First, a confession. The title of this post is chosen partly just to get people to read. But I promise, it isn't entirely gratuitous. So bear with me.
Second, another confession. I have a fetish for numbers. I like prime number in particular. (So I'm pleased that this is the 401st entry on Prosblogion insofar as 401 is itself prime.) I recently became aware of a survey about a survey that Brian Weatherson ran about the rankings of philosophy journals. The full results can be found here. In looking at the results, a few things stood out to me regarding the philosophy of religion journals.
First, related to comments made by Jeremy Pierce and Andrei Buckareff in the discussion on Leiter's blog about the recent ESF ranking of philosophy journals, neither Philo, Philosophia Christi, Religous Studies, nor Sophia are mentioned in the ESF rankings--only Faith and Philosophy and the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. Of these, only F&P, IJPR and RS are in the results from Weatherson's survey. Here is the data on these three from that survey (you'll have to go in to the permalink for this post to see the whole picture--click here):
There are a number of things that I find interesting about these scores. First, I was quite surprised to see F&P ranked the lowest of these three in terms of quality.
Second, I was surprised by the rather sizable gap in terms of how people over 40 evaluated IJPR and RS compared with those under 40.
Third, it didn't really surprise me to see students rank IJPR over F&P, and for faculty to rank F&P higher than did students.
But what really caught my eye was that both IJPR and RS scored a 0 with females (see, I made good on my promise!). I'm guessing that this is because no females evaluated those two journals, though I can't be sure on the basis of the available data.
I found this data interesting. But then again, I also know the difference between twin primes, cousin primes and sexy primes (oh yes, there are such things as sexy primes!).
Thanks for posting this Kevin. I got into philosophy of religion somewhat late. I remember asking lots of philosophers of religion what they thought were the best journals to publish in, since I didn't have a clue. It's anecdotal, of course, but most thought RS was the best with IJPR and FP about equal. But now I find it impossible to rank them. They're all very good, and publish lots of excellent papers. Philo hasn't been around long enough, yet, but like Sophia, lots of big players publish there.
Kevin, although Religious Studies and Philosophia Christi don't figure on ESF's list of philosophy journals, as someone on Leiter's blog pointed out, they are on the list of Religious Studies/Theology journals - see here:
http://www.esf.org/research-areas/humanities/activities/research-infrastructures/faq-sheet/scope-initial-lists.html
On the Religious Studies/Theology List, IJPR and Religious Studies are both A-rated. Philosophia Christi and Sophia are both rated a B. A-rated is judged to 'make the discipline' and B is judged to have a good reputation among researchers in different countries. C-rating is for 'other European journals', the idea being, I think, that the complete list will draw attention to the wide range of journals published in Europe.
It would be interesting to know how many professional philosophers of religion were among those surveyed. I suspect that F&P would be the clear favorite among those in the field.
Now come the anonymous editor's comments lobbying for journals. . .;-)
It's still a little strange that F&P and IJPR would be included with philosophy, while PC and Philo would count as theology journals. The acceptance standards for PC (and I assume Philo, but I'm not very familiar with that journal) are presumably much lower than for F&P and IJPR. But the kind of content is the same. So why would one count as philosophy and not the other?
It's especially strange for PC, since that's produced by an organization that's affiliated with a sister theology organization with its own theology journal. PC is explicitly a philosophy journal in contrast.
Isn't Religious Studies a broader journal that includes more than just philosophy?
Ben,
You're right. Perhaps I shouldn't, but I tend to think of 'religious studies' journals very differently than I do philosophy of religion journals. And I tend to think of Religious Studies as the latter rather than the former.
Overseas,
With respect to the first part of your comment, I don't know. The data doesn't give this information. With regard to the second, I suspect that you are correct. The same line of thought was one of the reasons behind my 'third' reflection above.
Anon,
I'm not sure what you're getting at. I don't see 'overseas' listed, either by pseudonym or actual name, as an editor of F&P. Furthermore, it doesn't seem to me that the comment above is 'lobbying' at all--rather, it strikes me as a reasonably (and accurate, on the whole) description.
Jeremy,
I'm not sure the acceptance standards for PC are all that much lower. I doubt they are, but I've never sent them anything. In any case, someone must know. I do know that Philo had (under Quentin Smith) a very involved system for refereeing articles. Took a long time to hear from them. I don't know if things have/will changed with P. Draper. But it is just bizarre that Philo would count as theology; they aim primarily to defend (various forms of)naturalism.
Let me ask a different question. If you had a really good philosophy of religion paper suitable for F&P or IJPR or, say, APQ, would you select the specialized journal or the general journal to send it first? Perhaps it is mistaken, but APQ seems the better place to send it, given those choices. But I'm curious about how others make these decisions. In some cases it just seems obvious: if you the choices are Phil. Studies or IJPR or FP, then clearly (to my mind) Phil. Studies.
According to the Directory of American Philosophers (2002-2003) and International Directory of Philosophy and Philosophers (2001-2002), the acceptance rates for the journals mentioned are as follows:
F&P: no % listed
IJPR: 15%
Philo: no % listed
PC: no % listed
RS: 25%
Sophia: not in the volumes
I don't know if the newer editions contain the missing info (these are the newest editions my department has). It would be helpful to know how the other 4 journals compare.
Mike,
Great question. I've tended to send my philosophy of religion papers to philosophy of religion journals, and my free will/metaphysics papers to the more general journals. But part of this is because I was trying to publish in as wide a selection of journals as possible. I am planning on sending a philosophy of religon paper to Phil Quart, as part of their 'Aspects of Theism' essay competition.
I do think that you're probably right that, in general, PS or APQ are better first choices than the narrower journals for reasons dealing with how the guild thinks of such things. But perhaps I'm wrong. And if I'm not, I should start following my own recommendation!
Kevin,
Phil. Quarterly is, needless to say, great. I had forgotten about that competition which (I think) PQ advertised a while back (no?). I think it is an excellent idea to get philosophy of religion papers in good general journals, if possible. It is a great way to show that good philosophy of religion papers are as good as papers in any other area. There still seems to me to be this bias. I don't think I'm misperceiving that, but I'd be happy to learn I'm wrong about it.
Mike, it's hard to give a good answer your question. I suspect that many tenure committees would view a publication in APQ as "better" than a publication in F&P or IJPR. (I wonder whether this is true in other subfields. For example, would many tenure committees consider a publication in APQ to be better than a publication in Ethics or the Journal of the History of Philosophy?) So someone in my shoes--my shoes, like me, are untenured--has pretty strong motivation to send their work to a good general journal instead of a great PR journal like F&P.
If you leave aside those kinds of considerations, my own strong preference for a paper of mine in PR that I really liked would be to get it into F&P. I think it's the best PR journal (and I'm quite puzzled by the results of Weatherson's survey!).
On the other hand, it might be that my response here ignores the thrust of your question, since you're asking about papers that are "suitable" for APQ. My own work in philosophy of religion has tended to be what might be called "Christian philosophy," that would leave the non-religious reader quite cold. (It probably leaves many religious readers cold, too.) Maybe the papers I have in mind just aren't "suitable" for APQ. I admit I'd make an exception to my "send it to F&P first" rule if I were writing something that I thought had a more general interest. For example, if I came up with a compelling new argument for God's existence, then I'd send the paper to Nous, because I'd want _everyone_ to read it.
However, I'd still want to say that papers that are more general in that sense aren't necessarily the best or most important papers in PR, and I don't think it's quite right to think of papers in general journals "making the discipline" of PR. Since the ESF ranking supposedly ranks journals "A" if they "make the discipline," then it seems obvious that F&P should be an A.
Just as a reminder, information on the Phil Quarterly competition can be found here:
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~pq/2007poster.pdf
I think that you're right that there still is a bias; in fact, I have personal confirmation that this is true of at least some in the profession. But I think that the bias is less widespread than in the past.
p. toner,
If your paper is in Christian philosophy of religion (by which I mean that you feel free to use assumption from Christian tradition) then it definitely won't find its way to a general journal. But I don't think papers like that (and we probably disagree on this point) are the best PR papers. The philosophy of religion papers I prefer are more philosophy than religion. Because they are philosophy, they are often publishable in the best general journals. Consider for instance Ted Guleserian's 'Modal argument from evil' in Nous. Just a great paper, I think, and unmistakeably in philosophy of religion. That's what I would call a great philosophy of religion paper. And Nous is (again, in my view) much better--and not just more popular--than F&P or the other PR journals.
To answer your other question, I don't think APQ is better than Ethics, nor do I know anyone who does. But Ethics is clearly an A journal. I don't think any of the philosophy of religion journals are A journals. Though I do think that F&P and IJPR are getting close to that level. The work it takes to get a paper in shape for Phil. Studies or Australasian, for instance, clearly exceeds what it takes to get a paper in shape for the good PR places. I can't imagine I'd get much argument with that. That's a good indication that you're dealing with an A journal.
Regarding Jeremy's comment about Religious Studies publishing, well, theology and religious studies papers in addition to philosophy of religion, to my knowledge, this is not the case. RS publishes papers in philosophy of religion, including philosophical theology. Look at their editorial board, they are all philosophers (although some are affiliated with departments of religion and/or theology). RS, like IJPR, is just a POR journal. In fact, look at the subtitle, "An International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion". It doesn't say that it is devoted to publishing papers in any other area. And I have never seen non-philosophical papers in there, and I have been a regular reader of for more than ten years.
Maybe I was just assuming from the title that it's a broader journal. I've read papers that have been published in it, but I don't think I've ever held a copy in my hand.
I also don't recall seeing a non-philosophy paper in Religious Studies. Though, Peter Byrne (editor, RS) is in the Religious Studies Department at KCL.
RS was originally intended to be a journal containing more than phil of religion, and there are some such articles, I think, in its earliest numbers. But the focus swiftly changed. The current editorial board has discussed changing the name, I think, but felt that historical continuity trumped other considerations.
I think that the ESF rankings are, at best, a guide to which journals are more prestigious, prestige being a property that exists insofar as it is perceived to exist. So I suppose they are of most use for people applying for jobs in Europe who want to know which journals are more likely to impress hiring committees.
What emerges, I think, is that people on the Theology/Religious Studies committee value the Philosophy of Religion journals more than the Philosophy Committee did. So people in Religious Studies/Theology departments think that good work in Philosophy of Religion makes the discipline, whereas those in Philosophy departments think of Philosophy of Religion as a relatively unimportant sub-discipline. As has been noted, the philosophy committee tended to rate logic journals highly - the implication being that logic is a discipline all philosophers need to know about, but not so philosophy of religion.
I guess I would rank F&P and RS first, and then IJPR a distant second, in part on the basis of the articles from me that IJPR has been willing to publish. :-)
Two brief replies to Mike's post of a couple of weeks ago:
First, just to be clear, I did not mean to imply that Nous is just more popular than Faith and Philosophy. As much as I like the latter journal, I do recognize that Nous is better. I'm not convinced that APQ, or Ratio, or PPQ, or some of the other good general journals are better than F&P. But I don't need to be convinced that Nous is better.
Second, I'm not sure I agree that it takes a great deal more work to get a paper in shape for Phil Studies than for F&P. But I'm basing that just on my own relatively limited experience with these journals. But if I granted your point for the sake of discussion, I'd still want to distinguish between Phil Studies or AustralasianJP on the one hand, and the kinds of journals I mentioned just above on the other hand. Maybe I'm just wrong about this, but I'd have put APQ a full step below AJP. (The Weatherson survey has them at 5.7 vs. 7.5, respectively, so I don't think it's completely off the wall for me to make such a claim.) So, granting for the sake of discussion that a PR publication in AJP
(and, a fortiori, Nous or the Phil Review) is better than a PR publication in F&P, does the same hold true of a publication in APQ? Or Ratio?
I don't know much about Ratio, though what I hear is good. I put, in no particular order, PS, AJP, APQ, PPQ, PR, JP, Nous, PPR and few others all around the best analytic journals. I don't think that's idiosyncratic. I would not put F&P anywhere near that category, thugh I think it's a very good journal. So we just disagree about that.
Patrick,
We might reach some agreement if I make clear that I don't think specialist journals in any other field are as good as the best analytic journals, either. I think Theory and Decision is excellent too, but like F&P, it publishes highly specialized material and so I don't think it's in the same category. Similarly for the best in applied ethics and so on. I obviously should have added Analysis to the best analytic journals. In any case, there is so much that is good in so many areas in these journals that I don't think specialist journals compare very well. I'm not in the least denying that F&P, Religious Studies or IJPR are not excellent in their specialization.
Mike,
You said, "I'm not in the least denying that F&P, Religious Studies or IJPR are not excellent in their specialization." Did you mean "I'm not in the least denying that ... are excellent in their specialization"? The former implies that the journals are, in fact, not excellent. Perhaps you meant that. After all, the unwarranted use of superlatives is rampant these days.
Yes, Andrei. I was torn between going back to correct it and not wanting to post three consecutive times. Anyway, thanks.