How to publish in leading social science journals

如何在一流社会科学杂志上发表文章

唐世平

【句句来自我的经验和教训】

(If you cannot understand what I write below, then this is not for you…)

[“leading social sciences journals”: I emphasize this because there are also quite many so-called international journals that are quite lousy.]

First and foremost, I want to make this very explicit:

Publishing in leading social sciences journals is perhaps more difficult, or at least, not easier, than publishing in leading natural sciences journals (e.g., Nature, Science). More often than not, the former demands much more in-depth learning of a broader literature, in addition to good English writing [Poorly written pieces will always get rejected, most of the time, since these journals get so many submissions, they do not have time for crappy pieces.], whereas the later depends more on your experimental results. The later also demands only limited mastery of English writing (unless you write a review article).

This is not to slight publishing in leading natural science journals, but to warn students from rushing to publish in leading social sciences journals. If you are not well prepared, you are likely to be beaten up again and again. [Some students want to rush to this kind of level: please do not….]

Here, I assume that you have read a lot and write decently well.

1.      Be persistent: you have to believe in your project, but with an open mind. Unless your project is of interest and importance to a somewhat wider audience (i.e., somewhat theoretical, if not very theoretical), there is really no need to spend so much time in writing in English.

2.      Before you submit anything to a journal, ask others to read and comment on them. Good social scientists do read them, and give you good (i.e., critical but constructive) comments. Their comments will prevent you from making some (if not many) stupid mistakes that will kill any chance of being reviewed or accepted.

3.      Pick you journals: you have to know your audience.

a)        Nowadays, every journal has a kind of niche and style, and you have to know them. You do not submit a postmodernist paper to say, Political Analysis.

b)        Also, unless you have a somewhat clear target, you do not even know how to write.

4.      You should use moderate tones when criticizing others:

a)        Not everyone is so open-minded that he/she can tolerate nasty comments against him/herself. Indeed, nasty comments may even upset a neutral bystander. When criticizing others, be modest and moderate!

b)        When you do criticize a big name scholar, ask the editors to not pick him/her as a reviewer. Everybody is egoistic, and big names tend to be more so. [Jervis and Mercer (…and myself) are exceptions, as far as I know.]

5.      Never expect too much: unless you are somebody like Jervis or Keohane [Here, you want to read Jervis’s preface to his 1997 System Effects! The real story behind this true story was that some journals reject Jervis’s submission with some not-so-nice comments!], do not expect your piece to be accepted outright.

a)        You should be grateful if your first version goes through the review process.

b)        It would be wonderful if you get a R&R (revise and resubmit).

c)        You have to thank God if you get an outright acceptance (I only get this once, so far).

d)        You should feel encouraged if you get a rejection with different opinions from the reviewers: if one or two of them like what you do, you can be 60-80% sure that your piece will be published sometime somewhere.

6.      If you get a rejection (or even R&R),

a)        Read the comments from the reviewers after 2-3 days so that you cool off your psychological resistance (and soothe your ego). It helps a lot!

b)        Revise, revise, and revise: there must be some comments that are helpful. Try to integrate them into your new version(s). Do not resubmit an essentially unchanged version to another journal: you can always improve.

7.      If you get a rejection and yet the two reviewers generally like your topic but desire better elaboration, you can ask the editors whether you can be given a R&R. Sometimes this will work (I have tried 4 times, and twice I got permissions to revise and then resubmit. One of the two pieces was the all-too-important piece “Foundational Paradigms”. BTW: I can even guess one of the four reviewers is a big-name philosopher, from the way he wrote his comments). Usually, this still requires substantial revisions. Of course, most journals do not allow that.

8. There are other things (e.g., logic) you need to be good at: but it is not my responsibility to teach them.