I submitted a philosophy of science (theoretical physics) paper on Bell's Theorem to a high ranking journal

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.

Thanks Veeky Forums

Other urls found in this thread:

vixra.org/abs/1302.0022
vixra.org/abs/1312.0173
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Yes. You don't get published by doing actually good work. You get published by kissing other people's asses.

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?

Are you a grad student? Ask a professor in your dept to help you with it and get them on as a second author

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?

It sounds like your paper is utter shit and the reviewer is just being polite.

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

>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.

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.

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?

Resubmit and cite the reviewers papers with an explanation of why they are bad

Unless you don't believe that they have a bias against you then go right ahead and submit to the same paper.

I do not believe they are inherently biased against me. Maybe just upset I did not cite them is all, there are very few people working in this area (hence the one reviewer) so I understand why they want the citations.

I will just revise and submit again, no big deal the paper will still have the same argument just a bit more of what they want.

post on arxiv and link it here

No thanks I did that once and everyone called me a retard, but then my paper was well received at a conference.

Thank you to everyone who answered with good advice. I was feeling a bit down, but now I will revise and try again.

Everyone feels a bit down from time to time and all we need is some support. I hope that when I come here with a mental breakdown you tell me nice things too :)

Has literally no one acknowledged the subject in 30 years? I agree with the reviewer--that's a tremendous gap, and you certainly must be able to at least acknowledge in passing something said in the last three decades.

>I submitted a philosophy of science (theoretical physics) paper on Bell's Theorem to a high ranking journal.
A philosophy journal? Because if you don't perform any experiments or cite any papers, it's not science and a science journal would be right to reject it.

does philosophy not have a reviewer response process? all the biology journals do

>undergraduate
HAHAHHAHhahAHAHAH thinking ANYONE gives a flying fuck what you have to say

T H I S
H
I
S

No, some people have. That is why I agreed with the previous poster that maybe it was a mistake to not include the more recent papers even if I did not personally find them substantive.

Yes, I submitted to the leading philosophy of science journal. I obviously cited other papers in the field as I said in a previous reply.

My specific paper did not have the reviewer response process. I only received one reviewer after 6 months. I believe this is due to it being a very niche subject in a very niche field (philosophy of science).

I have gotten this reply many times on Veeky Forums and I have even posted my real identity and credentials to dispel this myth that undergraduates can achieve nothing. I will just state that it is simply not true, and I encourage other undergraduates to not listen to people that say undergraduates are worthless.

na im a ~published~ undergrad and plenty of people have done great stuff in their undergrads, but do not even try to discredit the VAST majority of pseudo-intellectual undergrads who think theyre revolutionary geniuses
also
>posting your identity on Veeky Forums
are you a fucking madman?

The vast majority of graduate students are also pseudo-intellectuals. Professors too for that matter. I am not arguing that I myself am an intellectual or superior to the people I am speaking of, I am simply arguing that people should not be so doubtful and rude to undergraduates is all.

And maybe I am a madman, but a few people added me on LinkedIn and I gave them some advice on grant writing. Literally no negative repercussions to posting my identify, only positive.

Could you say which journal you submitted to? Or at least from what country it is?

except they did and only denied him because he didn't cite the right people in the right circles

Did i say worthless? I said no one gives a fuck.it doesnt matter how good the paper is, you arent a peer and therefore its very unlikely to be published and even if you do no one is going to read it

Lmao that is exactly the point you dip

Summarize your argument in paragraph or two. i'm curious about it since superdeterminism is such a strange, almost frightening idea.

Nah. Kill yourself.

Then why didn't you get a revise and resubmit?

I submitted to University of Chicago Philosophy of Science.

This may be true but it would be outside of my control.

Basically I use energy of information theory (lots of research on that) to argue against super determinism. There is a possibility in the future the theory I present could be experimentally tested. While the other philosophers were using logic and math arguments I used a measureable physical argument.

This was not the OP. But thanks for defending me.

I already said this was what I was going to do haha.

>I already said this was what I was going to do haha
Revise and resubmit is a decision they make. What is the exact verdict you got?

>What should I do?
Rev up those dick sucking lips and start kissing asses bro

Link your linkedin?

>completely novel argument against superdeterminism
Upload the PDF somewhere with your name on it, pass the link around (here is good). You're submitting to the virgin journal. Learn to into the chad self-publishing.

Yeah I guess I will have to.
I would prefer not to link it again, but if you really need to contact me I can create an email address. Let me know you will probably not even read this haha!
This may not be a bad idea, I have always felt the criticism from Veeky Forums is actually decent. Other than the real losers who freak out and have zero constructive things to say and just call you retarded.

>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.

That is the journal's prerogative but what really gets me angry is when the scientists doing science use the status of publishers publishing publications as a proxy for the real status of the state of the art in science. Who cares if they didn't publish me for a good reason or not? My discovery has been discovered for a long time and as long as the other scientists keep looking to the publishers instead of at my result is as disdainful as they will be to the scientists that replace them.

FYI, if you are a professional scientist and wrote your name on any invalid criticism of my research or drew any fallacious conclusions from my writing and then attributed your own fallacious reasoning to me then you should get your affairs in order. I plan to deal with you severely.

Just so everyone knows, this is not me, the OP.

You sound very disgruntled. Just keep trying or enter industry if it upsets you. I will be going directly into industry myself, I just wanted to submit to at least one journal (not research comps or conventions which I have done) before leaving academia.

If it makes you this upset it isn't worth it. Just the OPs dumb advice.

>I mean, if you don't even do that then your paper is just masturbation material for yourself.

implying papers can't contain new ideas or original insights and no recent citations such as

>Modified Spacetime Geometry Addresses Dark Energy, Penrose's Entropy Dilemma, Baryon Asymmetry, Inflation and Matter Anisotropy
>vixra.org/abs/1302.0022

or this other topically related paper about Bell's Theorem

>On Bell's Inequality
>vixra.org/abs/1312.0173

If people have published stuff on the same topic in recent years, you should include a section on related work and discuss why you think it's weak / not substantive

Are you unable to read????

It's easy to be well received at academic conferences. Those are intellectual hug boxes where everybody only wants to make each other feel smart and special.
Doing actually good work is another problem entirely

>he fell for the "science is le dispassionate search for truth" meme

How the fuck do you even have time to write journal articles as an undergrad. Are you doing a fulltime degree or did you drop some units for more free time?

Why do you publish as philosophy? Superdeterminism is a hypothetical model of reality, its criticism belongs to science just fine, philosophy is not supposed to criticize scientific model with hard science.

Actually I took around 21 credits per semester. Finished all my major courses and a minor. I will only have 3 credits my last semester, unfortunately I didn't do enough to graduate early.

Thanks for the advice, I will revise my work according to reviewers suggestions.

You realise I have no idea what that means because different countries and different unis have credits meaning different things right? Where I went 1 credit = 1+ hour of study. 21 credits would only be two subjects.

The rest of your post implies you did more than usual. Where did you find the time for working on papers too?

I took 5-6 classes per semester which is more than normal. If you are asking how I have the time to do it I don't really have an answer.

Basically I utilize every hour I am awake for either work, research, or business.

Time management I guess is the answer?

Usually in the US, 1 credit = 1 hour of lecture + 3 estimated hours of study

So 21 credits means 5-7 classes

Post linkedin