Publishing

Advice on Refereeing Papers

Three professors have published a brief guide to refereeing papers. Though based in business schools, Jonathan Berk (Stanford), Campbell Harvey (Duke), and David Hirshleifer (UC Irvine) have produced a document that provides good general advice for referees across the disciplines.

Some excerpts:

The main job of the referee is not:
1) To help write the paper ..

Live Twitter Chat w/ Timothy Williamson

Timothy Williamson’s new book, Tetralogue: I’m Right, You’re Wrong, is a philosophical conversation that takes place on a train between four characters. As Catarina Dutilh Novaes describes in her review of the book in Times Higher Education:

We meet Bob, who represents those who subscribe to “ancestral” modes of thinking, including superstition, belief in witchcr..

Do Not “Do Not Cite or Circulate”

Lee Anne Fennell, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, has written a short and amusing paper entitled “Do Not Cite or Circulate.” It’s directed at legal academics, but applies just as well to philosophers. From the opening paragraph:

Law professors, who are generally quite enamored of their own words and not especially reluctant to toss around the..

Plagiarism Policies

In November of last year, Daily Nous hosted a guest post that exposed the extraordinary plagiarism of Iranian philosopher Mahmoud Khatami (follow-ups here and here). One of the articles alleged to be a work of plagiarism was a 2007 article of his in Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy, entitled “On the illuminationist approach to imaginal power: outline of ..

Guarding the Guardians (or Editors) (3 updates)

The reason your paper is listed as ‘editor assigned’ is that I’m going to review it myself.

In the wake of the recent discussion here about the editorial practices at philosophy journals, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa (UBC) recounts a story, set about five years ago, in which he submitted a paper to a journal with a policy of double-anonymous reviewing—Philosophic..

Book Dedication Sale

Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski (both of Georgetown), have been working on a book entitled Markets Without Limits. You may recall an earlier post which detailed their plans to sell space in the “acknowledgements” section of their book. Not to be outdone—by their earlier selves—the duo are now selling the dedication page of their book to the highest bidder. You ..

Reasons You Rejected a Paper

The discussion of journal practices is continuing, but, at the suggestion of Tom Dougherty, I am posting this as a place to gather “frequent reasons for rejection” of articles. Here is his comment from the other thread:

If many of the papers getting desk-rejected by journals are rejected for common reasons, then I wonder if it might be in everyone’s interests for..

A Closer Look at Philosophy Journal Practices (two updates)

Considering how important the publication of articles in peer-reviewed journals is to a successful career in philosophy, it is expected that curiosity and questions about the practices at philosophy journals would arise. Additionally, lately it seems as if there has been an increase in concerns about unfairness in access to publication opportunities, including insuf..

Confluence, a New Online Philosophy Journal

Confluence: Online Journal of World Philosophies, is a new bi-annual, peer-reviewed journal of comparative philosophy and thought. From its mission statement:

It seeks to explore common spaces and differences between philosophical traditions in a global context. Without postulating cultures as monolithic, homogenous, or segregated wholes, it aspires to address ke..

Deciding which Papers to Referee

Some philosophers receive an excessive number of requests to referee papers. How should they go about deciding which papers to agree to referee?

Of course the paper should be in one’s area, but even that criteria leaves some people with more requests than they could reasonably be expected to fulfill, and so, with a decision about which requests to accept. One mig..

Famous Papers First Rejected

“The Strength of Weak Ties” (1973) by sociologist Mark Granovetter is an extraordinarily influential paper, one of the most cited in sociology (with nearly 30,000 citations, according to Google Scholar). Yet it was initially rejected. You can read the rejection letter via a link from here. It is an interesting case of peer reviewers dismissing an idea because they w..

Open Access and Journal-less Publishing

Recently I was asked by the editors of a journal whose mission and scholarship I support and respect to review a book by a scholar I very much admire. In the past, I would have accepted the invitation without a second thought and proceeded to read the book and develop a review. Over the past few years, however, as my work has focused on questions of public scholarsh..

How Much Should Publishers Pay Contributors?

A professor who prefers to remain anonymous—perhaps so as to not weaken his bargaining position—asks for help from Daily Nous readers about how much he should request to be paid for allowing a publisher to use one of his articles in a textbook anthology. He writes:

Does anyone have any information about how much, if anything, an author should expect to receiv..