New Journal: Australasian Philosophical Review


The Australasian Association of Philosophy (AAP) has announced that they are starting a new journal, Australasian Philosophical Review, to be launched in March, 2017. The journal will be adopting a version of an interesting format (similar to that of Ethics, Policy, & Environment):

Each issue of the *Australasian Philosophical Review* will consist of a curatorial introduction, a target article, a set of invited commentaries on the target article, a set of open commentaries on the target article, and a response to the invited and open commentaries.

Each issue of the *Australasian Philosophical Review* will have a different curator, and a different editorial team assembled by the given curator. The editorial team will appoint the author of the target article and the authors of the invited commentaries.

The open commentaries will be written by people who have registered with the journal to be sent alerts when target articles (and invited commentaries) are released to the commentary community. An invitation for submission of proposals for open commentaries will be made when invited material for a forthcoming issue is released. The editorial team will select, from among the submitted proposals, those that will lead to invitations to submit completed commentaries. All of this process will be managed through an online platform that enables double-blind refereeing.

The *Australasian Philosophical Review* is a general journal of philosophy. It will carry target articles — and commentaries — from all philosophical domains and orientations.

More details here.

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ejrd
ejrd
8 years ago

Two questions and a comment:

1. How are curators selected?

2. Are there any rules for how curators select authors?

Comment: in the light of the clique thread this month, I’m a little uneasy about the process being proposed here.

Graham Oppy
Graham Oppy
Reply to  ejrd
8 years ago

1. Selection of Curators: A committee is being assembled that will be responsible for the selection of curators. Current thinking is that membership of the committee will be for three year terms. The committee will be constituted with an eye to various considerations about diversity: geography (with respect to the regions of the AAP — Australia, New Zealand, Singapore); philosophical orientation; gender; etc.

2. Review: Since this is an AAP journal, its performance against its aims will be regularly assessed by the Board and Executive of the AAP. The journal has its origins in a survey of members of the AAP. The performance of the journal will be measured, in part, by follow up surveys of members of the AAP–and considerations about inclusion will have a prominent place in those surveys.

3. Curatorial Selection of Authors: The current plan is to give curators autonomy with respect to the selection of authors (and invited commentators). If it becomes apparent that this plan does not deliver diversity of authorship (and invited commentary), even though there is diversity in respect of curators, then the most likely course of action will be to require that curators consult with the selection committee on the choice of authors (and invited commentators).

Nathan Kellen
Nathan Kellen
8 years ago

No mention of whether it’s open access, so I imagine it won’t be. I was hoping we’d see a continuation of the great trend of new open access journals sprouting up (e.g. Ergo, Feminist Philosophy Quarterly).

Cool idea nonetheless, modulo the worries raised by ejrd above. It’s similar to the format used by ‘Behavioral and Brain Sciences’, which is a great journal.

Graham Oppy
Graham Oppy
Reply to  Nathan Kellen
8 years ago

No, the journal is not open access. In the full post on the AAP blog, I note that the journal is to be published by the same publishing house that publishes the Australasian Journal of Philosophy.

The AAP has very recently restructured: the previous governing body (“Council”) has been replaced by a Board, an Executive, and a group of Committee Convenors. The decision to launch a new journal was taken by Council. There was serious discussion on Council of access options. On the basis of resourcing considerations, Council determined that open access was not a viable option for the Association. I think that that Council assessment is correct: the Association does not have the resources to support an open access journal.

On current estimates of income to the Association from the publisher, we expect that the new journal will break even over the first five years of its existence. I doubt that we can make serious projections further into the future than that.

david chalmers
8 years ago

hi graham — from the circulated materials it’s not clear whether or not the journal will accept submissions for target articles (as BBS does). can you clarify?

Graham Oppy
Graham Oppy
Reply to  david chalmers
8 years ago

Hi Dave! Australasian Philosophical Review does not accept unsolicited submissions for target articles. While we have adopted BBS as a model, there are some respects in which APR will operate differently from BBS; this is one of them.