One of the most interesting developments in the little world of political theory / philosophy in recent years has been the mass resignation of the editorial teams of both Philosophy & Public Affairs, and Journal of Political Philosophy. Public statements from both groups suggested they were disturbed by their existing publishers’ injunctions to publish in higher quantities, perhaps at the cost of academic quality. Both ultimately moved en masse to found new open access journals – allowing them to continue their intellectual traditions with guaranteed independence. Neither P&PA nor JPP ceased to exist, as such; but both entered an odd, editor-less period, in which their futures appeared uncertain.
All of this raised wider questions for academic publishing: would these moves help weaken the for-profit, pile-’em-high business model of commercial journal publishing, in favour of a pro-bono model? Well, that might depend on the academic community continuing to boycott the journals in question. An enduring boycott might cause publishers to reflect that pressuring academics to do things they aren’t comfortable with can come with high costs. It might increase the bargaining power of editorial teams who had not yet jumped ship. In the meantime, we might find that the pro bono model works, even flourishes.
Today, however, brought the news that Philosophy & Public Affairs now has a new editorial team, and is asking for submissions once more. Will this undercut any pressure on commercial publishers to reform their practices? Prediction is perhaps a fool’s game. But consider this a space for armchair prognostications! To be clear, what I am interested in is informed discussion of the likely ramifications for journal publishing, at least within our little field. What won’t pass moderation are comments on any of the personalities involved. Those are not our topic.
{ 46 comments }
Alex SL 10.07.24 at 11:51 am
Not a philosopher but a biologist, but then again, these issues affect all academic publishing more or less the same way.
The problem as I see it has an extremely similar shape to the discussion about Twitter and other social media platforms that are either run by toxic people or allow a toxic culture and/or use a toxic algorithm.
First, why don’t we all ‘simply’ move to another, not-for-profit fleet of journals? Well, because we would all have to collectively decide to do that at the same time, and because in the case of journal publishing, ‘we’ means the vast majority of authors, of hiring committees, and of promotion/tenure committees, that is very hard to coordinate in the absence of a formal procedure for making that decision and some means of enforcing the decision. If I and two of my buddies shout, “no more Wiley/Springer/Elsevier”, but everybody else says, “the serious journals are those Wiley/Springer/Elsevier ones, because your new cute hobby journal has an impact factor of minus five”, then being the first to shift amounts to career suicide. Even if I am safe enough not to care much about my h index anymore, I still want to reach an audience who should see my outputs (otherwise, why am I writing?), and if they are still all reading Wiley/Springer/Elsevier… same problem. Cf. network effects of social media platforms.
Second, why don’t we ‘simply’ create not-for-profit journals to replace all the for-profit ones? Well, why did societies hand their journals over to Wiley/Springer/Elsevier in the first place? Because extremely few people can afford the time to manage and type-set an entire journal to modern standards pro bono. I am part of such a free-to-publish and free-to-read society journal, and the logical outcome of its pro bono nature is that if the two co-EiCs have teaching season, the next issue is stuck for several months. Not complaining, but it means that some contributors may get frustrated and instead turn to another journal where Elsevier pays somebody to type-set the next issue out on schedule as their main job. Cf. the convenience of Facebook is that Zuckerberg runs Facebook for you, so everybody doesn’t have to manage their own website, RSS, and/or mailing list anymore.
Things usually became the way they are for reasons. Sometimes that is because we painted ourselves into a corner, without looking ahead where we would end up. But every individual step was rational in the short-term, and if we try a do-over without realising what incentives led us into that corner in the first place, we may merely end up there again.
Catriona McKinnon 10.07.24 at 11:51 am
A new editorial team will do them no good if everyone continues a submissions boycott.
HenryS 10.07.24 at 12:38 pm
Old corrupt citation circle, meet new corrupt citation citation circle . . .
MisterMr 10.07.24 at 1:54 pm
IMHO the problem of non profit (or low profit anyway) internet journals is that people (readers, commitees that base their judgements on how cool the journals you published for are) actually WANT the existence of gatekeepers because this simplifyes their life: what if the committee that judges your past works really had to read all the outputs of all the applicants and really judge each of them independently?
What if people who want to read, say, a young adult fantasy novel actually had to choose between the Xthousand wannabe writers who publish their stuff freely on the net VS just buying the one that is succesful, you know other people already like it, and is clearly evident in the bookstore?
This situation means that the few who for whatever the reason manage to become the official gatekeepers get a lot profits/cultural power from it.
Chris Armstrong 10.07.24 at 2:00 pm
@4 – That’s less of a problem here, because the entire editorial teams have moved over more or less intact to the new, online-only journals. So I think readers can safely assume that the gatekeeping functions will continue much as before. People may disagree about whether that is good or not – but regardless of that, people who enjoyed stuff in the existing journals are likely to enjoy stuff in the new ones too.
Cara Nine 10.07.24 at 2:25 pm
Given the make-up of this new editorial board, I would expect that they will pay reviewers and authors. If they don’t, then I think that this is something that reviewers and authors should demand of them. This would be one positive move that a libertarian-leaning board should be able to produce from corporate publication.
Harry 10.07.24 at 2:45 pm
“Well, why did societies hand their journals over to Wiley/Springer/Elsevier in the first place? Because extremely few people can afford the time to manage and type-set an entire journal to modern standards pro bono.”
Right. But it’s notable that university libraries are in the business of funding start-up open access journals. Basically, when the journals were handed over to the for-profits, libraries lost out, because i) the journals tended to have reciprocal arrangements that meant the library of the University where journal X was based would get free subscriptions to 30 other journals and ii) the for-profits can charge very high subs to libraries whose faculty insist that they have subs to journals X plus 30 more, which, essentially, the scholarly society gave away. And most editorial work is uncompensated.
The Free&Equal and Political Philosophy situations are unusual, because everyone in the profession will immediately treat those as top journals — the editorial teams basically bring the reputation with them, and Philosophy is such a small discipline that those reputational effects will stick.
It’s smart of Wiley to go to Brennan, knowing he could assemble a reputable team. I think that’s an exception — they haven’t been able to do it with JPP, and I don’t think that will change. Suppose (implausibly) that the Ethics editorial team quit to found a new journal (I can’t imagine it will for a minute, not least because the publisher of Ethics is a university press): Ethics would then go the way of JPP, not PAPA (I think).
And it’s not clear to me that the Brennan team will make PAPA work. But if they do I don’t see that as at all a bad thing.
Harry 10.07.24 at 2:49 pm
One other thing:
“The editors are pleased to announce the addition of a new type of paper: public philosophy. We are looking for short, accessible papers, which explain a difficult philosophical concept or defend an interesting philosophical claim, but which are aimed at an intelligent lay audience. While our regular articles aim to make novel moves in existing debates or create new debates, goal of the public philosophy papers is to engage and educate the public in philosophical topics of public concern. Public philosophy papers will still be reviewed, but will face different standards.”
It’s going to be very hard to pull this off. In order to do so they need to do some early commissioning, to give people a sense of just what they are thinking of. But, if they can pull it off, it’ll add a lot of value!
alfredlordbleep 10.07.24 at 3:17 pm
@1 “Not complaining, but it means that some contributors may get frustrated and instead turn to another journal where Elsevier pays somebody to type-set the next issue out on schedule as their main job.”
Or you might try type-setting on your own per LATeX. (Sometimes an author’s small re-write is indicated for best results (!) )
Jonathan Quong 10.07.24 at 7:09 pm
In light of the announcement about Wiley today, I wanted to just clarify a couple of things about the difficulties we (the previous editors of P&PA) had in working with Wiley since I’ve seen a few people on social media say that they don’t know much about that.
In 2019 Wiley demanded that our editor in chief at the time, Debra Satz, accept 35 articles within 60 days. Our model was to publish every article that passed our review process. But Wiley’s demand was to have 35 articles accepted within 60 days no matter what.
Debra stepped down as EIC—in part, I assume, because she was fed up of dealing with Wiley—and the associate editors nominated Annie Stilz to be the next EIC. But rather than confirm Annie’s nomination straight away (she was obviously qualified to play the role) Wiley refused to confirm her nomination for seven months, during which time they pressured Annie to cave to their demands. The implied threat seemed pretty obvious to me. During that time we had to retain a lawyer, at our own considerable expense, and Wiley only backed down and confirmed Annie’s nomination when our lawyer made it clear that there might be a suit if they failed to confirm a manifestly qualified nominee for EIC. During Annie’s tenure as EIC there were various other problems we encountered. For example, in an effort to keep as many submissions in the Wiley system as possible, Wiley forced us to participate in a system where papers we rejected could be transferred to other journals in the Wiley system with our original reviewers’ names attached and not redacted. Wiley more recently indicated to us that they intend to phase out the production of pdf’s of articles. Wiley also pressured us at several points about changing the layout and format of the journal in order to standardize with their other journals. When we pushed back against some of these changes, the response was that if we didn’t accept the changes, our journal would be “left behind”.
All these experiences did not lead us to believe Wiley was much interested in respecting editorial independence, and we were further alarmed when it was announced that the same people responsible for removing Bob Goodin as editor of JPP (this was of course done without any consultation with JPP’s editorial board) were taking charge for Wiley of P&PA. To be clear, we left Wiley for a plurality of reasons, some of which had nothing to do with Wiley specifically. But it got to the point where we could not envision a productive future with Wiley that didn’t involve constantly battling against their continuous efforts to realize their bottom line.
I have no idea what sort of contract the newly announced editors have signed with Wiley, but a pressing question is this: who has the power to remove the EIC? If that power rests with Wiley, as opposed to the editorial board, then there’s no genuine editorial independence. And even if the contract does not grant Wiley the unilateral power to remove the EIC, one must think about the relative power imbalance. Wiley is a multi-billion dollar company that can afford a protracted legal battle in the case of a contractual dispute—this won’t be true of almost all academics who might take up the role of EIC.
I don’t plan to say anything further about this issue on this thread: I just wanted to get a few of the facts on the table for those who might not be aware of them.
Richard Bellamy 10.07.24 at 9:08 pm
What I find disappointing about Brennan et al keeping PAPA on the road is that undermines the attempt to counter the pernicious effect of commercial publishers owning the main outlets that academics publish in. This means effectively that university libraries are spending huge – and increasingly unsustainable – amounts to buy the research they fund. Ventures such as the Open Humanities Press, which publish Free and Equal and Political Philosophy – and are funded by a consortium of university libraries – are giving academics and universities ownership of journals and providing free access to what they publish at a sustainable and affordable price. Those who have taken the Wiley shilling and seek, misguidedly or not, to gain repetitional advantage from taking on an established ‘brand’ as the new editor calls it, are undermining a more egalitarian and sustainable system. I hope that universities get their act together and pull the plug on all commercial publishers and support entities such as OHP – who also already help small university presses by providing them with their much more user friendly platform and software, again cutting out the monopoly providers. To some degree they have done this with science journals which had become hugely expensive due to corporate greed – we should be pressuring university administrators to do something similar for the humanities and social sciences – its in their financial interest so it ought not to be that difficult.
Matt 10.07.24 at 9:20 pm
It’s claimed that the new editors of P&PA have contractually guaranteed autonomy, but I’ll admit I’d be very interested to see the relevant contract. They have a couple of good legal theorists with law degrees on the editorial board, and one hopes that they advised having a specialist in the area look at the contract. Without seeing it, it’s hard for me to know what it says and what it means, but it would be a bit surprising to me if it really took all of the issues that Jonathan Quong mentions above, and others a journal should want, completely out of Wiley’s hands. Maybe it does! But without seeing it, I’ll admit to remaining a bit skeptical.
Alex SL 10.07.24 at 9:23 pm
Cara Nine,
Where is the money coming from? Unless journals are run as public utilities (that would be my preference, but in the real world as it exists they mostly aren’t), there are three options to resource them: (1) editors do it as a hobby pro bono, (2) author pays, or (3) reader pays. In the first case, there is no money to pay anybody. If the author pays, you can make the journal open access, but authors at underfunded institutions and in developing countries cannot afford to publish, hurting their careers. If, as you suggest, the author is paid, then the journal cannot be open access. Am I missing something?
Regarding payments to reviewers, I find it fascinating how people who promote this appear to underestimate the costs for that. Let’s assume their usually preferred model of open access publication with a moderate publication fee of UDS2000 paid by the author, already prohibitive to many researchers. A frequently made suggestion for turning this aspect of life into another part of the gig economy is that reviewers should be paid USD400. If a paper is reviewed once by two referees, the author would now pay USD2800, right? Not really, though, because reviewers would also have to be paid for all the papers that were rejected after review. That ratio would differ from journal to journal, but let’s assume for simplicity that 1/3 of reviewed manuscripts have that fate, while most rejections are desk, so now we are at USD3200 publication fee. In reality, however, manuscripts are frequently reviewed by three reviewers, or reviewed multiple rounds, so we would easily look at more than doubling the publication fee paid by the author.
I would also like to reiterate in this context that as a scientist I am already paid to review: it is called my salary. If I were offered USD400 to review, my employer would have to negotiate a consultancy contract with the journal publisher, likely costing much more in legal advisor salary hours than that fee is worth, and then collect the fee themselves to make up for the hours of my time invested into that process. If I review pro bono, however, it is just an expected part of my job as a scientist. I don’t get an extra fee payment for talking to a journalist or giving a presentation at a conference either, and I shudder to think of a world where I would.
(Does anybody remember the Star Trek eposides playing on Ferenginar, where you have to do micro-payments to use an elevator or talk to a receptionist? That was meant as a dystopia, not something to emulate!)
Harry,
Agreed! Of course the university libraries lost out, but that was still in the personal and short-term interest of the societies and editors who were able to make the problem of managing a journal to modern standards go away. That’s what I meant with painting oneself into a corner.
alfredlordbleep,
I don’t see how using LATeX instead of whatever other software somebody uses currently means they don’t have to sink an enormous amount of time into their unpaid copy editor side-gig, time that they could spend researching or teaching if somebody at a company was paid to edit manuscripts instead. Unless you mean that the authors should all be asked to learn LATeX and can be expected to type-set to publication standards following detailed and specific instructions? If so, you may want to meet a few more authors.
Chris Bertram 10.08.24 at 5:40 am
A brief comment on the title: PAPA “is not dead yet”. Perhaps “undead” would better capure the renewed Wiley version.
SusanC 10.08.24 at 8:07 am
As someone who sometimes edits conference proceedings for Springer…
If Open Access were a bit cheaper, we wouldn’t even be having these arguments. Authors would just pay the open access charges, and think they were getting a good deal.(implied in this: at present, authors, not the publisher, do the latex typesetting, so whatever it is the author is paying for, it sure isn’t typesetting).
SusanC 10.08.24 at 8:13 am
Though, it would be a shame to see the end of the fine tradition of the pseudononymous paper.
If I recall correctly, Privacy Enhacing Technologies had an unusually large number of submissions where the authors – writing about things like Tor and Bitcoin – were themselves writing under pseudonyms of at least putting “The Free Haven Project” in place of whatever their actual affiliation really was.
Satoshi Nakamoto being the most famous instance of this fine tradition, of course.
SusanC 10.08.24 at 10:24 am
“That ratio would differ from journal to journal, but let’s assume for simplicity that 1/3 of reviewed manuscripts have that fate, while most rejections are desk, so now we are at USD3200 publication fee.”
Ummm… a first-rank rated conference will be rejecting about 90% of submissions. (And the rejects have actually been read by someone).
And, sad to say, even a good paper may have to get bounced by the referees a few times.
Alex SL 10.08.24 at 11:36 am
SusanC,
Your responses show how different the various fields operate, a topic that has fascinated me since I was a PhD student.
If Open Access were a bit cheaper… authors would just pay the open access charges, and think they were getting a good deal.
What is “a bit”? To make a Nature paper gold open access, you pay USD12,290 (not that I was ever a corresponding author on a Nature paper, of course). At the lower end, standard articles in PLOS One are USD2,290, but even that is prohibitive for smaller institutions. I once applied at a museum where it would have been 2/3 of the successful candidate’s annual research budget, and the expectation during the interview was that they would publish at least three papers per year. There is a numerical problem there that would have been most logically solved by not publishing open access… at any rate, even quartering these two numbers doesn’t make them negligible, especially for developing countries.
implied in this: at present, authors, not the publisher, do the latex typesetting, so whatever it is the author is paying for, it sure isn’t typesetting
I have authored or co-authored over seventy papers, and never did I do any type-setting. We submit DOCX files that were ideally created with the help of a reference manager like Zotero and following journal guidelines on how to format citations and figure legends, and the journals do the other 95% of the editing, like turning it into two columns and placing the figures in the text. I do not know how to use LATeX and have never had reason to learn it; R and Python are enough coding for me, I don’t have to also treat my manuscripts as software projects. Nor am I qualified to type-set; I’d do a terrible job at it even at a purely aesthetic level.
I remember precisely one case where a former boss had to do type-setting himself. He was flabbergasted by the idea, but it worked because it was only a one page software note, not, say, a twenty page research paper with five figures and sixty pages of supporting information.
a first-rank rated conference will be rejecting about 90% of submissions
I was at the top global conference in my field in July, and my understanding is that they always accept nearly all submissions, although some may be turned into posters instead of talks, especially if somebody submits two talks. The only reason you would get rejected is if you do something like promote creationism, are obviously outside the thematic scope of the conference, or the abstract reveals incompetence. Certainly, regional botanical conferences welcome honours and master students presenting their work, and we try to be maximally inclusive across our community.
What I meant was, however, at any rate the ratio of rejections after peer review, which is what determines how many peer reviewer fees would have to be paid under paid peer review. I was leaning over backwards to say that, despite my revulsion at the concept as such, the extra cost of paid peer review can at least be reduced by doing rejections mostly as desk rejections, and those can then well be 90% if one absolutely insists on cultivating an extremely cut-throat and hierarchical culture in one’s research field.
Arash Abizadeh 10.08.24 at 12:38 pm
To Alex SL: there are really two different open access models. One is the “gold” model that for-profit publishers have coalesced around to hijack the open access model for their own profit-maximizing purposes: they don’t charge readers, but charge authors instead. The other is the “diamond” open access model that charges neither readers nor authors. The new journal Free & Equal that the former editors of Wiley’s PPA journal founded after resigning en masse is a diamond open access journal. How, you ask, is this model funded? By a world-wide consortium of libraries who voluntarily give an annual subscription to the Open Library of Humanities. Why do they do this? Because this model, by cutting out the profit-making intermediary, is way cheaper for libraries. If you are interested in the general argument, please see https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/16/academic-journal-publishers-universities-price-subscriptions
Harry 10.08.24 at 1:09 pm
Philosophy journal rejection rates are, I think, exceptionally high — 90% is not at all unusual, and I think that its over 95% for Journal of Philosophy, Phil Review, Mind, Nous, Philosophy & Public Affairs and Ethics (and, I presume, JPP too, though I don’t know for sure). I presume this is because there are too few journals, and for those very highly rejective journals it’s self-reinforcing (high rejection rates lead the prestige, which leads to high submission numbers, which forces high rejection rates).
Philosophy conferences also have high rejection rates. I’ve been on the Central APA program committee a few times, and I’d guess we accepted a third of submissions. I did not think many good submissions were being turned down. (But, of course — the whole point of a conference is to improve the work, so weak submissions should be on the program!) Contrast is with AERA, which does reject quite a lot, but does so, as far as I can see, more or less randomly (judging by the quality of what’s on the program and the quality of submissions I’ve seen that were rejected).
Alex SL:
“Agreed! Of course the university libraries lost out, but that was still in the personal and short-term interest of the societies and editors who were able to make the problem of managing a journal to modern standards go away. That’s what I meant with painting oneself into a corner.”
Yes, that’s exactly right. One part of the institution cutting off the nose of another part. Librarians could have prevented this, and understood exactly what was happening, but were not party to the decisions, and lacked the institutional clout to demand being consulted. (There’s an excellent chapter about this in Zemsky, Wegner and Massy’s generally excellent Remaking the American University).
SusanC 10.08.24 at 2:00 pm
Some time ago, back when I was a grad student, a certain Very Eminent person hands off to me a paper he has been sent for review. (Delegating to grad students is accepted, even expected).
Me: Well, this is either a major advance in the field or complete nonsense. Bet it’s nonsense.
After about six hours of slogging through mathematics…
Me: it’s nonsense. Zero out of ten, must reject.
But, some poor unfortunate grad student did have to read the blasted thing to find where the error was.
Highly Eminent Person, was, of course, correct in their initial assessment after looking at it for like 30 seconds.
Arash Abizadeh 10.08.24 at 2:11 pm
I think we individually and, collectively as an intellectual community, have a choice to make. There are now three types of journals: published 1) by for-profit commercial companies; by 2) non-profit university presses, but who charge either readers or authors; and by 3) non-profits who publish diamond open access (charging neither readers nor authors).
So the question is this: Do we want to continue the status quo, which heavily favours 1, or move to a more equitable and financially sustainable model (favouring 3, and also to some extent 2)? The status quo is one in which commercial journal publishers, after relying on the mostly free labour of academics, who are paid instead by (often publicly funded) universities, turn around and charge those very same universities exorbitant fees for access (either via subscriptions or via author processing fees).
The problem is that moving to a new equilibrium requires some level of coordination and solidarity. Personally, I would like to put my time and energy into the alternative, rather than feed into these predatory companies’ profits. These companies rely on our labour as authors, referees, and editors, and we can help build momentum to model 3 in all three roles.
As authors: I think it’s unrealistic to think that authors could at this point send only to journals of type 3 (and 2). I think it is realistic, however, for authors to heavily favour type 3 journals (especially in political philosophy, since we now have access to several such journals, including JESP, PP, F&E, as well as Ergo and Phil Imprint); and to favour submitting to type 2 over 1. Again, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect everyone to refrain from submitting to type 1 journals; but it is realistic collectively and individually to favour type 3 (and 2) journals as authors.
As referees: I know some who simply refuse to referee for type 1 (for-profit) journals. I also think it is reasonable to adopt a policy of refereeing for them only if they pay compensation, saving pro bono refereeing for only non-profit (type 3 and 2) journals.
As editors: this one seems like a n0-brainer to me. I personally cannot see why I would spend considerable time and energy, as an editor, making money for these predatory type 1 journal publishers. (Well, I guess it’s not a complete no brainer: for-profit publishers are now throwing money at editors, so there’s that.)
notGoodenough 10.08.24 at 3:01 pm
Harry @ 20
Yes, that’s exactly right. One part of the institution cutting off the nose of another part. Librarians could have prevented this, and understood exactly what was happening, but were not party to the decisions, and lacked the institutional clout to demand being consulted.
While I don’t want to venture this with too much certainty (it was a bit before my time), I was under the impression that this particular “business model” was less established as a conscious decision within academia, and more established as a consequence of capitalists (initially Maxwell?) recognising a potentially incredibly lucrative opportunity (namely charging what they want with near free labour) and academics not sufficiently opposing it (whether it be through lack of awareness, insufficient organisation, generally agreeing with it, etc.).
Cara Nine 10.08.24 at 3:03 pm
@Arash – Yes, after having served on university library committees, something like this is what I had in mind. But, assuming we are stuck with the predatory for-profit model for many journals people find attractive to submit their papers to… at the very least, there can be pressure put on them to pay for labor they currently get for free. Since libertarian conferences and journals already operate, to a certain extent, on a pay-for-labor model, I am curious to see if this is something the new editorial board negotiated.
john hutnyk 10.08.24 at 3:44 pm
That a new editorial team is keen to do the work to maintain and even increase outlets for papers in philosophy (law, institutions, public affairs, and like topics) must ultimately be welcomed, even after some controversy/troubles. What troubles there were should now be a learning process, and no doubt what can be learned depends upon perspective. Seems certain there needed to be some clarification – most coming to this anew would suspect some sort of serious miscommunication was in play because it is obvious that to accept 35 articles within 60 days is impossible so it cannot just be that, I mean, I cannot think of a scenario where that could be asked, unless maybe all the reviewing was already done and there was some force majeure… well, there must be more to context because the demand as stated would be patently damaging. I suppose though now that context is washed under the bridge of proverbs, so rebooting the journal seems to me a good thing. To the comrade who pointed out that ‘salary’ pays for reviewing, a few things, yes, indeed, but a) not all academics are on the same levels of salary so its pretty random, some of course have no salary, then, b) anecdotally we can observe a massive expansion of numbers of review requests turned down, for various reasons, many of them fair enough, and this of course has editors finding it harder (any numbers on this please?) c) multiple review, triple blind in PAPA, exacerbates the previous point, and adds time, which is the next point: d) the deeply counterproductive slowness of the review process is a 19th century model not fit for the 21st… all this requires some system-wide rethink. Another possible learning here might be around some standards for this part of ‘the job’ (of course its not one job the requirements vary wildly). In this context, the return of an important venue for papers on philosophy, with whatever ongoing discussions – and there should be such – is welcome and I think keeping PAPA functioning must contribute to new standards. For going forward eyes wide open, I say more power to the new editorial team. Salute.
MisterMr 10.08.24 at 5:47 pm
My two cents as a non academic: if you truly want to push towards stuff published for free by universities/libraries, the solution is to have hiring committees value said open source more than the stuff published by commercial entities
Otherwise those academics who publish for free will be disadvantaged by said choice, and this will push good articles towards commercial publishers, which means that libraries will need to buy those commercial journals etc. etc.
Alex SL 10.08.24 at 8:48 pm
Arash Abizadeh,
I am fully aware that there are different open access models; I even know of green open access! As mentioned in an earlier reply, my preferred system would be one where journals are run as public utilities, and I am associate editor for a young diamond open access journal, although we don’t wave that term around, we simply don’t charge any fees.
But my question was not how journals would be funded, but where the money to pay authors (!) would come from on top of that if the journal is meant to be open access. Okay, so libraries pay the journal’s running costs. The problem with paying authors (and potentially reviewers) is then that if they are supposed to be paid something significant and commensurate to the work involved, we are likely talking about thousands of dollars per article. This means in terms of cost-per-article we are in the realm of article processing fees charged today by the for-profit publication companies – not at the level of Nature, but of other journals with more moderate fees. I then fail to understand how paying, say, USD3k to authors and/or reviewers under diamond open access will be cheaper for institutions than paying USD3k to publishers under gold open access. If the argument is ethical, okay, but I don’t see how it can be financial. And even if it is ethical, it can only be that authors are owed a share of profits, but in diamond OA there are no profits to share.
There is also the issue that academic authors are already paid to write manuscripts, because they get a salary where that is part of the job description, as I mentioned in the context of the proposition of paid peer review. Apart from hoping the gig economy can one day again be regulated out of existence in favour of stable, well paying salaries, I find it very funny (but also concerning for our social license) to contemplate how the demand for author and/or reviewer payments would be perceived by other professions if they noticed this discourse. Imagine an electrician who I pay to fix something in my apartment complaining that she should be paid extra by the electricity supplier whenever she does a job like that, because those are making a profit from the power I use after she fixes things, or a nurse saying that in addition to his salary at the hospital, pharma companies should pay him fees whenever he gives medication to a patient. The idea is patently absurd when applied in these cases, only in academia many somehow don’t notice that when demanding extra payments for doing what they already get a salary for.
SusanC,
Wait, what? The idea of somebody who has been asked to review handing that off to their PhD student is so shockingly unethical to me that it feels like it could be the topic of three separate CT posts. This is fraud. It is also a massive breach of reviewer confidence. He should have rejected the request to review and suggested you instead, so that the editor could have invited you instead if they felt you were qualified.
djw 10.08.24 at 8:58 pm
That a new editorial team is keen to do the work to maintain and even increase outlets for papers in philosophy (law, institutions, public affairs, and like topics) must ultimately be welcomed, even after some controversy/troubles.
Strongly agree with this; fields where top journals have sub-5% acceptance rates and middling journals barely break double digits are almost certainly fields where more journals and more pages are needed. Assuming this team do in fact have the editorial control they need to do this correctly, I think this is a development to be welcomed.
alfredlordbleep 10.09.24 at 12:42 am
@13
I don’t see how using LATeX instead of whatever other software somebody uses currently means they don’t have to sink an enormous amount of time into their unpaid copy editor side-gig, time that they could spend researching or teaching if somebody at a company was paid to edit manuscripts instead. Unless you mean that the authors should all be asked to learn LATeX and can be expected to type-set to publication standards following detailed and specific instructions? If so, you may want to meet a few more authors.
Surprise! Already the case for select mathematical periodicals (math and physics). These authors use Donald Knuth’s TeX to massage fancy integration symbols etc. to type-setting beauty*. . . .
Btw Bernard Shaw (aka G. B. S.) was said to rewrite a page on occasion for type-setting beauty.
correction—I should have written LaTeX.
*of course, an absurd windfall for publishers
alfredlordbleep 10.09.24 at 1:18 am
@13
In short—
Like TeX, LaTeX started as a writing tool for mathematicians and computer scientists, but even from early in its development, it has also been taken up by scholars who needed to write documents that include complex math expressions or non-Latin scripts,[7] such as Arabic, Devanagari and Chinese.[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX
Matt Cliffe 10.09.24 at 6:22 am
I don’t have the disciplinary knowledge to comment on the specifics of this issue, but I would be interested to understand why preprints haven’t taken off in philosophy? The concerns in e.g. medical science about the dangers of incorrect information seem less acute, equally, I would guess that concern over scooping is not the driver.
As an aside, this is an interesting thread to hear about how the conventions in fields are both strongly held and idiosyncratic.
Nicola 10.09.24 at 8:43 am
A huge problem related to publishing in journals of big publishing houses (in particular Wiley, Elsevier, Springe Nature) is the one of science tracking. Detailed background information about this topic is presented on the following website: https://stoptrackingscience.eu/background-information/
You should take this into consideration if you think about supporting their journals by submitting articles and / or offering your service as editors etc.
For me, it seems to be a good reason to support diamond open access initiatives instead!
Chris Armstrong 10.09.24 at 9:06 am
Thanks Nicola @32, that is very interesting and I really had no idea about it
Harry 10.09.24 at 1:05 pm
” I was under the impression that this particular “business model” was less established as a conscious decision within academia, and more established as a consequence of capitalists (initially Maxwell?) recognizing a potentially incredibly lucrative opportunity”
Sort of, but its not as though the academics didn’t have a choice. In some cases it was made financially attractive for the editors, and in others the benefits of offloading some of the editorial work was attractive, but in each case the institutional library lost more than the academics gained. One way of seeing library involvement in the movement to open-access is libraries reclaiming the terrain, though there are big collective action challenges.
notGoodenough 10.11.24 at 9:44 am
@ Harry
”but its not as though the academics didn’t have a choice
Well, yes – people have agency, but I think it is also important to recognise that that agency is somewhat constrained by (to use an old fashioned term) material conditions.
One can certainly draw the contrast between “what librarians have lost” and “academics have gained”, but respectfully that strikes me as veering dangerously close to conceptualising labour as competing interests between subordinate groups of workers in a way which detracts attention from the system which degrades all.
I suspect that many of the largest problems within academia (aside from hierarchical power dynamics) stem from it being (at least within the US/EU/UK/etc.) a business – and that, perhaps, some of these issues may be better understood within more traditional frameworks of labour relations (for example, would it really be so much of a stretch to draw an analogy between reviewing papers and unpaid reproductive labour?). Indeed, in a broader sense, ‘knowledge generation’ is labour which should be undertaken for the good of all, and benefits from being freely shared with a high degree of transparency – goals which are in stark contrast to the priorities which derive from the commodification of such work. Or, to put it another way, academics have had choices, certainly, but I suspect that the choices of (purely for example) post-docs and junior lecturers have been somewhat more constrained than those of (again, purely for example) most MPs or vice chancellors.
In many ways, I think there is a tendency to focus on reviewing for /writing for/boycotting journals, when ultimately the problem is more an endemic and systemic one (or, if I may employ a metaphor, similar to placing the onus of addressing climate change on individuals being more environmentally conscious in their choice of drinking straw while avoiding political or economic approaches to addressing the systemic issues of production-consumption within society and industry).
But this is, of course, purely my perspective – views, as they say, may differ.
Corentin Léna 10.11.24 at 11:46 am
Two observations from the p.o.v. of a mathematician (the first surely incidental to the main point of the post).
It is practically impossible to avoid using LaTeX in my field, but I would not wish to impose it on anyone. Alex SL’s remark about treating manuscripts as software projects seems apt.
In my experience, most mathematicians will systematically upload a preprint of their work on arXiv (and regard it as a way to claim priority, if need be). Combined with the glacial pace of reviewing (which may be a necessity: seriously reading a mathematical text takes time), it means that the actual publication in a journal is almost completely disconnected from the diffusion of the work, and only serves as an evaluation (e.g. the paper was good enough to be accepted in “Annals of Mathematics”, therefore the author must be brilliant).
engels 10.11.24 at 4:20 pm
The editors are pleased to announce the addition of a new type of paper: public philosophy
Public philosophy and public affairs? (I always thought the title of the journal was odd.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_affairs_industry
Harry 10.11.24 at 4:40 pm
NotGoodenough “One can certainly draw the contrast between “what librarians have lost” and “academics have gained”, but respectfully that strikes me as veering dangerously close to conceptualising labour as competing interests between subordinate groups of workers in a way which detracts attention from the system which degrades all.”
Not at all. I’ve read quite a lot about this, so I’m not making it up, and I had direct experience with a particular journal and librarian when it was happening. My read is that the academics were naive, didn’t gain hugely, and didn’t consult librarians because… well, they weren’t used to consulting people, especially people they view as having lower status, in decisions. They weren’t thinking about the health of their institutions.
It wasn’t post-docs or junior lecturers making these choices, by the way, it was well paid tenured professors, mainly at R1s, because those are the people who edit journals and head up scholarly associations. This all happened in the late 60s through early 90s. If you were a tenured professor at an R1, lots of choices were available to you. (Still are).
John Q 10.11.24 at 7:30 pm
Top administrators bear their share of the blame, along with funding cuts from governments. There used to be enough slack in the system that professional service activities like journal editing were easily absorbed. Pressure to tighten up meant that scholarly associations couldn’t get the free labour (academic editors, but also admin and copy-editing) they used to rely on, so they accepted deals with commercial publishers (which didn’t always turn out well). That came back to bite uni library budgets, but there was no easy way of linking one to the other.
notGoodenough 10.11.24 at 8:33 pm
@ Harry
Not at all. I’ve read quite a lot about this, so I’m not making it up
I don’t believe I implied “you were making it up” – certainly it wasn’t my intent to do so. My point was not that it is pure fantasy to contrast “what librarians have lost” and “academics have gained”, but rather by doing so one does seem to overlook the role of everything else (e.g. publishers, financiers, the rise of conservative ideology, political and economic considerations, etc.). Or, to put it more pithily, my intent was not to exonerate academics from blame, but to suggest that there might be a systemic issue too.
It wasn’t post-docs or junior lecturers making these choices, by the way, it was well paid tenured professors, mainly at R1s, because those are the people who edit journals and head up scholarly associations.
Thank you for the polite correction of something I didn’t say. While I would never dare to assert my minor career within academia, and later research in general, is worthy of much consideration, I would tentatively suggest that I have had some experience of the system (for my sins – which I don’t quite recall right now, but must have been both numerous and grave indeed).
Might I direct your attention to the following part of my ramblings?
I think it is also important to recognise that that agency is somewhat constrained by (to use an old fashioned term) material conditions. and academics have had choices, certainly, but I suspect that the choices of (purely for example) post-docs and junior lecturers have been somewhat more constrained than those of (again, purely for example) most MPs or vice chancellors.
To try to spell it out a little more explicitly, I was tentatively suggesting that perhaps the commodification of academic publishing might be better understood less as a one-off isolated event and more as a function of the ongoing commodification of academia – and, more broadly speaking, public services in general. Bad decisions (for whatever reasons) were no doubt made, and no doubt are worthy of consideration and due condemnation. But it does seem to me that such matters rarely occur overnight or in a vacuum (consider a spherical academic…), and instead tend to represent the culmination of multiple factors (including internal and external pressures).
My time (again, admittedly brief and lowly though it was) certainly gave me the impression that there is a considerable amount of “invisible labour” within academia, which itself can be a quite exploitative area in which to work. Would the power of publishers be so great were h-index not such a perniciously ubiquitous metric? Would there be the same degree of oversaturation of publications were this less a determining factor in an academic’s future? Would the levels of burnout be so great were it less resembling a corporate endeavour? Would so many departments suffer attrition were the bottom line “public good” rather than “financial”? Would there be such a prevalence of mental health conditions were so many peoples’ working environments less abusive and labour rights better represented? Well, who’s to say? Certainly not me!
I will instead merely suggest, once again, that perhaps “it is also important to recognise that that agency is somewhat constrained by material conditions”.
Speranta 10.12.24 at 11:18 am
I’m late to the debate. These changes can also be interpreted as mini-tests for theories about institutions. Who will win: contractualism (institutions can be created de novo, all you need is the collective will) or conservatism (institutions are a combination of chance, work, and persistence)?
As for me, I bet on the rescue of the journal. I might be biased as I also think it’s more fair/just – that is, both more inclusive for authors and more beneficial for readers – to have journals that publish more issues.
Harry 10.12.24 at 1:42 pm
notgoodenough
I don’t doubt that things are considerably different in other systems (the Uk, and Australia) but I think you underestimate the amount of agency tenured professors have over their collective conditions in R1s in the US.
I agree with this: “the commodification of academic publishing might be better understood less as a one-off isolated event”, but we see the forces driving it and the surrounding conditions rather differently. (Eg, it’s not a coincidence that this was happening during a time in which the nominal and actual teaching loads, and student-related service expectations, of tenure line professors in R1s were continually falling, as they still are (though more slowly than in the 70s and 80s). Also, for that matter, not an accident that the reduction in teaching loads among tenure-line professors was accompanied by a rise in the use of contingent teaching labor).
notGoodenough 10.12.24 at 8:27 pm
@ Harry
“I think you underestimate the amount of agency tenured professors have over their collective conditions in R1s in the US.”
Possibly, but in my defence I don’t believe I am underestimating agency over collective conditions in other countries.
“but we see the forces driving it and the surrounding conditions rather differently”
Well yes, I think that the fact that the commodification of academia seems to be a multinational occurrence suggests to me that it is not entirely coincidental that the overall degradation of “the knowledge generation sector” has coincided with the degradation of other sectors (allowing, of course, that variations in countries does lead to some variation in the exact specifics).
I could, of course, be completely wrong, and maybe there is absolutely no connection at all to the broader politics, economics, values, and approaches which have brought us global climate change, privatisation followed by profit extraction and public bailouts, multiple financial crashes, and – generally speaking – the exploitation of everyone and everything to the general public’s great loss. I am a little sceptical, given what seems to me to be very similar processes and outcomes, but certainly I admit the possibility I am an in error here.
However, at this point I don’t think there is too much more to say – we seem to disagree about root causes, and I doubt that either of us will convince the other through explaining our perspectives (not, of course, that anyone should change their mind purely on the basis of some comments on the internet!).
JoeinCO 10.13.24 at 7:23 am
I am a bit puzzled by the relationship described above between the journal and Wiley. I publish in American Geophysical Union journals. They are produced by Wiley under an agreement with AGU. Here is the text from their agreement — at least when it was made 11 years ago:
“Under the terms of the agreement signed last week, AGU will retain control and ownership of all its journals and the scientific aspects of publishing including editorial control and oversight. As in the past, AGU will select editors and will have full authority over the scope, the peer review process, and the selection of content. A revised publications staff structure for supporting the editorial function is under development.
Effective 1 January 2013, Wiley-Blackwell will assume the functions of journal production, marketing and sales, distribution, and subscription management. ”
I have not been a editor for AGU journals (I have been for another professional society journal), but have never heard of the sort of editorial meddling described above. I don’t think this kind of arrangement is bad, but I don’t know if it has changed over the years either.
BTW, AGU has several open-access journals that I like — and since I do heavily applied interdisciplinary work, I try to publish there so the users of the information — often in city and state government, or NGOs– can have unfettered access.
I will not publish in pure for-profit journals (i.e without the intermediary of a professional society), and nowadays won’t even review for them, and decline invitations with a curt note stating why. Perhaps this is a distinction without a difference, but that’s where I draw the line for now.
Arash Abizadeh 10.13.24 at 12:50 pm
Alex SL @27 Ahh, paying authors! Sorry I didn’t get your point—you’re several steps ahead of me.
Nicola @32: thank you, very informative and important!
Cara @6 @24 Your suggestion that a for-profit owned journal should pay authors and referees is very interesting. It’s not my preferred model, but it falls under my “let a thousand flowers bloom” category.
Arash Abizadeh 10.13.24 at 12:51 pm
JoeinCo @44: Your distinction is an absolutely important one, which my original post @22 was missing. So as you suggest we really should distinguish between four types of journals:
1) journals published by and owned by a commercial for-profit publisher;
2) journals owned by a non-profit (e.g. scholarly association) but published by for-profit publishers by contractual agreement (so the non-profit can leave when it so chooses);
3) journals owned and published by a non-profit, but who charge either readers or authors (e.g. owned and published by a university press, or owned by a scholarly association and published by a uni press); and
4) diamond open access journal that charges neither readers nor authors.
The real target of my post was type 1 journals, not type 2. Type 2 journals are closer to type 3 journals in my mind. The real issue is ownership and control, not who nominally publishes it. Does this seem right?
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