Concerns Over the Journal of Philosophy’s Reporting
There are several issues with how the Journal of Philosophy has handled reporting, and while some have attempted to defend it, I find those justifications quite lacking—though I get where they’re coming from. It’s pretty embarrassing for a journal to accept only one article over six months, even if it eventually takes more submissions throughout the year. The fact that it can take anywhere from 9 to 18 months to process a submission indicates some systemic problems.
- A sluggish reviewer process
- Poor quality reviews for various reasons
- An outdated publication model with limited space
Here are a few suggestions to address these issues:
To tackle the space problem, why not accept more papers? For instance, if the journal shifted from allowing 20 papers a year to 100, it would benefit the field overall without damaging its reputation. If it received the same volume of submissions in the latter half of 2025 as in the first, a 100-paper acceptance results in a 12.5% acceptance rate. That doesn’t indicate a non-selective journal at all.
I can already hear the counterargument: “But there isn’t enough room for 100 articles in the hard copy!” Perhaps that’s true, but maybe only the 20 “best” papers need to be in the print version. The hard copy could serve as a secondary badge of prestige, while the 80 other accepted pieces could still be showcased online in one of the leading journals in the field.
If all journals adopted a two-tiered system like this—say, a fivefold increase in acceptances, with only some in print—it would significantly reduce the backlog of papers in peer review. Each rejected paper at the Journal of Philosophy is simply going to find its way to another journal, and the same goes for others.
What about the reviewers? This topic has been widely discussed. While some journals might consider compensating their reviewers, that could get pricey due to the sheer amount of reviewing that needs to be done. Maybe reviewers could earn “credits” from the journal, which they could use in various ways. For instance, these credits could speed up review times from editors or possibly even cover costs for Open Access publication for accepted articles. In essence, we need to make reviewing valuable to encourage thorough, quality assessments.
The worst approach would be to act as if everything is functioning as it should in the peer-review system. It’s clearly not, and change is necessary. I think we’ve already hit the iceberg, and it might be too late to steer clear, but we shouldn’t keep pretending everything’s fine while the ship is sinking. Action is required, and it needs to happen now.
