Getting Work Published In Studies In Philosophy And Social Science
Most people approaching this journal have already spent years reading it before they ever hit submit. That's the right instinct. It's not the kind of venue where you can waltz in with a half-baked paper and expect a polite desk rejection. I've seen it happen, and I've been on the other side of that desk too. It's a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Brill, affiliated with the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion. The scope sits at the intersection of philosophical inquiry and social scientific analysis, covering topics like philosophy of religion, social theory, ethics, political philosophy, and the methodology of social science. It's not a generalist philosophy journal. It's not a generalist social science journal either. The niche is deliberate and it shows in what gets accepted. The journal publishes original research articles, occasional shorter notes, and book reviews. Annual volume schedule is steady, not rapid. Expect a typical submission-to-first-decision timeline of around four to seven months if the paper survives initial screening. That's longer than you might want, but it's standard for journals in this space where editors tend to send papers out to multiple reviewers and wait for reluctant academics to respond.
One thing beginners get wrong: this is not a journal that prioritizes novelty for its own sake. It values careful, well-argued work that engages seriously with existing literature. A clever argument that skips over the secondary sources will get noticed for the wrong reasons. I once reviewed a paper that spent 4,000 words rehashing debates between Habermas and Rawls without engaging with any of the recent criticism either of them had attracted since the turn of the millennium. The editor's response was one word: "No." Not even a full rejection letter. Just a note that said the paper missed the current state of play entirely.
How To Approach Submission
Start by reading three issues back-to-back. Not a selection of articles you happen to like. Three consecutive issues. You need to understand the editorial temperament, the kinds of arguments that land, and the prose style that's acceptable. Philosophy journals vary enormously in this regard. Some prefer dense, technical writing. Others want accessibility. Studies In Philosophy And Social Science leans toward clear but rigorous argumentation. You can be sophisticated without being obscure, but you cannot be vague and hope to get through. When you write your manuscript, make sure the thesis is defensible in roughly 250 words or fewer. Editors and reviewers will look for this early. If they can't identify your core claim within the first few pages, they assume you don't have one. I've submitted papers where I spent two weeks trimming my introduction because my thesis statement was buried under three paragraphs of contextual padding. It made the paper stronger. The reviewer comments on the revised version specifically praised the clarity of the argument's framing. Cover letters matter more than people think. Yours should be one page maximum. State what the paper argues, why it matters to the journal's readership, and confirm it's not under consideration elsewhere. Nothing burns bridges faster than a cover letter that reads like a sales pitch or, worse, that suggests the editor should already know why your paper is important without reading it.
Get the Full Details
A Specific Problem I Encountered
About five years ago, I submitted a paper that drew heavily on phenomenological methods applied to social research on religious belief formation. The referees loved the philosophical rigor but flagged one issue that took me three weeks to resolve. One reviewer argued that my engagement with empirical social science literature was selective in a way that undermined the conclusions. Specifically, I was citing survey data from the European Values Study but ignoring a cluster of methodological critiques that had appeared in the same period in journals like Sociology of Religion and Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. The fix wasn't to rewrite the paper. It was to add a dedicated section addressing those methodological objections head-on and explaining why my framework still held. That added about 1,800 words and required me to read roughly forty additional sources. The second round of review was smoother because I'd already answered the hardest objection before they could escalate it. Papers that get rejected on this kind of grounds usually do so because the author treats the referee's criticism as optional commentary rather than a structural problem. Another common failure point: authors who treat "social science" as interchangeable with "survey research." The journal publishes work that engages with qualitative methods, ethnography, historical analysis, and theoretical social science just as readily. If your paper is purely quantitative but doesn't engage with the philosophical implications of its methodology, it will feel out of place. Conversely, a purely philosophical paper that ignores the actual practices of social scientists risks being too abstract for this venue.
What This Journal Does Not Want
It does not want parameter-heavy papers that assume the reader already has a PhD in statistics. It does not want papers that use philosophy as decorative framing for what is essentially a policy brief. It does not want papers that cite exclusively Anglo-American literature while claiming to address continental or global topics. The last one is a real problem I see repeatedly. Authors will write about "global perspectives on secularization" and then cite only twelve sources, all from UK or US universities. Reviewers in this field notice. Also, don't submit a paper that's really just a literature review dressed up as an argument. The journal publishes the occasional survey article, but those are typically invited. A standalone literature review without a strong interpretive thesis will not pass initial screening, regardless of how thorough it is.
Pragmatic Details
Submission is through Brill's online portal. You'll need to provide a structured abstract of about 200 words, keywords, and author biographies. Formatting follows the Chicago Manual of Style, notes-bibliography system. Footnotes are preferred over endnotes. Tables and figures should be embedded in the text file with captions ready for typesetting. The journal is hybrid open access. You can publish traditionally and subscribers access the content, or you can pay an APC to make your article open. There's no requirement to go OA. If cost is a concern, the traditional route is perfectly fine and doesn't affect review quality. Revision cycles typically allow one major revision. If you're asked to revise, take it seriously. I've seen authors who submitted a revised paper with only minor word changes and wondered why it was rejected. A major revision request is not a soft acceptance. It's an invitation to prove you can handle substantive criticism. Address every point, even the ones you disagree with. A polite disagreement with evidence is better than silence on a referee's concern.
If your paper gets rejected, you can sometimes resubmit a substantially revised version. Check with the editor first. A direct resubmission without asking looks like you didn't take the rejection seriously. The acceptance rate for this journal is competitive but not absurdly low. Papers that fail usually fail on scope mismatch or insufficient engagement with the relevant conversation, not on pure quality. The most practical advice I can offer is to treat the editorial process as a collaboration rather than a hurdle. Editors at this journal are working scholars who want to publish good work. They'll tell you what's wrong if you give them a paper worth fixing. The papers that stall are the ones where the author treats feedback as an inconvenience rather than information.
