In most schools, PhD admissions are mostly decided by the profs you'd be working for, and they are well-equipped to judge papers on their contents, not where th

In most schools, PhD admissions are mostly decided by the profs you'd be working for, and they are well-equipped to judge papers on their contents, not where they're published. They may also assign papers to their grad students (your future colleagues) to read and rank. In either case, they're being read by people who know the literature and hope to find people they'll be able to do good work with. I myself don't put much faith in LoRs unless they're from someone I know pretty well. Other people differ. If you're sure you can produce a good paper, I think that's better than a LoR. But research can be hit-or-miss.