I submitted a philosophy of science (theoretical physics) paper on Bell's Theorem to a high ranking journal.
It took them about 6 months to review the paper and it received only one reviewer.
The reviewer and editor said the paper presented a completely novel argument against superdeterminism but the reviewer felt that since I did not use any recent papers in my citations it should be rejected.
I am suspicious the single reviewer was the expert in the field and they were mad about me not using their papers, but I did not like the arguments used.
Is this the typical process in academia? It makes me not want to bother writing another paper.
Yes. You don't get published by doing actually good work. You get published by kissing other people's asses.
Isaiah Thomas
What should I do? The paper is pretty interesting and I was hoping it would have impact in a few other fields as well.
Should I ask for reconsideration or submit elsewhere?
Jaxson Roberts
Are you a grad student? Ask a professor in your dept to help you with it and get them on as a second author
Camden Green
No I am an undergraduate.
I wrote this paper and a professor said it was not his field but encouraged me to publish it because it was a new idea.
Should I just put it on archive or something?
Evan Jackson
It sounds like your paper is utter shit and the reviewer is just being polite.
Parker Anderson
Yeah, no reputable journal is going to accept an undergrad's paper if it doesn't have a prof also as an author
I'd look into undergrad philosophy journals before archiving it
Henry Gonzalez
>no citations Dude, the least you could do if you have such a great argument is go over the most recent related papers that perhaps argue for superdeterminism and examine those arguments and contradict them using your own.
I mean, if you don't even do that then your paper is just masturbation material for yourself. You are supposed to build on top of the knowledge we already have, not just bring your recently pooped stool to the party and tell us: this is important, please read.
The reviewer made you a favor here (though taking 6 months is rude). All you have to do now is review the literature, see what are the most influential papers about the topic and then include a discussion of those papers in your paper to highlight why your argument is better.
Nathaniel Roberts
The paper has around 25 citations, just none from particularly recent.
The topic was very well discussed in the 1980s but then dropped off for a long time. I mainly address 1980s papers rather than 1990s and 2000s.
Samuel Taylor
Other than that I believe you are correct I can address more recent arguments. However, should I submit to the same journal again? Or is that frowned upon?
