The chief, affiliate, and advisory editors and the entire editorial board members of one of the influential journals in ethical and political philosophy, Philosophy & Public Affairs, have resigned en masse.
In line with their assertion (under), essential goals of scholarly journals are “not well-served by business publishing.” Philosophy & Public Affairs is printed by Wiley, the sixth largest publishing company on the earth by income (over $2 billion yearly).
The outgoing editors and editorial board members can be launching a brand new diamond open-access journal to be printed by Open Library of Humanities (OLH), and can be occupying on the new journal the identical positions they held at Philosophy & Public Affairs. (Present editor-in-chief of Philosophy & Public Affairs, Anna Stilz, isn’t among the many assertion’s signatories. In reply to an inquiry about that, she replied, “I can’t touch upon this presently.” That mentioned, it’s value noting that Stilz has been publicly essential of Wiley up to now—see, for instance, the updates on this post.)
Readers might recall the similar resignation final yr of the editorial crew on the Journal of Political Philosophy, one other Wiley journal, and that crew’s creation of Political Philosophy, additionally a diamond open-access journal printed by OLH. A minimum of 11 Wiley journals have seen mass editorial resignations since 2018, in accordance with Retraction Watch.
The as-of-yet-unnamed new journal can be open for submissions starting in September.
Within the assertion under, the editors and editorial board members announce their resignation, clarify their causes for it and for his or her creation of an open-access journal, and focus on points associated to submissions at present below overview at Philosophy & Public Affairs.
The next is a press release from the chief, affiliate, and advisory editors and all of the members of the editorial board of Philosophy & Public Affairs.
We’re unanimously resigning from our editorial roles at Philosophy & Public Affairs, printed by Wiley, and launching a brand new diamond open-access journal printed by Open Library of Humanities (OLH). All of us will play the identical editorial roles within the new journal and can retain the purpose of publishing the very best philosophical work pertaining to issues of public significance.
We take this step as a result of we consider that scholarly journals—together with our personal—serve vital functions, and that these functions are usually not well-served by business publishing. For 3 many years now, educational journals have suffered from their possession by for-profit publishers, who’ve exploited their monopoly place to sharply elevate costs, unduly burdening subscribing libraries and shutting out different establishments and people from entry to analysis. The current rise of the author-funded “open entry” mannequin has solely bolstered educational inequality, since students with entry to fewer assets are unable to pay the charges that make their work freely accessible; it has additionally incentivized business publishers to attempt to publish as many articles as doable and so to strain rigorous journals to weaken or abandon their quality control.
Confronted with this battle between function and enterprise mannequin, we’ve determined to embrace the aim and transfer to an alternate mannequin.
The choice—which our librarian colleagues have been urging for a while—is for libraries, universities, and different educational establishments to supply direct help for the publication of open-access journals, that are guided by unbiased scholarly judgment and freely obtainable for authors and readers. We’re delighted to have discovered exactly this mannequin at OLH, an award-winning diamond open-access writer supported by a consortium of libraries and funding companies.
If diamond open-access journals are so good, why are they not already dominant? Partly as a result of all of us have day jobs and transitions take time. As well as, our careers rely on publishing in journals with identify recognition, status, and excessive impression elements. These publications at the moment are sometimes owned by business publishers. Colleagues typically can’t afford to take an opportunity on untested journals. That is why, as editors of one of many main journals in our area, we really feel a robust accountability to maneuver towards a brand new, higher, association.
Our plan, if Wiley permits it, is to finish the opinions for all revised submissions obtained previous to this announcement. We apologize to authors who just lately submitted manuscripts to Philosophy & Public Affairs, and we acknowledge the particularly excessive value to authors who’ve been revising their manuscripts, however who haven’t but resubmitted. We very a lot remorse these prices however noticed no sensible strategy to keep away from them. We hope to make the brand new journal worthy of those prices.
We plan to launch the brand new journal (whose identify can be introduced shortly) and start accepting submissions in September 2024. Please ship us your greatest work in ethical and political philosophy and adjoining fields, pay attention to our migration in your hiring, tenure, and promotion choices, and encourage your colleagues to do the identical.
We’re excited to embark on this new journey. We hope you share our pleasure and be part of us in making this new enterprise an important success.
Signed,
Outgoing Government Editors
Jonathan Quong, College of Southern California, USA
Patrick Tomlin, College of Warwick, UK
Outgoing Affiliate Editors
Arash Abizadeh, McGill College, Canada
Nico Cornell, College of Michigan, USA
Garrett Cullity, Australian Nationwide College
Marc Fleurbaey, Paris Faculty of Economics, France
Johann Frick, College of California, Berkeley, USA
Joe Horton, College School London, UK
Sophia Moreau, College of Toronto, Canada
Kristi Olson, Bowdoin School, USA
Japa Pallikkathayil, College of Pittsburgh, USA
Gina Schouten, Harvard College, USA
Zofia Stemplowska, College of Oxford, UK
Adam Swift, College School London, UK
Outgoing Advisory Editors
Charles R. Beitz, Princeton College, USA
Joshua Cohen, Apple College, College of California, Berkeley, USA
Alan Patten, Princeton College, USA
Arthur Ripstein, College of Toronto, Canada
Seana Shiffrin, College of California, Los Angeles, USA
R. Jay Wallace, College of California, Berkeley, USA
Outgoing Editorial Board
Elizabeth Anderson, College of Michigan, USA
Cheshire Calhoun, Arizona State College, USA
David Estlund, Brown College, USA
Archon Fung, Harvard Kennedy Faculty, USA
Barbara Herman, College of California, Los Angeles, USA
Pamela Hieronymi, College of California, Los Angeles, USA
Frances Myrna Kamm, Rutgers College, USA
Niko Kolodny, College of California, Berkeley, USA
Jeff McMahan, Oxford College, UK
Liam Murphy, New York College, USA
Debra Satz, Stanford College, USA
Samuel Scheffler, New York College, USA
Amartya Sen, Harvard College, USA
Tommie Shelby, Harvard College, USA
Amia Srinivasan, Oxford College, UK
Jeremy Waldron, New York College, USA
Stuart White, Oxford College, UK
Gideon Yaffe, Yale College, USA
A PDF of the assertion is here.
UPDATE: I’m knowledgeable by among the editorial crew that the journal’s founding editors—Marshall Cohen, Tim Scanlon, and Tom Nagel—had been consulted about this determination and totally help it.
