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A reader calls to my attention the policy at Mind: “No more than one article may be submitted by any corresponding author during any twelve-month period.” This apparently includes articles that get desk-rejected fairly quickly.
I can understand the reasons for such a policy, but I wonder (1) whether readers think they are justified? and (2) how common are such policies? Do other journals have them?
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Philosophical Review has the same policy: “Only one submission per corresponding author is allowed at a time, and only one submission per twelve months”.
Nous and PPR don’t have such a policy (at least not that I’m aware of), although as it well known they do have periods in which submission for new manuscripts are closed (as now does AJP and JPhil also, although these look to be more ad-hoc than the familiar Nous/PPR restrictions).
I assume these different policies broadly serve the same function, namely to restrict the sheer volume of submissions ‘under review’ at any one given time to allow editorial teams to work through massive backlogs.
I don’t have particularly strong views on whether such practices are justified. They seem prudentially appropriate in terms of allowing those journals to keep wait times for decisions within reasonable timeframes. Questioning if such practices are ‘moral’ seems confused at best.
I guess if one were fixated on publishing in those particular venues and only those venues it might be somewhat frustrating. But there are a sufficient number of alternative great venues to publish, such that if one really found such policies objectionable one could just submit elsewhere.
Yes, as Jonathan Mitchell says above, PhilReview has the same policy, and JPhil has a particular submissions window. I’m not aware of the AJP having a submissions window, but it does restrict you to one submission at a time, and no more than two in twelve months. I’ve only encountered these policies at top generalist journals.
I think it’s fine, though I find the submissions windows mildly annoying, because they don’t usually line up well with my paper pipeline.
As others have said, Phil. Review has the same policy. I think it’s a reasonable pragmatic solution to the problem of being flooded with submissions. In particular, I suspect there could be a significant volume of submissions at these journals that are just “Hail Mary” submissions, and this policy deters that kind of submission. Having just had a desk rejection from a journal (not Mind or Phil Review) on an article that had been sent out to referees at several other journals, I’m cognizant of the fact that one could just get the wrong editor on the wrong day and get an undeserved desk rejection, and then for these journals you’re locked out for a full year, but I don’t think that unfortunate possibility undermines the justification for the journals trying to reduce excessive submissions.
I think that these restrictions on submissions, both those at Mind, Phil Review, etc. and those at Nous or PPR, mainly reflect an unwillingness on the part of these journals to scale up their processes to handle the large numbers of submissions that they would otherwise receive. I hugely respect the work of the editors of leading journals, but these restrictions are a disservice to the profession.
Philosophy of Science also has a policy like this.
Faith & Philosophy has such a policy as well, limiting submissions to two per calendar year. The rationale is the one noted by others, to prevent the manuscript dumping that some authors were doing.
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