Note by author, 8/17/2022. This really, really needs to be updated. In the five years since publication of this post, I can say that BBR and Tyndale are still awesome for feedback, JETS is getting better, but TJ, if anything, is getting worse. Regarding my last rejection by TJ (which was subsequently accepted by a different journal), the "feedback" could have been almost cut and pasted onto any other rejection.
For the best journals, blind peer review is key. This means that a paper is sent anonymously to peer-reviewers, without the author knowing who they are and vice versa. This virtually eliminates favoritism, and in theory allows authors to make unbiased decisions based on the quality of the article and its contribution to scholarship.
Blind peer-review often provides the opportunity for the scholars (or their grad assistants, in some cases!) to give feedback--feedback that may even lead to the article being improved and published in another journal despite being initially rejected (this has happened to me). For us minor-leaguers, such feedback is incredibly valuable, and even bona fide scholars would do well to take notice (for a fascinating account of how Albert Einstein himself would have benefitted from peer-review feedback, see this article in Physics Today).
Now, as a service to the educational community, I'm giving you my own perspective on which journals in biblical studies give the best feedback. This will be based solely on my personal experience (and only includes journals I've submitted papers to), and may not be totally fair to some journals (e.g., if I only submitted a paper one time, 8 years ago). So keep that in mind. I welcome personal reports from other fledging writers like myself.
Also, for the record, I've submitted a paper a total of 19 times (some of those are the same paper submitted to a different journal after rejection), and 6 of those times the paper has been accepted for publication [Author's note: this was 5 years ago. I need to update this]. So basically I'm batting .316. Not sure if that's good, bad, or totally average! I have yet to be published in a clear tier-1 journal, though I have a couple of high tier-2 journals.
Note: in none of these cases should this be taken as a criticism of the journals under discussion (or "sour grapes" on my part). They have good reasons for rejecting the papers they do. Having said that, there is some subjectivity in journals, as evidence by the fact that in two cases I have had papers rejected by one journal and then published by another journal on an equal tier. Still, I gladly acknowledge that I am not a real scholar, and no doubt sometimes my writing is just not up to the level of the journals I'm submitting to. Also, obviously a journal has the right to not offer feedback, if the editors so desire. My point is simply to help those budding scholars that wish to improve their writing via feedback.
Now, here we go: To start us out, I will acknowledge Tyndale Bulletin as the greatest journal for feedback, in my humble-but-correct opinion. I have yet to be published there (it's a career goal of mine), but each time I've submitted a paper I've received feed back that helped improve it. One of those rejected papers is about to come out in another tier-2 journal, and it was no doubt improved via the feedback I received from the first reviewers in TynB. So Tyndale Bulletin is the clear winner, in my opinion.
From tier-1 journals, Journal of Biblical Literature is the winner. The feedback was extensive, clear, relevant, courteous, and filled two whole pages (I received a "revise and resubmit" from them: still not sure if I'll do that or revise for another journal). In contrast, New Testament Studies gave me a short paragraph, basically "your writing and research were good, but the reviewers were unconvinced by your thesis." Novum Testamentum gave no feedback, only rejection. Those are the only three tier-1 journals I've had the guts to submit a paper to.
Trinity Journal is a bit of a mystery to me. The first two times I submitted a paper I received some feedback from their committee (even though the paper was rejected); the latest submission (which is being published elsewhere), for all practical purposes I received no feedback. Still, it's a prestigious enough evangelical journal that I'll probably try again some day, but only if I feel my paper is a really good fit. Also, "review by committee" is a bit tough to get by unscathed (and TJ only publishes twice a year, which probably makes it tougher to get published by them. Kudos to those who have!)
If TJ is my "unlucky" journal so far, Bulletin for Biblical Research is my "lucky" journal. Both papers I've submitted to them have been published, and both times with very good, constructive feedback which, without a doubt, made the paper better. Frankly, for young aspiring scholars, I would recommend BBR as one of the best journals to submit your initial paper to (as long as its more in the realm of NT/OT studies than theology per se).
Let me start this next paragraph with a disclaimer: JETS is one of the two top evangelical journals (the other being TynB), and well-worth trying to publish in. Having said that, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society has given me virtually no feedback, regardless of being accepted or rejected (I've had one paper published with them, not counting my rejoinder to a response to my article, and two papers rejected); however, I've seen indication that this might be changing for the better. Similarly, Westminster Theological Journal, in my sole attempt, gave me no feedback, although it's obviously a journal worth publishing in.
I have never received what I would consider "mean" feedback. However, Journal of Theological Interpretation gave me probably the toughest feedback I've encountered; I think I seriously misunderstood what sort of paper would be a good fit with them, so this is not to cast them in a negative light, but it was definitely hard to swallow! (Also, I clearly adopted a too casual style; I need to watch out for that).
Filelogia Neotestamentaria published a paper of mine, but did not give feedback (this was about 6 years ago, though). I submitted a paper to Word&World in a student competition about 7 years ago; it was rejected, with no feedback, but I did get a free year's subscription!
Bibliotheca Sacra, obviously a very prestigious journal worth publishing in, is also somewhat of a mystery to me. I submitted a paper that directly dealt with a topic covered before in the journal, yet significantly expanded the discussion, and was told the paper was not a good fit for the journal, with no other feedback. They did, however, encourage me to submit again to the journal in the future. I honestly don't know what to make of that: does this mean they liked my writing but not my topic? Or is that simply what they say to all writers that show at least a minimum competency in writing? Regardless, I'll probably submit again sometime, but only after making sure my article is a really good fit. (And Kudos to my friend, you know who you are, who has a forthcoming paper with BibSac!)
The Bible Translator, which accepted a paper of mine within the past few months (after two revisions), gave excellent feedback. In fact, one of the two reviewers actually suggested an avenue of research that I had not considered before, and this immensely improved my paper. Kudos and thanks to BT's anonymous peer-reviewers!
Finally, I had the privilege of publishing a paper in Science & Christian Belief (put out by the Victoria Institute), and received excellent feedback (interestingly, one of the reviewers was clearly a scientist, and the other was clearly a philosopher). I spent about 12 hours revising that paper for publication, but it was worth it! (Note: I had to try to change my spelling to British spelling for S&CB; not sure how successful I was!)
So there you have it: my own limited experience on which journals have provided helpful feedback. Now, dear young doctoral student or fledgling scholar, go out and submit your papers! (And feel free to share your experiences in the comments, so long as you are courteous and fair, with no "sour grapes")
I agree; I received the most helpful feedback from Tyndale Bulletin!
ReplyDeleteDr. Himes, I appreciate your blog, really good info.
ReplyDeleteI wrote a paper on Simple Apposition in Koine Greek, the focus is on the NT but offers extensive research from other period works.
The conclusion of my paper is rather significant and original. As it asserts and provides strong evidence that Luke’s Genealogy is being mistranslated, which is why it doesn’t match Matthews. It also refutes Wallace’s rule that states simple apposition can only occur between two substantives in the same case. I provide provable examples.
I don’t have a PHD, so I am concerned about not being taken seriously, but I think my paper speaks for itself.
A couple of questions. I have never submitted to a journal.
1. What would you say is the order of Journals in which it would be best to submit to?
2. Since the research data is extensive almost 3,000 examples, I decided to put the data on a web site and reference it in the paper to keep the paper shorter, about 14 pages. I only put my strongest examples that most prove my point in the paper. Is this the best strategy?
3. Would tier one journals even consider a paper from someone without a PHD.
I appreciate any feedback.
Hi, Seth, good to hear from you.
Delete1. I think Filologia Neotestamentaria (https://www.bsw.org/filologia-neotestamentaria/) is the best place to start, with any paper devoted to an aspect of biblical Greek grammar. Their feedback is not the best, but the fact that they specialize in Biblical Greek grammar, syntax, discourse analysis, and textual criticism, makes them a good choice for a technical paper like that. Next after that that, I would suggest Tyndale Bulletin (since BBR requires a letter of approval from a doctoral advisor), which gives really good feedback from key scholars and occasionally publishes articles of a technical nature on Greek grammar.
2. However, make sure your paper is sufficiently narrow. The genealogy in Luke combined with simple apposition might be a bit overly broad, unless the former is a discussion that stems naturally from the later, in which case it might work. If so, however, make sure you've read up on all of the top commentaries on Luke, especially the exegetical ones, as well as recent literature on Luke's genealogy in the journals (e.g., I think it was Andrew Steinmann that recently had an article in JETS discussing the second "Cainan" in Luke compared to the Genesis genealogy). Make sure your research has taken into account the significant scholarly work from the past decade.
3. If submitting to a journal, I would generally make sure you don't exceed 8,000 words (some journals allow higher), so using only the best examples may be the best strategy. Try to narrow it down to the 1st century Koine. If at all possible. If you need to narrow it even further, proving your point from the papyri as opposed to, say, Plutarch, would be better, if you have access to the papyri.
4. When submitting to a journal, I would not have anything online that the article references, b/c it raises issues of copyright, etc. A journal owns your paper once they accept it and you give the final authorization, so you need special permission to duplicate anything in it online. In rare cases a journal article may reference a website which provides further information, but this is very rare and probably can only occur with special permission. You could, perhaps, simply keep the raw data (all the references to biblical and extra-biblical citations, with some bare bones comments about why this is significant), but that's about the most I'd recommend doing for now if you wish to publish in a journal.
5. My suggestion would be, don't phrase your paper as the ultimate definitive answer (that would take a dissertation-sized discussion), but rather an introduction to a reexamination of some of the key issues in light of extra-Biblical data. Few would be interested in wading through too many examples in a journal article, but all you need, in theory, is a few dozen, perhaps, within a narrow field (e.g., first century papyri), to make your point.
In other words, if you can make your point simply with 1st century Koine references, even a narrow slice of that, I think most people would be satisfied.
6. I think most tier-one journals would accept a paper from a non-phd. Of those I've submitted to, I've never seen anything prohibiting it. However, make sure you read "guidelines for submission" for each journal you are considering submitting to. I know some journals, such as BBR, now require a letter of approval from the author's current phd advisor, but I that seems to be fairly rare. I've seen examples of people with just a master's degree publish in respectable journals, though it's certainly more rare.
Blessings,
Paul Himes