does well at conferences but not at journals seems to me to have the following properties: it has lots of interesting, novel ideas, but the argument is not watertight. I think there is often a genuine tradeoff between papers that go out on a limb and do something novel, and papers that make a minor point but that are argumentatively watertight. Very rarely, you can write a paper that does both--be highly original and rigorous--and one can place it well. But usually, a paper cannot do both. For one thing, the paper with lots of novel stuff cannot rely on an existing dialectic with familiar moves. Referees see the shortcomings, can offer objections, and recommend reject. Often this recommendation is fair. Looking over a paper recently rejected this way, I look at their comments and I think, as I have done before, "yes, reviewer 2 (or often reviewer 1 AND 2) is right: the move from x to y doesn't quite work yet". But often, I don't know how to fix it. And, after a few unsuccessful tries, the paper just ends up in the heap of unpublishables.
In a conference, you're more willing to think along with the paper---the format itself (an invitation for dialogue after) facilitates this. At a workshop in Minneapolis on formal methods in philosophy, we had a roundtable discussion on the nature of philosophy. What is philosophy? Many of us agreed: philosophy begins in wonder. Philosophy helps us to cultivate that sense of wonder. It challenges us, it pushes us out of our comfort zone. It stirs our emotions, leaves us perplexed about our basic assumptions. It was remarkable that we were in a company of analytic philosophers, many of us wrote formal analytic philosophy.
Still, I still think this view of philosophy is fundamentally correct. Not only does philosophy begin in wonder, good and enduring philosophy evokes a sense of wonder in us. Good philosophy is profoundly experiential. As Martin Lenz comments
Perhaps you have already asked yourself now and then why at least the first chapters of Descartes’ Meditations are such a widely and persistently appreciated text. Why does it speak even to first-year students in such a direct way that other works never will? Let me give you a hint: it’s not the structure of the arguments; neither is it philosophical content. It is because it is a meditation.
Reading Descartes' meditations is a powerful experience, that's in part why he still matters to us. Lenz cautions that we should not reduce or impoverish our experiences to finding and responding to objections. Objections are just one way to respond to other people's philosophy. At conferences, a lot of what goes on are objections the range of responses are typically broader---these include also the passive listening to someone's argument, including all the non-verbal cues such as images, emotions, that accompany the core text. When we respond to a conference paper, we respond to that whole.
Some people might think that the journal review system is broken. There is something wrong if we systematically accept papers we can find no fault with but that don't stir our imagination, whereas the papers with holes but new ideas get shot down by objections. Maybe that's true, but maybe this also gives us the opportunity to expand the range of philosophy, including what is acceptable for tenure and promotion, beyond the journal article or classic monograph. By the way, I think that monographs already have different norms for acceptance compared to journal articles. The arguments in books, it seems to me, tend to be looser and a book to be publishworthy needs to be more original than a typical journal article. It does not work (typically, unless your writing style lends itself to it, but I think it often doesn't) to write a book exactly like a series of journal articles. Philosophy monographs allow room to breathe and wonder. They don't need to be referee-proofed to the same extent as journal articles.
I'm inclined to an expansive conception of philosophy where images, aphorisms, music, poetry, can all be part of philosophical conversation. For example, I'm currently editing a book under contract with Oxford University Press which will feature 42 drawings I made, which are pictorial comments on philosophical thought experiments, accompanied by personal reflections of philosophers. The book would be marketed to intro to philosophy students. I'm also co-editing, with Eric Schwitzgebel and Johan De Smedt, a book of philosophical stories. Note that all of these are still in fairly traditional publication venues (OUP and Bloomsbury).
I do wonder whether there would be room for a journal that explicitly makes room for more wondrous philosophy--philosophy that is high in innovative content but low(er) in rigor, a journal of cool, exciting half-baked ideas of sorts. I don't think there is such a journal yet.
Closest come journals that require higher standards for originality (such as Mind), but these journals do not compromise on papers being tightly argued. Perhaps, one might say, that's how it should be. Poetry, music, etc. are all very nice but fundamentally, philosophy is still argumentative. A journal that compromises on rigor to accept any idea that tickles the reader, even if it's full of holes, will just be a rubbish heap of badly written papers. Perhaps that's true. Still, I think there's a market for such papers, which now languish unpublished, or occasionally end up in edited volumes (which is all fine, but writing for edited volumes is typically on invitation and so would exclude many scholars).
I think your observations and analysis are spot-on, Helen. I have a paper that I've been dragging with me that fits this profile. It's been cited (as a paper) in several published articles/handbook chapters, but I can't get it published, because referees find it insufficiently rigorous, and they are correct, and I don't think this can be fixed.
I think the narrowness of the academic philosophy journals that you rightly observe is one reason why some senior philosophers, who no longer have to worry about stringent output requirements, start to write mainly books - since books give us more freedom to do what we really like, rather than what the referees/editors want us to do.
Posted by: Ingrid Robeyns | 12/17/2019 at 04:46 PM
I agree with almost all fo this. But pragmatically speaking, I think we probably would need to start with accepting more novel, and less water-tight arguments in journals before expanding philosophy in the ways you describe. I think it would be very, very, hard to get the profession on board with such a big expansion (one which I couldn't more strongly support.) Perhaps the first step would be to have a journal of presentations. Maybe you create a video f a talk and send it in. It would be reviewed. Or just a recording and not a video. Either way, spoken philosophy is different. It could be reviewed but wouldn't be blind reviewed. But of course, lots of "blind reviewed" papers are anything but, anyway. If I had the prestige I would try to start a journal of video or audio presentations. It also seems much more inclusive, since some people are better at learning by listening, and some people are better at expressing ideas by speaking instead of writing.
Posted by: Amanda | 12/17/2019 at 10:04 PM
Also, I think the argument that philosophy is fundamentally an air-tight type of discipline couldn't be more implausible. Let's go back to those handful of philosophy books and articles that receive more attention, admiration, and discussion than almost any of the others. Almost none of these are the air-tight type of arguments. Very few of the classics are like this, or Rawls, or even some big contemporary papers that I don't want to call out. The point is that it really shouldn't be controversial that lots of great philosophy isn't water-tight. And besides, unless the water-tight argument is about something important, then it seems philosophy is just an intellectual sport, ie., an arbitrary competition to see who is the very best at making very tightly constructed arguments, but, you know, who the hell cares about the subject matter? If they are well argued, being on a silly topic doesn't matter! We philosophers, are really, really, good at complex, structured, reasoning patterns. We set world records in that. Isn't that the idea? I don't think so. But I think a decent number of others do think so, or act as though they do.
Posted by: Amanda | 12/17/2019 at 10:14 PM
Ingrid, I have a paper like that too. Does well at conferences, I get asked about citation information about it frequently, (where I uncomfortably must reply it was never published). However, it is the first paper I've completely given up on for publishing. The reviewer comments are not merely rejections but just some of the most aggressive, dismissive, and insulting I've ever had. And it's not like I'm not use to mean reviewers. I actually decided to stop submitting it because I feared that even if it was published, it might hurt my reputation since so many philosophers apparently hated it so much. The subject probably explains a lot of this, but generally, I have a much easier time getting papers published that I didn't enjoy writing and that I do not consider my best work.
Posted by: Amanda | 12/17/2019 at 10:20 PM
Thanks for this helpful post. I have also experienced getting very positive feedback at conferences (beyond politeness -- along the lines of "this was the best thing I heard all conference"), yet struggled to publish. I've been attributing failure to publish to being better at presenting than I am at writing, but it sounds right that there are parts about my arguments in these papers that aren't watertight (and probably can't be).
Posted by: P K | 12/18/2019 at 08:22 AM
Thanks for this great post, Helen. I am very much in agreement. I will say that I think lower-ranked journals may be more willing to publish imaginative but not watertight articles. I know some people are averse to publishing in "bad journals", worrying about what others will think of it. But this kind of attitude bugs me. If you believe in a work you've created and have gotten good reactions to it at conferences, why not publish it in a lower-ranked journal? If it's any good (and let's say you've also published in good journals), people might just read and engage with it anyway! I'll also say that I think the Journal of the APA has gone out of its way to prioritize publishing more imaginative works, committing to this in its editorial statement. So I think there is some real desire in the discipline (a desire that I myself share) for more works of this type.
Posted by: Marcus Arvan | 12/18/2019 at 08:48 AM
FWIW, one of the most negative responses I've ever received was from JAPA for just such a paper (which I published pretty much as-is in a T10 journal immediately afterwards). JAPA's report was *very* short, and pretty much just said that it was unpublishable in any philosophy journal.
So even if some journals sometimes go out on a limb (and JAPA certainly has a few times), I think it can happen pretty much anywhere, for exactly the reasons outlined in the OP. Flagging the weird nature of the paper in a cover letter might help give a signal to editors committed to giving such papers a chance, however.
Posted by: Michel | 12/19/2019 at 04:18 AM
Well, consider that the role of the conference feedback giver and the journal critic are very different, as are the social settings. You rightly point out that the journal critic may be more inclined toward harshness under the guise of anonymity. I don't debate that. But the person who comes up to you at a conference may feel too awkward and pressured by a lifetime of social cues to politeness to voice any deep or striking critiques of a paper. People in the audience who did think negatively about your paper may not come up to you at all, under the motto "if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all."
Additionally, the things you notice and can process in the act of listening to a paper presentation versus reading a paper (red pen in hand, so to speak) are vastly different. How many times have you heard a presentation you were enthusiastic about, but then had serious critiques of after taking the time to read the actual manuscript?
Of course, these are just my critiques thrown out from the nebula of internet anonymity, so it's possible your post is actually brilliant beyond compare or critique ;)
Posted by: Nicole | 12/19/2019 at 03:53 PM
I've gotten very harsh feedback at conferences, and I've seen many others get that, too. But I think it depends a lot on the kind of person you are and how you present. I have theories as to why, but some people are just easier to criticize to their face than others. Still, I don't think it is controversial that philosophers give very negative criticism at conferences.
I do agree that conference comments are more positive compared to journal reviews, and that seeing a person face to face explains that. But the bar is very, very, low for journal positivity. I also don't think that anonymity and harshness gives us more reason to think that the harsh review is accurate.
Recently I've had the chance to read the reviews of the same paper that I myself reviewed, i.e. I read the other report from the other reviewer. This has been so eye opening to me. Because with my own work, I can never trust, completely, my own assessment that the report was unfair. Yet after reading the reports on other people's papers, I got the odd sense of comfort, along with despair, in knowing just how completely epistemically unjustified, and plain mean, that comments of journal reviewers can be. I guess it's not just me!
I think when you have to show your criticism publicly, you are far less likely to give shoddy criticism, i.e criticism that shows you didn't read closely, and much less likely to be mean. I would be in favor of publishing reviewer rejections. Yes, I get the disincentive. And it will never happen. But I support it, theoretically.
Posted by: Amanda | 12/19/2019 at 09:39 PM