Publishing in English Language Journals: an editor’s view Beijing Foreign Study University October 2015

Background  Greg Currie is Professor of Philosophy and Chair, Department of Philosophy, University of York, UK  Educated atLondon School of Economics  University of California, Berkeley  Worked for many years in Australia and New Zealand  Universities of Sydney, Otago, Flinders (Adelaide)  Visiting positions at  Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews, Bristol, Maryland

I work on  The philosophy of the arts and cognition  Particularly areas where scientific work has (should have) an influence on philosophy:  The Imagination  Seeing things in pictures  How narratives are understood  Irony  Gaining knowledge from fictions

 I am an editor of Mind & Language  Will be Editor-in-Chief from October 2016  Mind & Language was founded in the early nineteen eighties by a group of philosophers, linguists and cognitive scientists in London  Intended to encourage work across all those disciplines  And in particular to encourage philosophers to take seriously the idea that their work might have empirical implications  Its title reflects the situation of the times: language was the gateway from philosophy to the scientific study of mind

As things developed  Other areas have become crucial:  We pioneered studies of:  “Theory of mind” (interpersonal understanding) Gordon, Goldman, Harris, etc  Delusions, Coltheart, Davies  Awareness of intention, Jannerod,  Unconscious drivers of action, Gendler

Journal policy  Generally we look for papers which have implications for more than one discipline  Philosophy tends to be the “home” discipline; we expect papers to be philosophically aware and to be of interest to philosophers  We run our own workshops and conferences annually and publish selected proceedings  We publish very few book reviews (more often book symposia)  We do not publish replies

What do we look for  Papers should engage with a debate and a literature but should have definite proposals that will move the debate on  They should not review literature of simply comment of a debate between others  They should have a positive thesis  We like, but don’t insist on, collaborative work

What we don’t want  “Debate internal”  Studies more suitable to an experimental journal  “Experimental philosophy”?

Reviewing submitted papers  Chief editor may decide to reject a paper as unsuitable  En editor is assigned to look after the paper through the refereeing process  Chooses two referees, preferably from different disciplines  Tries to get timely reports!  Decides on the basis of the reports:  Accept without changes  Accept with minor changes  Revise and resubmit  Reject without right of resubmission

We are a helpful journal  We often see merit in a paper and suggest ways to make it better  That’s part of our mission  But we don’t want to be treated as a source of feedback  Submit only when ready!  If asked to revise, take your time!– we have no deadline for resubmission (unless we explicitly say so)  We won’t take more than one resubmission

Advice to authors  Read the journal  You can see the most read papers listed on the journals web site  Take lessons from the best papers  Take your time  If possible get a native English speaker to check it  (We do take into account non-native speaking and don’t insist on traditional English!)

Responding to referees reports  The graduate student mistake  “The referee’s report is rubbish; they have not understood; I’ll take no notice”  Reports are sometimes bad  Even good reports will contain mistakes  Try to get as much critical feedback from it as you can  Even a report that does not contain much useful criticisms is still a source of important information  The paper just did not excite the referee  Editors don’t say “If there are no obvious errors we will publish the paper”  They say “If you recommend publication there must be a very good positive reason”  “We simply can’t publish all the reasonably good papers we get”

Scholar One?  Mind & Language will move over to this automatic submission system within the next year and a half  But we remain dependent on our referees  It is not easy often to get suitable referees  Often referees take too long  Sometimes people asked to be referees refuse  There may be delays before we hear from them  All this can make the process longer than we would like

Judging where to send you papers  Be realistic!  Check out reliable rankings  Many are recognised by professional bodies  In philosophy things are not so clear  A good recent one is   Mind & Language ranked 8 th !  Read papers in that journal and get a feel for what they like

My own publishing history  Early on I wanted to publish in the best, most prestigious journals  Received many rejections  Published in Mind, Nous, Philosophical Studies, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, etc  All top 10 journals  As I gained a (small) reputation I felt less pressure  My typical publication pattern now is  Invitation to speak at conference  Asked to submit paper to edited volume or journal special issue  Referring is much lighter—if at all  An easier, less stressful path and I don’t have to put the work into submission and revision  I also publish monographs (average one every six years) and volumes of essays  I regularly publish with OUP one of the most prestigious