peer review

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The Demand for “AI & Philosophy” Hires & Expertise — and Its Precedents

Over 20 jobs have been advertised this season at PhilJobs: Jobs for Philosophers that list among the desired areas of specialization or competence philosophy related to artificial intelligence (AI). (more…)

Philosophy Workshop Introduces New Kind of Prize (guest post)

One of the small number of speaker spots at the Northeast Normativity Workshop (NEN) is reserved for the winner of a prize that’s structured in an innovative manner. (more…)

Rejection Rates Should Not Be a Measure of Journal Quality (guest post)

“If philosophy relies too heavily on rejection rates as a measure for journal quality or prestige, we run the risk of further degrading the quality of peer review.” (more…)

Bad Reviewer Experiences

A couple of years ago, we had a discussion of “Philosophy Journal Horror Stories“. Most of the experiences shared were from the perspective of authors. But authors aren’t the only participants in the academic publishing system with complaints (from which we might, one hopes, learn something). (more…)

Refereeing & Freedom of Information Acts (updated)

As noted in an update to a previous post, philosopher David Wallace (Pittsburgh) has made a request under the UK’s Freedom of Information Act for Oxford University Press (OUP) to provide him with correspondence related to certain publication decisions on recent submissions by Alex Byrne (MIT), Holly Lawford-Smith (Melbourne), and Richard Marshall. (more…)

What’s So Bad About “Bad” Philosophy?

In some domains, “overall quality depends on how good the worst stuff is,” while in others, “overall quality depends on how good the best stuff is, and the bad stuff barely matters.” (more…)

Logic Journal Retracts Two Articles After Refutation in Online Discussion

Studia Logica: An International Journal for Symbolic Logic, recently published and then retracted two articles by Janusz Czelakowski (Opole) following a discussion at MathOverflow, a site for professional mathematicians. (more…)

Is Peer Review in Philosophy “Broken Beyond Reasonable Repair”?

Over at The Philosopher’s Cocoon, Helen de Cruz (SLU) laments her experiences with peer review from the perspective of an editor trying to get submissions refereed, saying “it is my strong suspicion that the peer review system is finally broken beyond reasonable repair.” (more…)

Why a Crowd-Sourced Peer-Review System Would Be Good for Philosophy (guest post)

Would “an online, crowd-sourced peer-review system” work better than traditional peer-review as a “quality control device” in philosophy? In a paper forthcoming in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, three philosophers, Marcus Arvan (Tampa), Liam Kofi Bright (LSE), and Remco Heesen (Western Australia), argue for a positive answer to this question. (m..

A Resignation at Philosophical Studies and a Reply from the Editors (updated w/ comments from Cohen, Dembroff, Byrne)

Last week, Stewart Cohen, professor of philosophy at the University of Arizona, resigned as editor-in-chief from the prestigious academic philosophy journal, Philosophical Studies, a position he held for 25 years. (more…)

The Curious Case of a Quickly-Published Article (updated)

The article was submitted to a peer-reviewed philosophy journal on January 8th, accepted on January 24th, and published online on February 7th. (more…)

Flipping the System: One Possible Solution to the Publishing Odyssey (guest post by Felix Bender)

In the following guest post*, Felix Bender (CEU / Amsterdam) surveys some proposed solutions to our current time-consuming, backed-up, overcrowded system of publishing academic articles, as well as some problems with them, before offering up an interesting solution of his own. (more…)

How to Write a Referee Report (guest post by John Greco)

The following is a guest post* by John Greco, who is currently Leonard and Elizabeth Eslick Chair in Philosophy at Saint Louis University, but will soon be taking up the McDevitt Chair in Philosophy at Georgetown University. It first appeared at The Philosopher’s Cocoon.

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Should We Get Rid of Peer Review?

“Where philosophers of science have claimed the social structure of science works well, their arguments tend to rely on things other than peer review, and that where specific benefits have been claimed for peer review, empirical research has so far failed to bear these out. Comparing this to the downsides of peer review, most prominently the massive amount of time a..

The Worst Reviewer/Editor Comments You’ve Received

By request, here is a spot for you to tell us about the harsh, insulting, devastating, stupid, nonsensical, mean, unhelpful, contradictory, and otherwise objectionable comments you’ve received from peer reviewers and editors on your work. (more…)

Stakeholder Refereeing for Controversial Ideas: Replies to Some Criticisms

I appreciate the responses, here and elsewhere, to my idea of using stakeholder refereeing as an alternative to the pseudonymous authorship policy planned by the Journal of Controversial Ideas. (more…)

Solidarity Instead of Pseudonymity: an Alternative Strategy for “Controversial Ideas”

Last week we discussed the planned Journal of Controversial Ideas, which will allow its authors to protect themselves from possible negative professional and social consequences of their writings by using pseudonyms. There was a hint of paradox: the proposal to create such a journal was itself so controversial that perhaps it would have been better published pseudon..

An Objection Does Not A Rejection Make

“If philosophers are serious about improving the way their journals function, they need to consider not only how to improve the mechanics of the reviewing process, but also how to improve the way they criticize one another.”

What are good grounds for a journal referee suggesting a paper be rejected? Tim Crane (CEU) has some thoughts on that. (more…)

Anonymous Peer Review: “An Inherently Conservative Procedure”

On the topic of anonymity, I should also note that I am deeply convinced by the point that anonymous review is a privilege afforded only to work in mainstream areas of philosophy, written in a conventional voice, and hence it is an inherently conservative procedure.

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Self-Citation and Anonymous Review

How should you go about preparing an article for anonymous peer-review if you cite yourself in your article? There are a couple of issues here that suggest that mere redaction is not usually enough. (more…)

New Form of Peer Review At New Philosophy Journal

The Public Philosophy Journal (PPJ) has published its inaugural issue. The editors describe the journal as “an open forum for the curation and creation of accessible scholarship that deepens our understanding of, deliberation about, and action concerning issues of public relevance,” and have instituted a novel form of peer review they think fits better with the jour..

Should You Referee the Same Paper Twice, for Different Journals? (guest post by Eric Schwitzgebel)

The following is a guest post * by Eric Schwitzgebel, professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, and blogger at The Splintered Mind.

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A Desk Rejection Scorecard (guest post by Antti Kauppinen)

The following is a guest post * by Antti Kauppinen, currently an Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Tampere, and soon to be (as of 2018) Professor of Social and Moral Philosophy at the University of Helsinki. It’s about improving desk rejection: the practice of editors at academic journals rejecting papers without ..

Hypatia’s Editor and Reviews Editor Resign; Authority of Associate Editors “Temporarily Suspended”

The editor of feminist philosophy journal, Hypatia, Sally Scholz (Villanova University) and the editor of Hypatia Reviews Online, Shelley Wilcox (San Francisco State University), are resigning from their positions in the wake of the controversy surrounding the publication of “In Defense of Transracialism” by Rebecca Tuvel (Rhodes College). Meanwhile, the Board of Di..

An Anonymous Peer-Reviewed Philosophy Journal?

Are some philosophical positions so controversial that we should have a journal that publishes peer-reviewed essays about them anonymously?

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