Journals that close submissions part of the year

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

I've noticed that several top philosophy journals -- Nous and PPR, for example -- accept submissions for only a few months out of the year. Why is this? And where can I find information about when these venues pause submissions? (Their websites don't say.)

I believe this is a longstanding practice at these journals due to the overwhelming number of submissions they receive. While I don't know the exact dates they close on (or if they change year by year), it might be helpful to crowdsource knowledge about this from readers.

Which journals have adopted this practice and what are their open submission dates?

Comments

[Joona Räsänen]

I am not aware of any other journals that accept submissions for only a few months out of the year. Why Nous and PPR do so? Not sure, but both journals are edited by the same 84 years old philosopher. Perhaps it is time for someone else to edit these journals?

Btw, not accepting submissions during the whole year might not have much impact on the number of submissions. The journal probably receives X number of submission in any case, they are either submitted during 12 months or during 4.

[minimal inside knowledge]

Nous and PPR usually open on November 15th (this is stated on e.g. Nous's submission website right now as the opening date in 2024) and close in either March or April (I think it varies from year to year?).

For what it's worth, I really disagree with Joona's take here. My experience is that these are the two best managed of the prestigious journals--good referee reports, responsible amounts of time to rejection or R&R, and extremely helpful/thoughtful editors. I don't think I'm alone in thinking these journals are well managed. And I think that part of what makes them manageable for their editor and associate editors is the shorter submission window. I personally like that tradeoff! (Also Sosa's being in his 80s seems irrelevant--is there any evidence he is a negligent or bad editor? All of the evidence I've ever heard of is that he's great at this job. I do think there is a case to be made for diversifying the editing of these journals, but it's not based on age or incompetence, it's just based on trying to diversify the kind of philosophy that makes it into top journals.)

Also, my understanding is that while these journals get tons of submissions, they do get far fewer than when they were open all the time (at least adjusting for the rate of increase across all the top journals of submissions). I think it could be better publicized that they do this, so things are more equitable for submitters, but posts like this can help with that. Other than that, I guess I can't really see the problem with it, especially if it helps them keep the journals well-run.

[Bob]

My experience with PPR and Nous has, unlike minimal's, been poor. My chief complaint is that they often take over two months to issue a desk rejection. But I have received some helpful referee reports from them.

[ABD]

Like Bob, my main experience with Nous has been waiting 3+ months for desk rejections with no comments.

[Let's just figure it out already]

AJP does not accept submissions for a certain portion of the year. I really hope this practice does not become more widespread. Other generalist journals (Analysis, Ergo, Thought, PhilStudies) are able to get reviews to authors in a timely fashion and are also open all year long. I wonder what accounts for their success. It would be good to try and actually understand what practices successful journals employ.

[D]

I've also had not so good experiences with Nous and PPR. I think they're badly run, but so are most other philosophy journals. (Timely reviews from Phil Studies? Must be nice, I just had some take over a year.)

Also worth noting about the other top 5 generalist journals: Mind and Phil Review allow only one submission per author per year. And JPhil, well, let's not talk about JPhil.

[Let's just figure it out already]

D, sorry to hear about your not so great experience with PhilStudies. Want to reiterate my main point, tho: it would be great if we actually dig into this and better understand why/how some journals are able to get timely (and helpful!) feedback to authors. Ergo, in my opinion, is exemplary, and as I've mentioned I've also had very good experiences with Analysis and Thought (as well as PhilSci and Synthese). What are they doing that other journals aren't? I'd be much more interested in discussing this than another round of debate about fanciful interventions (market for reviewers, banning grad student submissions, etc.) that have no hope of being actually implemented in our profession.

In other words: Let's take the 'referee crisis' seriously for once!

[non-spoken rules]

I did not even know this was the case. If I go to their websites right now I cannot see anything about this. Does that mean that submissions are open at the moment?

[Marcus Arvan]

@non-spoken: I believe Nous and PPR both have notes flagging when they are no longer accepting submissions—and when submissions open again—in their Manuscript Central sites after you login to try to submit a manuscript.

[Sdphilo]

If Nous and PPR give desk rejections after 2 months then why does it say in the APA survey they give first decision after< 3 months?