HelpMePublish is an app that “provides databases on 13 major subject areas containing information on more than 6000 reputable academic journals provided by journal editors, subject experts and academic users.” According to a comment on another post here by James Maclaurin (Otago), a philosopher who devised the project, there are 557 philosophy journals in their database. He writes, “We have only just launched but already about a quarter of journals have supplied the requested stats so we’re hopeful of producing a sustainable tool for academics.” The idea behind the app is to gather information about the journals from various sources so that journals can then be ranked, sorted, and searched by “acceptance rates, refereeing policies, publication time, quality of editorial advice, realtime journal readership data and much more.”

So I downloaded the app, which itself is free, registered with it (which takes a minute), and subscribed to the philosophy section, which costs $4.99, to see what it is about. The things I do for you people!

Is it worth it? Well, the short answer is “collective action problem.” The longer answer is: the app is new, and so there is not much author and reader feedback, and the makers are clearly still gathering information from editors and publishers. If enough philosophers subscribe and spend a few minutes entering information on their experiences with journals as both authors and researchers, then it could be a valuable tool. If everyone waits until everyone else has done this, then while the app will (eventually) have the information from the editors and publishers, it will not realize its full potential.