journals
TagShould Journals Publicly Grade Submissions?
Jonathan Weisberg, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto and managing editor of Ergo, notes that by the time a paper is published in one journal, it has likely made the rounds at a few others, and hence has been reviewed by several people whose opinions on it are not publicly available. These people have already “thought about strengths and..
Dominance Of The English Language In Contemporary Philosophy: A Look At Journals
“If you’re an academic aiming to reach a broad international audience, it is increasingly the case that you must publish in English. Philosophy is no exception.” So writes Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside), in a post at The Splintered Mind.
As he notes, this gives native English speakers an obvious professional advantage of being able to reach a worldwide readersh..
Does Referee Gender Make a Difference?
Once again, Jonathan Weisberg (Toronto), one of the managing editors of Ergo, looks at the journal’s data to see what, if anything, can be learned from it. This time, he focuses on what difference the gender of an article’s referee makes. (more…)
How Bad Is Reviewer 2, Actually? Data from a Philosophy Journal
Does Reviewer 2 deserve that terrible reputation? (more…)
Philosophy On The SciRev Journal Reviewing Site
SciRev is a multidisciplinary website for researchers to share their experiences with various journals so they can select not just appropriate but also efficient venues for their work. It is run by a pair of economics professors. They describe the aim of the site this way: (more…)
Philosophy Departments and Journals Ranked by Gender Data at New Website
A new website presents data on women in philosophy in a novel manner: it orders departments by number of women faculty and journals by number of women authors. (more…)
Care to Referee More?
Some members of our profession are referee superstars, being asked multiple times a week to referee papers for journals (and often saying ‘yes’), while others are well-qualified but unnoticed, and are almost never asked to referee. The result is that some philosophers have become unfairly overburdened, journal editors have been having increased difficulty finding re..
New Journal: European Journal of Japanese Philosophy
The inaugural issue of the European Journal of Japanese Philosophy is out. It’s a publication of the European Network of Japanese Philosophy (ENOJP). (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…)
2,000 Spaces for 10,000 Papers: Why Everything Gets Rejected & Referees Are Exhausted (guest post by Neil Sinhababu)
The following is a guest post* by Neil Sinhababu, Associate Professor of Philosophy at National University of Singapore. It concerns a publication crisis: how the number of new journal submissions outstrips the number of places to publish all of them, creating a backlog.
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..
Philosophical Diversity in U.S. Philosophy Departments (Updated)
The vast majority of philosophy departments in the United States offer courses only on philosophy derived from Europe and the English-speaking world. For example, of the 118 doctoral programs in philosophy in the United States and Canada, only 10 percent have a specialist in Chinese philosophy as part of their regular faculty. Most philosophy departments also offer ..
Prominent Philosophy Journal Broadens Scope
Mind, a longstanding leading journal of philosophy known for publishing high quality work in the analytic tradition, has a new editorial staff and has announced in an editorial its plans to broaden its scope and appeal:
The sole criterion for publication in the journal is quality. No area of philosophy, no style of philosophy, and no school of philosophy is to be..
What Was The Real Target of the Latest Academic Hoax?
Recently a pair of philosophers, Philippe Huneman (CNRS / Paris I Sorbonne) and Anouk Barberousse (CNRS / University of Lille), writing under a pseudonym, submitted a nonsense article to the journal, Badiou Studies, which accepted and published it (see this account, which I put in the Heap of Links last week).
The ostensible target of the hoax is Alain Badiou and..
Improving Journal – Author Communication
A philosopher who prefers to remain anonymous recently wrote in with some complaints about a journal. Among them:
The editor and editorial staff have been for at least the last three months, and continue to be, completely unavailable via both email and the submissions manager.
In this particular case, the problem began to be resolved when I passed along the co..
Continuous Publication Model for Journals — Input Sought
I am going to be taking the helm of a journal in 2017 and the publisher wants my editorial team to consider moving to the continuous publication model pioneered by the Royal Society Journals. On this mode..
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..
Editorial Changes at Thought
The editorial staff at the journal, Thought, has changed. Crispin Wright writes:
We wish to record our great gratitude to Jc Beall (Subject Editor for Logic), Janice Dowell (Subject Editor for Metaphysics), and Carrie Jenkins (Principal Editor) for their contributions to the editing of the journal hitherto. We are excited to announce that Catarina Dutilh-Novaes (..
Issues with Special Issues of Journals
Special issues often have guest editors, and the procedures for submission and editorial review may vary from those used for standard issues. The recent publication of an article with some rather bizarre passages in a special issue of Synthese has brought attention to how special issues are put together, with particular questions raised about editorial oversight and..
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..
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..
How to Encourage Service to the Profession?
A professor writes in:
We hear a lot of complaints about how the APA and about how journals are run from folks who don’t volunteer for the APA or serve (and have never served) in leadership positions at journals (e.g. as those responsible for finding referees and ensuring to the best of their limited abilities that referees are doing their jobs). Suggestions for..
Making Journal Issues Larger
The European Journal of Philosophy has announced it is increasing the size of its issues. Joseph Schear (Oxford), the journal’s editor, writes:
For the last several years, we have been suffering from a substantial backlog, in part owing to an increase in the number of high-quality submissions. Fortunately, we have just been given a 50% increase in our page budget..
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..
Philosophy Cliques Revisited
A graduate student who prefers to remain anonymous writes in:
Is it a step in the right direction towards abolishing white male supremacy when the mansions of Hollywood are opened to millionaire actors from minority groups or when the children of the global elite are allowed behind the gates of the Ivy League? Some say we have to start somewhere and we might as w..
Journal Rankings — Useful? (guest post by Thom Brooks)
The following is a guest post* by Thom Brooks, Professor of Law and Government at Durham University’s Law School, founding editor of the Journal of Moral Philosophy and blogger at The Brooks Blog.
Journal Rankings — Useful?
by Thom Brooks
I’ve benefited enormously from much invaluable advice over the years that has fed directly into my Publishing Advice for..
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..
“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..