“Free & Equal” Now Open To Submissions
Free & Equal: a Journal of Ethics and Public Affairs, the open-access journal created by the editorial team that resigned en masse from the Wiley-published Philosophy & Public Affairs earlier this year, now has a home on the internet and as of today is accepting submissions.
The Free & Equal website is here. Below is a statement from Anna Stilz (UC Berkeley), editor-in-chief of the journal.
The Free & Equal website cover image
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She writes:
I’m pleased to announce that our new diamond open access journal, Free & Equal, has launched and is now open to submissions at https://freeandequaljournal.org/. The journal was founded by the very same editorial team that ran Philosophy and Public Affairs until May 2024, and we look forward to publishing the same wide range of high-quality philosophical articles. Please submit your best work to us, and encourage your friends, colleagues, and students to do the same.
Our mission statement:
Free & Equal: A Journal of Ethics and Public Affairs was created in 2024 by the former editors of Philosophy and Public Affairs, which was founded in 1971 by Marshall Cohen, Thomas Nagel, and T.M. Scanlon. Our name, Free & Equal, expresses our two founding commitments: to free inquiry on equal terms about matters of public concern; and to the free dissemination and equal accessibility of the products of this inquiry. We welcome philosophical discussion of substantive legal, social, and political problems, as well as work that investigates abstract questions relevant to these problems—including work that challenges our founding commitments. Free & Equal provides a venue in which philosophically inclined authors from many disciplinary backgrounds and perspectives can bring their arguments to bear on problems that concern us all.
Related:
Journal Created from the Ashes of PPA Gets Name, Editor-In-Chief
Editors at Philosophy & Public Affairs Resign; Will Launch New OA Journal
Stilz Resigns from PPA; Shares Instructions to Authors
Bad Publisher Behavior? Wiley and Philosophy & Public Affairs
Solidarity among Philosophers Leads to New Journal: Political Philosophy
This is great news! Thanks to Anna Stilz and everyone involved for their important work.
This is fantastic news. However, I don’t think the link to the website is working (or the website is experiencing issues)?
I just tried it in three different browsers (2 on a Windows laptop and 1 on an iPhone) and the link worked. The site is brand new, though, so it wouldn’t surprise me if there are some traffic issues, other hiccups, or if it has to be put offline briefly for some fixes.
Hello! I run the tech team for the OLH who publish this journal. The site seems to be working fine and we’ve not had any other reports but if you’re still not able to access it please email us at [email protected] and we can try and resolve it.
The link in this post (at least for me) is not https://freeandequaljournal.org/ (as it may appear to be) but rather https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Furldefense.com%2Fv3%2F__https%3A%2Ffreeandequaljournal.org%2F__%3B!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!sPIf855OzodaamOXu4AfzOTLhqbf18BbOhoTEnUZ74klrKfpp3iAHvpo9jWKgbOJBWcRQYA2OtVmitd_EA%24&data=05%7C02%7Cjweinberg%40sc.edu%7Cdd890a89c926479c76a208dcd36ace57%7C4b2a4b19d135420e8bb2b1cd238998cc%7C0%7C0%7C638617702920925903%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Enx8AFWrd3CE5kSieLfrTJ91hJdKJEHTsUtoCLs7UHU%3D&reserved=0 (presumably because it has been copied from an email). Quite possibly some weird stuff is happening with your connection and whatever Microsoft Outlook has done to the link. When I click on it, strange things happen but it sorts itself out eventually.
This has nothing to do with the journal but it’s a good lesson about Internet security. Try to use a browser that has a status bar or some other indicator of the URL you’re clicking on: when you put your mouse over the link, somewhere it should show you the target of the link. If the target isn’t what you think you’re heading towards, shenanigans may be afoot. In this case it’s an innocent copy and paste from Outlook, I think, but you never know when someone who will go unnamed will try to infest all our computers with a virus that makes us comment “great job Justin Weinberg, this is such a great blog!” on every post.
I can’t reach the site either
The site works for me. You might try typing in freeandequaljournal.org rather than using the link Justin provided.
I’ve tried manually typing in the URL but it didn’t work.
Update: Only works for me when I use a VPN. So, I assume my network provider is blocking the site for some reason.
For the information of the journal organizers: I can access the website from my phone, but when I try to access it on my university’s network, I also get blocked due to a malware and phishing risk.
Thanks to you both for letting–we’ve passed this information on to our tech team to see what fixes might be available.
Sorry, meant to say thanks for letting us know!
This is good news, but why will there only be two issues when PPA has/had four? The concern is that even fewer pieces will be published than before, which is hardly good for our subfield.
Hi James, The two issues are not limited in the number of articles they will contain. Since online publishing works differently and articles are published continuously as they appear, issues become less significant to the publication process. It was simplest to have one issue for the first six months of the year, a second issue for the next six months of the year. Political Philosophy does the same, as do most OLH journals.
I have to say, I’m impressed by how pithily the paragraph on the home page of the website both communicates the journal’s mission and cancels the implicature that caused people to be concerned about the journal’s title!
I still can’t connect to the website without using a VPN, even on my own personal network. For some reason it’s being blocked by default security settings.
Dear Danii,
I spoke with our tech team about this today. The problem seems to be that one service provider has flagged the website as a security threat, and is blocking access for its users. We’ve been in contact with that provider to ask them to remove the block, but until that occurs, you can access the site from the OLH journal page here, by scrolling down to “Free and Equal”: https://www.openlibhums.org/journals/
We are working to get a permanent fix as soon as possible.
Best,
Annie