Tips for getting on an APA main program?

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

Does anyone have any idea how the review process for getting onto the main program of an APA actually works?

(I assume some of you out there have been reviewers before - fwiw, I've never heard from a friend in the field of being asked to do this. So who does it? What do they ask you to look for? Overall it seems there's a serious lack of transparency here. It's also obvious to anyone who looks that there is something that an 'APA paper' looks like. Follow that formula, write on a trendy topic, and you'll probably get in eventually. But who is doing all this reviewing?)

I've never heard any concerns like these before, and I've gotten on main programs a few times without doing anything out of the ordinary--but maybe I'm missing something.

If anyone does have any helpful tips or other insights for the OP, please share!

Comments

[grad student]

I’ve been on the main program and I just submitted a paper I thought was good. I had certainly no idea that there was some particular format I was supposed to be following, and I don’t think it’s true that it’s ”obvious to anyone who looks that there is something that an 'APA paper' looks like.”

[Chris]

You can look at the APA website to see who is on the program committee in a given year (at least once they publish the program)
There’s one person in charge and about 24 people total. They do all the refereeing for a given division in a given year.
Typically 2 people read and evaluate each submission.
They independently give their ranking - yes, no or maybe if space is available.
You’re supposed to evaluate philosophical quality and whether the paper would be of interest to a number of philosophers.
You sometimes have a discussion about the maybes with the other referee to fill the available slots etc.

So as you can imagine a lot depends on who the two people are that read your submission.

I hope this helps.

[irritated program committee member.]

This post seems honestly a bit rude or at least unnecessarily flippant to me. I've been on the program committee for the APA; there's no "formula" and there's also no need for a topic to be hot. (Also Chris is right, though how many people are reviewing a given paper I think varies across divisions--sometimes it's just one I think.) There's no particular format or formula and obviously different reviewers have different senses of what is good or bad. I'll say I rejected quite a few papers on "hot" topics by people who I later discovered (through seeing descendants of the papers published) were also fancy or "hot" people because I couldn't see why the paper was interesting or valuable or that it would generate good discussion. Maybe others just go through and are like "is this paper on hot topic X" and decide things that way, but that is very far from how some people do it.

Also the information about who is on the program committee is online and not hard to find. It's not some great mystery or conspiracy. There's definitely not a lack of transparency--go to the APA division websites and they all should have the program committee listed. Indeed, the whole thing seems more transparent than many other publishing or conference submission processes to me. I think people should do more work before they launch these kinds of accusations, which are unfounded.

Also, the folks on the program committee are volunteering quite a lot of time and effort to this. Maybe be grateful to them instead of bitter.

[it's no secret]

The APA Pacific division answered similar questions years ago, and the answers likely apply to the other two divisions. https://blog.apaonline.org/2016/06/28/inside-the-apa-secrets-of-the-pacific-division-revealed/

[sharing a bit of the frustration]

At the risk of putting words in OP's mouth, I want to offer some of my own context, which might also explain the spirit behind OP's question. While I agree with irritated program committee member that the original post made some erroneous assumptions about the transparency of the APA's review process, I commiserate with what I take to be the general spirit behind the original post, which is a general sense of confusion and frustration about the APA's review process. My own experience, which I have seen echoed in the careers of several colleagues, is that it seems impossible for certain scholars to "break into" the APA. I have published several articles and book chapters and presented at dozens of conferences, many of which were more selective than the APA. However, I have submitted five papers to the APA (papers that were accepted at other conferences), and they have been rejected each time. The APA is not terribly selective, accepting roughly a quarter of submitted colloquium papers, so it's a bit confusing to me why my papers keep getting rejected. One begins to wonder if one's work is too "continental" or "historical" or something else that the APA is less interested in. I don't assume this makes the process less than transparent, and I very much appreciate the time and effort spent by reviewers. But this kind of phenomenon is curious, and a bit frustrating, so one starts to wonder if there is some unspoken criteria by which papers are judged (for example, a more analytic bent). Which is not of itself a bad thing at all, but it would be helpful to know if that is the case.

[irritated program committee member.]

@sharing a bit: I suspect checking out the program committee might give some clues to this. I think one thing that can happen is that sometimes the committee doesn't have the right combination of people on it for refereeing to be split evenly among people, so papers get sent to someone who listed something as a secondary or even tertiary interest. And I suspect that the more that happens, the more you get kind of weird outcomes in specific subfields (since someone might just be interested in one specific part of the subfield, e.g. one single continental figure or something). If there is no one with primary expertise in e.g. continental on the committee then your paper might get sent honestly to someone sort of random. But my experience with at least the eastern is there are usually quite a few people with that expertise (though obviously that's a huge area and whether the person matches your methodology/approach probably influences things). I'm not sure what there is to do about it, but I do think that the APA wants to have broad representation on the program committees, so you could try making suggestions to the nominating committee of your division about what you think is missing in terms of representation on the program committee.

[Assc prof]

If every submission has the same chance at selection and the APA selects 25% of submissions, the chance of going 0/5 is 23.73%. While that's less likely than getting at least one past the gate, it's not so unlikely that it requires a special explanation.

I've had papers rejected and papers accepted. The accepted ones tended to be better and, just as important, with the appropriate scope of argument for an 8-10 page paper. Though reviewer preference and randomness can play a role, I imagine quality and scope does too.

[sahpa]

@Assc prof: no, if the odds are 25% accept, then after four tries you are virtually guaranteed acceptance :)

(I'm joking. Even after many years and much instruction, I still find probability deeply unintuitive.)

[apa presenter]

I developed a knack for getting papers on APA programs. I presented 9 papers (and have since stop sending them in). It is not easy. Rather, you need to start with an argument that you can convey in a compelling manner in 3000 words. So, there is no room for subtlies and side issues. And some topics do not lend themselves to this. Warning, though. Sometimes these APA papers are hard to get published. They do not naturally scale up to published papers. Only 5 of my 9 APA papers were ultimately published.
Keep trying ... the Pacific is especially enjoyable, especially if you live on the east coast.

[Mark]

Can assc prof explain their reasoning to another probabilistically challenged philosopher?

[Craig Agule (not a math professor)]

@Mark:

I'm not them, but here's my uninformed thought. If the P(acceptance) is .25, and if the submissions are independent, then P(~Acceptance) is .75; I'll call that P(Not).

To calculate the odds of conjunction given independence, you just multiply. P(Heads) is .5. P(Two Heads) is P(Heads) ^ 2, or .25. P(Three Heads) is P(Heads) ^ 3, or 0.125.

So, the odds of _not_ getting in over five shots, assuming independence, is P(Not)^5, or .2373 and change.

[Anony]

I think the most reasonable assumption in most cases is randomness (just like with publishing in general). There may be other exact reasons why something was rejected. But you will almost never know those.

So, just try to do good work and chalk it up to randomness. (At the very least, I find that this helps my mental health.)

[Chris]

Mark: .75 chance each year of not getting a paper accepted. There are five years of failure. If we assume these are independent, then the probability of not getting a paper accepted at all after five years of trying is: .75 x .75 x .75 x .75 x .75 = .237 (approximately). So a 23.7% chance of failure even trying five times.

[not a coin]

Just because I hear this often when people talk about publishing or getting jobs and am irritated by this, with apologies I'd like to state the obvious: the assumption underlying the calculation that 0/5 papers is ~24% is that the APA selects papers completely randomly, which I take apa presenter's testimony to contradict. Sure, there's quite a bit of luck and randomness in these processes but that's not the same as calling these processes random. I, for one, would not like to think of the time I spend reviewing papers as essentially the same as simulating a coin.
I've never submitted to the APA and so have no insight to contribute, but I think "sharing a bit"'s frustration is onto something even if it's not something we can realistically address.