Publishing in special issues of lower-ranked journals, or not all?

In our October "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

If you have an article/paper/chapter that you are never going to publish elsewhere, is it better to publish it in a special issue of a lower-ranking journal than not publishing it at all? I've heard mixed advice on this.

For context, I'm thinking of special issues of journals most people haven't heard of, but that semi well-known philosophers have published in, or will also be publishing in in the special issue.

I'm thinking well-known philosophers being in the special issue (or in previous issues) kind of "legitimizes" the journal, but when looking at a CV, you don't get to see that, which can potentially be seen as a negative by search committees.

This question is also applicable to "non-elite" edited books (e.g., not Cambridge Companions).

This is a good question. My attitude on this is: if you think it's good work, publish it. There are several reasons why I think this:

1. Empirical evidence suggests that search committees actually look favorably on a CV with 'weak' publications, provided the candidate also has good publications. 
2. My own informal data collection on the job market years ago coheres with this, as did my own experience as a job candidate--particularly for jobs at 'teaching schools', which in my experience care far less about where you publish and more about how consistently you do. In fact, nothing in my experience as a job candidate or thereafter supported the advice that I too was given in grad school to "avoid publishing in bad journals." The more publications in lower-ranked journals I got, the more interviews I got. They also helped me to get tenure, and since getting tenure, I've been able to publish more consistently in better journals.
3. In addition to probably helping rather than hurting job candidates, publishing in lower-ranked journals can build confidence. They certainly did for me. It feels good to get work out there rather than have one's hard work stuck unpublished in a computer folder.
4. Recent evidence suggests that articles in lower-ranked journals are cited quite a bit, which can only help on the market and in a tenure and/or promotion case. Here again, this coheres with my experience. Some of my most-cited work is in lower-ranked journals.
5. It's your damn work! If you think it's good, get it out there. If it is good, then good, openminded philosophers will notice and not care about where it's published. :)

But, of course, these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Comments

[Bill Vanderburgh]

If the choice is between publishing or not publishing...publish!

If a candidate has few pubs in less prestigious journals, that's surely not as good as having many in prestigious journals. But it is still better than having none, since it shows an effort and a potential trajectory.

Everyone who publishes has a first publication, and it usually isn't in the top journal in the field. Search committees know this.

And as Marcus says, once you have a few articles in good journals, having a few others in less good journals is a net positive, both for searches and promotion. The exceptions are the *very* few departments who position themselves as "elite" who insist on only publishing in the top journals. But such departments are SO few that we really should stop giving them so much attention. Most philosophy happens, and most careers in philosophy happen, in very different (I would say, more reasonable) circumstances.

I think special issues are great. They give your work a built-in audience and more exposure. Being part of an on-going, lively conversation is one of the best parts of doing academic work. For similar reasons, I'd rather place my work in a good specialist journal over a great generalist journal (but maybe that's just me).

BTW, this talk of better and worse journals is a bit crazy, no? Do we really believe in rankings? Is there really a very big difference between the 1st- and 30th- ranked journal? I doubt there is a way to fully justify such a claim. Acceptance rates are so low across the board that excellent work, worthy of the journal it was sent to, gets rejected all the time, and eventually finds a home elsewhere. Luck is a huge part of this game, and we should not pretend otherwise.

[Trevor Hedberg]

I think it has to be a fairly special circumstance for a publication in a "lower-ranking" journal to count against you in a meaningful way. Marcus mentions several reasons above. Another reason is that some journals are "lower ranking" in a lot of contexts but carry a lot of weight in their specialty area. As one example, I don't think you're hurting your candidacy for an environmental ethics job by having publications in Environmental Values or Ethics, Policy & Environment instead of publications in Ethics or Philosophy & Public Affairs even though the latter journals would generally be considered better by most members of the profession. Additionally, a fair number of jobs nowadays have hiring committees with few (or even 0) philosophers on their search committees. Non-philosophers will not be in position to assess which journals in the field are best and are unlikely to devalue publications from lower-ranked journals.