Publishing
CategoryAllegations of Ideological Policing via Refereeing
The refereeing of academic papers in philosophy has its share of problems. Is one of them ideological policing? That is an allegation made by Dan Demetriou (University of Minnesota, Morris) in regards to an article he co-authored with a student, Michael Prideaux. (more…)
A Question About Journals’ Style Requirements
Dear Journal Editors,
On behalf of those submitting articles to your journals, I write with a question about your house style requirements. (more…)
Plenty Of Woe To Go Around: A Post About A Philosophy Journal
What the hell is going on? You might occasionally ask yourself that question when confronted with the problems, missteps, malfunctions, and other obstacles that seem to be part of the normal experience of academic life—for example, when you send in an article to a journal and it, and the journal’s staff, seem to vanish. A reader of Daily Nous recently wrote in: (m..
Synthese Editors Issue Letter on Special Issues
In January, an article by Jean-Yves Beziau, “The relativity and universality of logic,” which contained some remarkably strange passages, was published in a special issue of Synthese. After some publicity, the editors of Synthese, Gila Sher, Otávio Bueno, and Wiebe van der Hoek, announced that the article had not undergone the normal review process for a special iss..
Irony of the Day: Special Issues and Political Correctness Edition
Jean-Yves Beziau (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), recently in the news for bizarre remarks he made about political correctness, homosexuality, and the attractiveness of an “old lady” in an essay on logical pluralism in a special issues of Synthese (which prompted a moratorium on special issues there, and reconsideration of policies of editorial oversi..
A Movement Against For-Profit Journals
Is there a burgeoning movement in philosophy to avoid for-profit journals?
A professor of philosophy writes:
I’ve now met over twenty-five junior and/or rising senior (e.g., assistant to early associate) faculty around the globe who are adopting a new policy towards journal refereeing. I don’t know whether there’s some sort of “movement” along these lines, but..
Tyron Goldschmidt Has Written Nothing To Deserve A Drink
…so make sure you buy him one next time you see him. Goldschmidt, a visiting assistant professor of philosophy at Wake Forest University, has just published, in Dialectica, “A Demonstration of the Causal Power of Absences.” I’ve taken the liberty of reproducing the article in whole, below, to save folks who lack institutional access to Dialectica the $38 PDF downl..
Journal Articles for Free
Do you know about Sci-Hub? Simon Oxenham at Big Think explains:
On September 5th, 2011, Alexandra Elbakyan, a researcher from Kazakhstan, created Sci-Hub, a website that bypasses journal paywalls, illegally providing access to nearly every scientific paper ever published immediately to anyone who wants it. The website works in two stages, firstly by attempting to..
Reply from Jean-Yves Beziau re: Synthese Controversy
Jean-Yves Beziau has written asking me to share a link to his reply to criticisms of his article, “The Relativity and Universality of Logic,” and the controversy regarding Synthese’s publishing of it. The editors-in-chief of Synthese explained earlier this week that Beziau’s article was published without having gone through the proper editorial process.
Beziau’s ..
Pay to Be Recommended at Academia.edu?
We’ve discussed issues with Academia.edu here before. Now there’s a new development. A number of academics have been receiving messages like the following:
Hi Dr. ________,My name is Adnan, I’m the Product Director here at Academia. I noticed you had received a few recommendations on your papers. Would you be open to paying a small fee to submit any upcoming pape..
Statement from Synthese Editors / Moratorium on Special Issues
Hey Did You Know Logical Pluralism Is “Connected to Homosexuality”? (updated with a statement from the editors of Synthese)
Or that it is like a “sexy young woman that 1 day will be a not so attractive old lady?” Neither did I. But that is what Jean-Yves Beziau (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) claims in “The relativity and universality of logic,” a paper published in Synthese that is currently making the rounds on social media (and discussed here). The passage is so incredi..
Philosophy Citation Practices Revisited
You may recall that earlier this year, in a guest post, Marcus Arvan decried philosophers’ reading and citation habits. Now, Moti Mizrahi has a post up at The Philosophers’ Cocoon with data showing that philosophy articles, on average, contain fewer than five cites per article are cited less than five times:
Additionally, Mizrahi says that other data suggest..
Copyrights and Quotes in Academic Work
So here’s yet another case of over-the-top copyright restrictions involving something I wrote. In December 2014, the Whitehead Research Project held an excellent conference on Whitehead’s short book Symbolism (which Amazon also sells as an ebook for 99 cents). I was one of the speakers at the conference; I posted an uncorrected version of my talk, “Whitehead on Caus..
What Should Academics Do About Journal Prices?
All six editors and all 31 editorial board members of Lingua, one of the top journals in linguistics, last week resigned to protest Elsevier’s policies on pricing and its refusal to convert the journal to an open-access publication that would be free online. As soon as January, when the departing editors’ noncompete contracts expire, they plan to start a new open-ac..
Reviewing Open-Access Books
- How should open-access books be submitted to journals for review? These books are published in hard copy as print-on-demand paperbacks, but they..
Reforming Refereeing (guest post by Aaron Garrett)
The following is a guest post* by Aaron Garrett, associate professor of philosophy at Boston University. Professor Garrett recently became editor of the History of Philosophy Quarterly and asked if we could open up a discussion about reforming various aspects of article refereeing. I encourage people to contribute to the discussion and share their experiences and co..
Getting Credit for Peer Review
It is a great service to the profession to peer review articles, and service to the profession counts at most institutions towards tenure and promotion. But how much does peer reviewing count?
My sense is that the credit one gets for peer reviewing is disproportionately small compared to how important peer reviewing is for the academic enterprise, but it would be..
Should Philosophy Articles Be Shorter?
“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”
This line is attributed to several authors, but probably originated with Pascal. Writing shorter is hard, as anyone who has tried to cut several thousand words from a paper in order to submit it to an APA meeting will attest. Yet, when stripped of most non-essential material and organized as efficiently..
“Sleeping Beauty” Papers in Philosophy (updated)
“Sleeping Beauty” papers “lie dormant for years before experiencing a sudden spike in citations as they are discovered and recognized as important.” A recent article in Nature discussed scientific papers that have slumbered for decades, as well as a way of assigning a “beauty coefficient” to papers.
The coefficient, B, is “a value based on the number of citations..
Moratorium and New Editors at Mind
Thomas Baldwin (York), the current editor of Mind, writes that the journal will cease accepting new submissions for several months, starting in July, so as to ease the transfer of the editorship to Adrian Moore (Oxford) and Lucy O’Brien (UCL):
At the end of September 2015 the editorship of Mind will move from Thomas Baldwin (York) to Adrian Moore (Oxford) and Luc..
Answers from Academic Publishers
Two weeks ago I put up a post soliciting questions for academic publishers. If you submitted a question, thanks. Editors at various presses—Peter Momtchiloff, Peter Ohlin, and Lucy Randall at Oxford University Press, Stephen Latta of Broadview Press, Hilary Gaskin of Cambridge University Press, Philip Laughlin of MIT Press, Rob Tempio of Princeton University Press..
What Counts As Pre-Publication?
Dale Miller (ODU) noticed that Public Affairs Quarterly has the following “Pre-Publication Policy“:
Public Affairs Quarterly will not publish material that has already appeared elsewhere. This is not at odds with authors sharing their papers with selected individuals whose comments they would welcome or who they wish for other reasons to inform about their work. ..
Using Initials to Hide Gender
There is some evidence that women scientists use their first initials, rather than their first names, at a greater frequency than men do in their publications. It would not be surprising if this were also true in philosophy and some other non-science disciplines. Reasons for women using initials might include worries about sexism in non-fully-anonymized peer review,..
Questions for Academic Publishers (updated)
Oxford University Press philosophy editors Peter Momtchiloff, Peter Ohlin, and Lucy Randall have offered to answer Daily Nous readers’ questions about academic publishing. Here’s how it’ll work. You send in the questions to me at [email protected], or post them in the comment section below, and in a subsequent post during the last week of May, they will post..
No One Is Listening
Up to 1.5 million peer-reviewed articles are published annually. However, many are ignored even within scientific communities — 82 per cent of articles published in humanities are not even cited once. No one ever refers to 32 per cent of the peer-reviewed articles in the social and 27 per cent in the natural sciences. If a paper is cited, this does not imply it has..
How to Review Book Manuscripts
An assistant professor writes in with the following query:
I’ve been asked recently to review some books for major presses, which is great and I love doing it (free books!) But I have no idea how to do it and they really give no guidelines. They just say something like, “tell me what you think.” Obviously I have all sorts of thoughts, and I’d really like to know ..
APA / BPA Journal Surveys
Last year, the American Philosophical Association (APA) and the British Philosophical Association (BPA) teamed up to conduct a survey of philosophy journals, and the results are now in. 43 journals were surveyed on submission and acceptance rates, review process, and the percentages of papers submitted and accepted that were written by women and members of minority ..