Time to End For-Profit Journals? (Leiter)

MOVING TO FRONT from Sept. 7, since an interesting discussion has developed in the comments section.

In our earlier thread on in-house journals like J.Phil. and Phil Rev., Tim Crane (UCL) raised the following points that deserve their own thread:

Academic journals are an amazingly cheap and secure way for publishers to make money. Cheap partly for the reason Tom [Hurka] mentions: most of the serious work (including the work that gives the journal its prestige -- writing and peer reviewing) is unpaid. And secure because university libraries are committed to keeping complete series of the main journals in a field. Yet profiteering publishers like Springer and Elsevier put up their prices regularly, and their captive market has to pay. Every year more and more of a University's library budget is eaten up by (some) publishers' unreasonable price-rises. Readers in the UK will already know that this is how the infamous Robert Maxwell made his money.

In the age of online publication, there is no reason why publishers should make so much money from our work. We don't need publishers in order to have peer-reviewed quality journals. We don't need paper publication for journals. Philosophers' Imprint has shown how you can have an excellent free e-journal which is peer-reviewed, and the Notre Dame Philosophical reviews is now one of the leading places for book reviews. Of course, these projects cost money too -- but it would be a better use of libraries' budgets to administer e-journals which are free for the whole world, than to fill the bank accounts of Springer, Elsevier and the like.

It's true that some profits of journals (e.g. Mind, Philosophy, Analysis) are ploughed back into the profession in the form of scholarships, grants etc. But this is because these journals are owned by academic societies, who have an agreement with their publishers to use a portion of the profit in this way.

It's perhaps worth noting that In the UK, the Wellcome Trust has now made it a condition of giving any research grant that the published results are deposited in an open-access online archive, in addition to being published in any peer-reviewed journal. Also, the dreaded UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in 2008 will now accept any form of web-publication as publication.

These seem like steps in the right direction: to aim to make all peer-reviewed and other research available online to all, for free.

Comments are open; non-anonymous postings will be preferred.  Comments may take awhile to appear (I'm finishing a tenure review, hence the paucity of postings lately).

Comments

[Steve Darwall]

I couldn't agree more with Tim Crane's comments (and thanks for the plug!). Here's what we say on the Phliosopher's Imprint website about these matters. Some of it is a little out date, given some of the developments Tim notes; but mostly it still seems pretty accurate:

"There is a possible future in which academic libraries no longer spend millions of dollars purchasing, binding, housing, and repairing printed journals, because they have assumed the role of publishers, cooperatively disseminating the results of academic research for free, via the Internet. Each library could bear the cost of publishing some of the world's scholarly output, since it would be spared the cost of buying its own copy of any scholarship published in this way. The results of academic research would then be available without cost to all users of the Internet, including students and teachers in developing countries, as well as members of the general public.

"These developments would not spell the end of the printed book or the bricks-and-mortar library. On the contrary, academic libraries would finally be able to reverse the steep decline in their rate of acquiring books (which fell 25% from 1986 to 1996), because they would no longer be burdened with the steeply rising cost of journals (which increased 66% in the same period).*

"The problem is that we don't know how to get to that future from here, and there are so many other, less desirable futures in which we might end up instead. The current trend toward licensing access to electronic versions of journals is counterproductive, since it reproduces the unnecessary economy of subscriptions and permissions, in which intellectual property produced at universities is transferred to those who can collect fees for its dissemination. Now that academic institutions have access to the Internet, they have no reason to pay subscription or subvention fees to anyone for disseminating the results of academic research.

"Unfortunately, significant obstacles stand in the way of a transition to fully electronic publishing. Authors do not view electronic publication as prestigious, readers do not view the electronic literature as authoritative, and neither of these views seems likely to develop in the absence of the other. Younger scholars are unsure whether electronic publications will count towards tenure and promotion. And the funds that would support electronic publication and archiving are tied up in print subscriptions that can't be discontinued until an electronic alternative is available.

"Philosophers' Imprint aims to overcome these obstacles in order to promote the free electronic dissemination of scholarship. The Imprint is designed to combine the permanence and authority of print with the instant and universal accessibility of the Internet. The Editors select for publication only those submissions which are judged to be of lasting value, on the basis of a blind refereeing process. Having no commitments to subscribers, the Editors are free to publish as few papers as are found to meet an absolute standard of quality. Each paper is given a fixed, typeset appearance and a stable Universal Resource Locator (URL), to allow for reliable citations. The University of Michigan Digital Library has committed funds to produce the Imprint, to provide it with indexes and a full-text search engine, and to ensure the permanent accessibility of its archives.

"No license, subscription, or registration is required for access to the Imprint Because the Imprint has no subscription income, it must operate economically, without paper or postage. Contributors are therefore required to submit their work electronically. Refereeing will take place on a secure website, and all correspondence with authors will be by electronic mail. Finally, the Imprint will not manage rights and permissions. Permission for instructional uses won't be necessary, since the Imprint will be accessible without charge to teachers and students alike; permission for other uses will be managed by the authors, who will retain copyright in their work."

[Lee Walters]

There is in addition to the journals Tim mentions, the Australasian Journal of Logic (http://www.philosophy.unimelb.edu.au/ajl/) and the Journal of Ethics and Social Policy (http://www.jesp.org/), but such journals are still very much in a minority. What exacerbates this problem is that JESP and Imprint seem to publish only one article a quarter.

Presumably this is either because they do not have the resources to do more or because they are not receiving enough quality submissions. If it is the latter then philosophers have a real opportunity to change things themselves and should, so to speak, put their money where their mouth is by submitting to these journals. Of course this is easier said than done when kudos is attained by publishing in the premier hardcopy journals.

[Eric Schwitzgebel]

Hear, hear! Let me also mention Psyche http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/ .

Philosophers who share the sentiments expressed have, I believe, an obligation to prefer free or at least inexpensive journals for their submissions -- even if only as one factor among several. If that maxim were to be a universal law, we'd drift closer to and perhaps even acheive the future Steve Darwall contemplates.

[Eric Schwitzgebel]

Oh, and P.S.: If you think the future of the most expensive journals is not very bright, as libraries continue to cancel subscriptions (is this what happened to Erkenntnis?), then there are also purely prudential reasons to submit to free or inexpensive journals.

[Adam]

Lee Walters said:

"Presumably [electronic journals' low publication frequency] is either because they do not have the resources to do more or because they are not receiving enough quality submissions. If it is the latter then philosophers have a real opportunity to change things themselves and should, so to speak, put their money where their mouth is by submitting to these journals. Of course this is easier said than done when kudos is attained by publishing in the premier hardcopy journals."

Wouldn't the opportunity for change, then, be best taken up by already-established philosophers, who don't need the premier-journal kudos? People are going to read Fodor no matter where he publishes; the same goes for other philosophers' household names. And should one or more big names get behind an independent online journal, he/she would be doing the profession a great service.

[David Sobel]

I completely agree with the drift here and would add that people persuaded by such arguments should give preference in reviewing articles for not-for-profit journals that either are cheap (or online and free such as Imprint) or use what money they make for the profession.

[Sam]

Adam:

For what it's worth the Philosopher's Imprint has quite a few good names lending support already:

Editors
Stephen Darwall
J. David Velleman

Editorial Board
K. Anthony Appiah • Richard Arneson • Paul Boghossian • Robert Brandom • Michael Bratman
John Broome • John Cooper • Mark Crimmins • Kit Fine • Daniel Garber • Alvin I. Goldman
Richard Heck • David Hills • Jaegwon Kim • Louis Loeb • Penelope Maddy • Tim Maudlin
Peter Railton • Gideon Rosen • Jerome B. Schneewind • Nancy Sherman • Michael Smith
Robert Stalnaker • Jason Stanley • Jamie Tappenden • Kendall Walton • Stephen Yablo

http://www.umich.edu/~philos/Imprint/about.html

They've also published papers by some pretty prominent folk:

http://www.umich.edu/~philos/Imprint/frameset.html?browse

[Pablo Stafforini]

According to the DOAJ website (http://www.doaj.org/ljbs?cpid=15), there are actually 49 open access philosophy journals. Not all of these publications are in English, a few appear to be of modest quality, and some are quite obscure. The fact remains, though, that many online journals would be significantly more reputable and better known if philosophers, when submitting their work for publication, gave them preference over the traditional hardcopy alternatives.

[Tim Crane]

I agree with with David Sobel's point. Although it will make life more difficult for the editors of good journals like Phil Studies, we might want to start to think about where the efforts of reviewers should be focussed. We all receive many requests to review articles for journals. We all have to turn some down. If we are serious about aiming for open-access, free, peer-reviewed e-journals, then we could start by refusing to review for Springer journals, and citing Springer's pricing policy as the reason.

Just in case readers of this blog are not aware of the discrepancies in journal pricing, here are some examples of the price of annual institutional subscriptions (ultimately these are the ones that matter, rather than individual ones):

Mind (OUP): 180 USD
Phil Review: 65 USD
J Phil: 100 USD
PPR: 210 USD
Ethics: between 210 and 300 USD
Philosophy & Public Affairs 152 USD
Nous (Blackwell): 653 USD

Then there are the Springer journals:
Erkenntnis 1079 USD
Phil Studies 2328 USD
Synthese 2517 USD

I'm converting from the 2007 prices given in EUR on their website at http://www.springer.com/east/home/librarians/price+lists?SGWID=5-40585-0-0-0. At least, I think that these are the institutional rates, it's not explicitly stated. It is actually very hard to find to find the pricelist on the Springer website (not surprising, really -- a bit like trying to find the price label in a Gucci suit). No doubt there are some advantages for libraries when they pay for a consortium deal, but it's hard to believe that these deals too do not also make large amounts of money for the publishers.

I cannot believe that the extra paper required for the larger size of these journals can possibly justify these prices. And I cannot believe that the editors are getting larger fees than the editors of other journals (though that would be some consolation if it were true).

It's worth pointing out the low prices of Phil Review and J Phil. Regardless of the criticisms people have made of these journals in this blog, we cannot accuse them of ripping off our universities! In fact, it seems to me that the question of the outrageous cost of some journals is much more pressing -- and one with a much clearer answer -- than the question of what exactly peer review should be, and whether all journals should be peer reviewed.

Another thing we should all do (independently of all this, but in the same spirit) is retain copyright on absolutely everything we publish. No-one is under any obligation to sign copyright forms assigning copyright to the publisher. Just tell them you will retain copyright. It is always nice for one's work to be reprinted and so it is easy to forget that the publisher often asks for a large fee when the work is reprinted. Also, if we all do this then no-one will be able to threaten any author who wants to put a pdf of a published article on their website. As far as I know, this has not been done yet, but people sometimes raise it as an objection to open-access archiving of papers. (Often when I have suggested that everyone should have all their papers available for free on the web, someone says knowingly, 'surely there will be copyright issues...?')

For those interested in the wider academic context, Stevan Harnad, founder editor of BBS and now at Southampton and Montreal, has a lot of stuff on his website about open access publishing: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/

Tim

[Bill Hooker]

Further to Tim Crane's pointer to Stevan Harnad, Peter Suber's Open Access News is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in OA. (For even more, see my blogroll under "open access/open science".)

[Andy Streich]

You might talk to your colleauges in mathematics who are addressing a similar problem. http://www.math.columbia.edu/~neumann/journal.html

[Tim Crane]

Thanks very much to Bill Hooker and Andy Streich for the extra links. The resignation of the entire editorial board of the journal Topology, on August 10 2006, reported on John Baez's site (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/journals.html) is quite striking.

John Baez also has some good advice about what we should do to start changing things. Modified to remove the references to a mathematical archive, they are:

1. Don't publish in overpriced journals.
2. Don't do free work for overpriced journals (like refereeing and editing).
3. Put your articles on your webpage before publishing them.
4. Only publish in journals that let you keep your articles on your webpage.
5. Support free journals by publishing in them, refereeing for them, editing them... even starting your own.

[Iain Martel]

It seems to me that a significant part of both the in-house and for-profit journal problems could be solved if the APA were to start its own online journal. The APA surely has the prestige to overcome the start-up obstacles facing other online-only journals, and ought to be able to leverage its membership and organisation to get a broad and strong editorial board. Such a journal could potentially quickly establish itself as a strong competitor to Phil Review and J Phil in prestige. It would be free of the departmental ties and biases that (allegedly) affect those journals. If it published a sufficient volume of papers, it could drain demand from the overpriced Springer journals. And once established and widely accepted, it would open the way for other online journals and help effect the revolution envisioned by Tim Crane and others.

Now I'm sure I'm being wildly over-optimistic here, but surely it's worth a try? I'm sure the readers of this blog represent a sufficiently large proportion of the APA membership that their collective demand would have to be heard. So who wants to start a campaign?

[Steven Gross]

I completely agree that it's outrageous how expensive the Spinger (etc.) journals are. One piece of info, though, if one wanted to make a more exact comparison: I think it's not uncommon for libraries, at least at large research institutions, to negotiate a better rate, on the basis of their subscribing to a large number of the publisher's journals (and to their e-journal access). At least I have heard of this being done. Don't know how much of a discount this has yielded.

Steven

[Lee Walters]

I would like to echo Tim’s posts. Some journals already assign copyright to authors and/or allow authors to publish their papers on their webpages. With this in mind I have attempted to expand on the information Tim provided, in the table here http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctylwa/philosophy_journals.htm, so those who want to follow Tim’s 1-5 can easily do so.

Some notes of caution about online journals, author copyright and own webpage publishing:

Any step-change from paper to online publishing would, ceteris paribus, transfer costs from institutions to individuals, including students, of access to hardcopy. Of course this could be easily remedied by making some of the library cost savings available to students in the form of higher printing allowances. But then we would still face the issue of increased cost, financial and environmental, of printing multiple copies of the same article. This could be alleviated if libraries were to print and bind copies of the most used online journals for storage in their stacks.

As Jason Stanley (I think) remarked putting papers on the web prior to acceptance, can lead to non-blind referring if the reviewer googles the paper’s title.

Assigning copyright does seem to confer advantages to the author in the form of collecting fees and administration, or at least that is the impression I get reading JPhil’s blurb - http://www.journalofphilosophy.org/rightspermission.html

[Margaret Atherton]

Those of us who think it would be a good idea for the APA to take a hand in dealing with the problem of in-house and for-profit journals probably ought to address ourselves to the APA itself. At the present moment, the Chair of the Board of Officers of the APA is Ernie Sosa, the new Executive Director is David Schrader and the chair of the APA committee concerned with publications is Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. Alerting any of thse people to the concerns being expressed here might be useful.

[Margaret Atherton]

This is my postscript, sorry. I think Philosophical Imprints is wonderful and I notice that they have historians of philosophy on the masthead but have not yet published any history of philosophy. I don't know, of course, why this is. But there is another general problem not yet discussed here about the representativeness of journals which aim to be premier and reputation establishing.

[Tim Crane]

In connection with Steven's point, I'm in no position to make a detailed comparison of pricing either. But everything I've read suggests that it's very unlikely that journal 'bundling' is a good deal for libraries in the long run. Some of the reasons are given in this account of why Cornell University Library cancelled its subscription to over 900 Elsevier journals in 2003. It's definitely worth reading: http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/03/12.11.03/CUL_Elsevier.html
.

[Jamie Dreier]

I'm somewhat torn about Tim Crane's suggestions.
I currently do a lot of work for Phil. Studies. Now, on the one hand, that's one of the worst price offenders. But on the other hand, they do publish a *lot* of papers, and Phil Studies seems to me one of the best venues for nearing-tenure philosophers. So I'll have to think about what to do.

I should mention that JESP (on whose editorial board I serve) leaves copyright with authors, and furthermore does NOT require exclusive submission; that is, as far as we are concerned an author can submit a paper to us and to any other journals at the same time. Of course, since (as far as I know) no other philosophy journal in the world has this policy, it's very low cost so far to us! But (a) somebody has to be first, and (b) we do publish some articles that could suitably be submitted to a law review at the same time, and law reviews share the non-exclusive submission policy. Finally, our turnaround time is very, very rapid (as I think Imprint's is). Most of the papers we have published were up and available (not merely accepted) within eight weeks of submission.

[Mark Richard]

Here, here, to the spirit of Tim Crane's comments.

A remark. I recently published an article in _Phil. Studies_ and wanted to preserve copyright. Trying to do this delayed the publication of the article almost a half a year. At the end of the day, Springer refused to mark the article with a copyright in my name. I found the process and the somewhat greedy attitude of Springer so irritating that I have vowed not to publish again in any journal owned by Springer. (I stress that this was misbehavior on Springer's part, not on the part of the editors of _Phil. Studies_.) Making such a vow, of course, is a lot easier for someone who already has tenure.

Perhaps the best use of the APA's time, as far as this matter goes, is to investigate how it might promote the founding of more high quality on-line journals.

[Lee Walters]

*This time with correct link*

I would like to echo Tim’s posts. Some journals already assign copyright to authors and/or allow authors to publish their papers on their webpages. With this in mind I have attempted to expand on the information Tim provided, in the table here http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctylwa/philosophy_journals.htm - so those who want to follow Tim’s 1-5 can easily do so.

Some notes of caution about online journals, author copyright and own webpage publishing:

Any step-change from paper to online publishing would, ceteris paribus, transfer costs from institutions to individuals, including students, of access to hardcopy. Of course this could be easily remedied by making some of the library cost savings available to students in the form of higher printing allowances. But then we would still face the issue of increased cost, financial and environmental, of printing multiple copies of the same article. This could be alleviated if libraries were to print and bind copies of the most used online journals for storage in their stacks.

As Jason Stanley (I think) remarked putting papers on the web prior to acceptance, can lead to non-blind referring if the reviewer googles the paper’s title.

Assigning copyright does seem to confer advantages to the author in the form of collecting fees and administration, or at least that is the impression I get reading JPhil’s blurb - http://www.journalofphilosophy.org/rightspermission.html

[Eric Schwitzgebel]

Thanks so much, Lee, for the useful table (readers will have to delete the comma at the end of the link to access the URL)! It would be great if you could expand and update it.

Tim, I'm curious about your experiences in declining to transfer copyright. Was your strategy to insist on this late in the process or make it explicit in the initial submission? How much success have you had, and with what journals?

[Keith DeRose]

Some words of caution -- I now see that Jamie has some of the same worries.

I have myself been following a policy of doing various things to favor non-expensive journals since early in my career. One of my first pubs was with Phil Studs, and it was in connection with that that I first came to realize how expensive that and other journals (mostly Kluwer journals, as they were then called -- or was it D. Reidel? - it's hard for me to keep up) were. I resolved to submit my own papers to reasonably priced journals, other things being equal, and have stuck to that policy pretty well. I've not been absolutist about it: When I was invited to a great-looking conference on a topic I work on, I accepted, even though I knew that the papers were to be published in Phil Studs -- which resulted in a second publication for me there. I also started to give priority to reasonably priced journals in what refereeing assignments I'd accept, and in recent years, when I've been able to accept only a very small percentage of such requests, this has amounted to my not accepting any such requests from the expensive journals. All that just to make the point that I very much sympathize with the worries about these expensive journals. But...

I've always viewed my refereeing of reasonably priced journals over the expensive ones as a choice of the greater of two goods, and I would be very hesitant to call for a general boycott of these journals. The price issue is only one consideration. Far more important to my thinking that there be good, established journals that use blind reviewing, to provide a vehicle for younger philosophers to establish themselves. If I could accept a greater proportion of the requests I get, I would do some refereeing for the expensive journals. And I very much appreciate the efforts put in by the editors and referees of these expensive journals.

You have to think about what would happen if philosophers followed the above advice and we all stopped supporting the journals in question in the various ways proposed. Some of these journals are quite important, and they publish a *lot* of papers. I emphasize the amount of philosophical work they publish not because that mitigates the worry about expense -- I'm sure they're still way too expensive, even when you calculate expense per page. But this high volume does very much heighten my worry about pulling the rug out from under these journals. There would suddenly be a *lot* fewer good publishing slots for philosophers. Perhaps other journals would arise to fill that gap, but that's just a "perhaps," and, anyway, it generally takes a fair amount of time for a journal to get established as a good, solid one.

While I'm at it, I'm also not as enthusiastic as some in this discussion are about the idea of an APA-run journal. I generally like the APA, and think it's quite good at doing some things -- but also not-so-good at doing others. How would a journal in some way run by the APA turn out? For myself, I'm very far from certain that such a journal would be one of profession's best, or that it would be a good thing if such a journal become recognized as our profession's "top" journal. Maybe it's worth a try. I just thought I'd express a small note of skepticism about the likely results -- even if this skepticism is here about as unsupported as the expressions of enthusiasm have been.

[Tim Crane]

In order to know what we might actually achieve here, it would be good to know what the arrangement is between the publisher and a particular journal. Many journals are not owned by publishers -- lots of journals are independent entities which have agreements with their publishers. In the cases I know something about, these agreements can be terminated. The journals I know something about are some of the UK ones: Analysis, Philosophy, Mind, Mind & Language, the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. In all these cases, the journal can be moved to another publisher (and in many of them, it has done so at some time in its history).

It is not inconceivable, then, that if these journals got themselves financial support for e-publication, they could divorce themselves from their publishers altogether and become open-access -- without losing whatever respectability they may have. Of course, this depends on getting the financial support, and the difficulty here is that the societies which publish these journals get a lot of their income from sales of the journals. I'm not saying this would be easy!

I don't know what the arrangement is between Phil Studies and Springer -- it would be good to know. For if the organisation which actually owns the title can take the title away from the publisher, then the journal itself has more power than we might initially think.

As Keith says, Phil Studies was previously published by Kluwer, before that by Reidel: companies which have always been notorious for their pricing. Kluwer was merged with Springer in 2003, the same year in which Bertelsmann, the German media conglomerate, sold Springer to UK private equity firm Cinven and Candover for 1.05 billion EUR. So does Cinven and Candover own Phil Studies? Let's hope not!

The choice isn't necessarily between closing down all the old expensive journals and trying to launch a whole bunch of cheap or open access new ones -- it might rather a matter of the older journals moving to publishers who agree to charge less, or even (and this is the fantasy) to places like the University of Michigan who are prepared to give financial support to online open access journals.

Like Jamie and Keith, I think Phil Studies is an excellent journal, and it may well be that colleagues don't think it is worth risking this journal's life for the sake of a risky attempt to divert university expenditure into something which is better for everyone (open access peer reviewed e-journals). After all, we would have to know whether the money saved on not buying expensive journals would be spent on supporting open-access journals, or on more books, or just simply not spent at all.

But if we don't start thinking about how to implement open-access journals, then how do we stop more and more of our universities' library expenditure going into the pockets of people like Cinven and Candover, whoever they may be?

[Jo Wolff]

Just to add to Tim's last post, many of the societies which own UK Journals are registered charities, and so any profits the society make has to be spent on the purpose of the charity, which is normally to further the aims of philosophy. Although the publishers are often keen to push up the prices, so as to increase their take, the societies often resist this, and the prices remain relatively modest. Otherwise, in effect, the society is simply redistributing money from library philosophy purchasing budgets to other philosophical purposes, which they do not all see as their proper role in life.

Regarding Lee's post, how many journals actually pass on any copyright permission or photocopying fees to authors? From their blurb the Journal of Philosophy apparently does, and so do the Aristotelian Society (while the author is still alive), but I don't know of any other journal that does this.

[Stewart Cohen]

RE: Tim Crane's query about the relationship between Phil Studies and Springer. Springer owns Phil Studies, so there is no possibility of transfering the journal to another publisher. I have tried on more than one occasion to to get the price of the journal lowered, but have been unsuccessful. I am forwarding this discussion to my publishing editor at Springer, though I'm not optimistic that it will change anything. I should point out that Phil Studies is now available online, and my understanding is that universities get access through large consortia that negotiate significantly reduced rates. I am writing to my publishing editor to find out the details and will report back.

Stewart Cohen
Editor, Philosophical Studies

[Michael Cholbi]

As someone involved in the editing of an open-access journal, Studies in the History of Ethics (http://www.historyofethics.org), I would suggest that one of the reasons there are so few open access and/or non-commercially affiliated journals is that the larger publishers offer editorial support to academic editors that greatly diminishes the labor burden for already busy faculty members. It's an enormous amount of work to complete the clerical and logistical tasks associated with a journal (acknowledging and tracking submissions, identifying referees, conveying feedback to authors, sending out page proofs, etc.) Having an "editorial assistant" who does this sort of work for the journal reduces this burden. For faculty interested in starting a journal from scratch, this logistical and clerical burden is definitely a disincentive.

[Laura Schroeter]

The Springer journals pricing policy is egregiously out of line with even the most expensive philosophy journals. But it's hard to support a boycott of the journal, since Phil Studies is one of the best run philosophy journals in terms of editorial policy, turnaround times, volume and quality of published articles.

The fact that Springer owns the title to PhilStudies puts it in a position of power. But it does seem like philosophers could have some important leverage here. One radical solution would be to arrange to transfer the entire editorial board associated with Philosophical Studies to a university-sponsored online journal called, say, New Philosophical Studies. I don't know if there would any be legal problems with this sort of move. There would certainly be plenty of practical difficulties. But it seems clear that such a move would be in the long term interest of the academics who actually use the journal.

[harry b]

Jo Wolff asks how many journals pass on cpyright fees to authors -- one anecdote: the publishers of PPA once went to enomrouse lengths (several phone calls) to get all of my information in order to sned me my copyright fees for something: in the end I got a letter telling me that the balance was below the $25 minumum needed for them to cut a check. It did not inspire confidence in their efficiency, but it did make me believe that I'd get fees if they were worth anything!

[Tom Hurka]

Re Jo Wolff's query:

The Canadian Journal of Philosophy policy was (and presumably still is) to split permission fees three ways: one third to the journal, one third to the publisher, one third to the author. The journal's share of those fees was a non-trivial (though not large) amount each year, so authors also got a non-trivial amount. The administration of the requrests and fees was handled by the publisher.

And I recently got a small permission fee from Social Theory and Practice, again split with the journal (after I persuaded them to up the fee they charge!). So I think most journals do share fees with authors. They certainly should.

[Neil]

Elsevier, which is overpriced, has another problem: it organises arms fairs. See petition here:

http://www.idiolect.org.uk/elsevier/petition.php

[rachel Barney]

I feel I have been listening to these 'something should be done' conversations for the whole of my professional life, and am getting a bit fatigued with them -- perhaps we could actually start to do that something?

Viz, Brian, would you consider setting up a venue where people could take the pledge, in a sort of on-line petition, not to submit to or do work for Springer publications until their prices are brought into line with those of other journals? I'll be happy to sign.

Admittedly it's not much of a sacrifice in my area, but I really don't see what the problem is here -- it's not as if the sort of good paper published in Erkenntnis will have nowhere to go without it. It's hard to imagine a more portable commodity than a philosophy paper, unless it's the willingness to serve on an editorial board. If we really do collectively disapprove of these practices, this should not be a hard problem to solve.

[Brian Leiter]

Rachel, I'm afraid I have enough to do already! But if someone wants to undertake the petition or pledge initiative, I'll certainly publicize it.

[David Velleman]

In response to Margaret Atherton: Philosophers' Imprint has published some history of philosophy -- for example, Patrick Frierson's "Kant's Empirical Account of Human Action" (www.philosophersimprint.org/005007/), or Dan Jacobson's paper on Mill (www.philosophersimprint.org/003002/). There are indeed many periods of history that we haven't yet covered; but then there are many topics of all kinds that we haven't covered. We're new, we receive relatively few submissions, and we're fairly selective. (See our "About" page for a real-time calculation of our acceptance rate, calculated from our editorial database.) We would be delighted to receive submissions in all areas of philosophy, broadly construed.

[Aidan McGlynn]

Further considerations in favour of free, open-access journals - not as important as those raised by Tim Crane and others but not, I think, insignificant on that count - are those to do with brute accessibility. I can have any Philosopher's Imprint paper on my desktop in under a minute, a hard copy in under two.

In contrast, I've often wasted a lot of time trying to get hold of a particular journal paper because the high-fees mean that there are gaps in which journals and sometimes which volumes of particular journals the library can grant me access to. Last Novemeber I discovered there were certain issues of Analysis I simply couldn't get an electronic or hard copy of - it took me a month and a 5000 mile journey to get the four-page paper I needed to cite. Certain other journals, not deemed important enough, are simply inaccessible. I'm sure other people can think of similar experiences they've had.

Of course, a move to e-journals like Phil Imprint won't ease any problems one may have getting access to older journals. But long-term, we might hope that moving away from the current system might help remove barriers between philosophers and the papers they need to read and cite.

(Of course, there's always the option to buy individual access to a particular paper online. But there we find another example of greedy pricing - you can pay over 40 dollars for 10 pages of text.)

[schwenkler]

Aidan McGlynn's comments are right on target; a related consideration in favor of open-access journals that he doesn't mention is that they are available to anyone with an internet link, rather than being restricted to those with access to well-endowed research libraries or deep pockets. Anyone with vaguely egalitarian sentiments about who philosophy is supposed to be "for" should easily recognize the importance of this consideration ...

[Stevan Harnad]

(1) The substantive problem for researchers is the accessibility of research journal articles (online), not the affordability or profitability of journals (though the two are somewhat connected).

(2) The solution to the accessibility problem is not for authors to wait for Open Access (OA) journals (the "gold" road to OA) but to self-archive their final refereed drafts of articles accepted for publication (the "green" road to OA.

(3) It is good to retain copyright, but not necessary for self-archiving, because 94% of journals have already given self-archiving their green light to self-archive http://romeo.eprints.org/ and for the remaining 6% there is still the Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access option http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html
together with the EMAIL EPRINT REQUEST button now being implemented in Institutional Repositories for any article set as "Closed Access":
http://www.eprints.org/news/features/request_button.php

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html

[Jo Wolff]

People, like Aidan McGlynn, with problems getting access to back-copies of Analysis might be cheered to hear that JSTOR is currently expanding its coverage of philosophy, and The Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, including the Supplementary Volume, and Analysis are to be included, so I understand. I don't know when this goes live, though.

Stevan Harnad is right that price is not the problem here; Analysis must be one of the cheapest journals around.

[Keith DeRose]

Analysis, 1933-1995, is now up on JSTOR. It's good that it's on JSTOR, but why a *10 year* moving wall, I wonder?

[Eric Schliesser]

In light of the six month moratorium at Nous and Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, maybe this is also an opportune time to question the concentration of so much editorial power in one person?

[Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen]

I just discovered this thread, and this may be too late to enter the debate, but I thought it might be useful to consider the pr. page price of the discussed journals as well as the overall price. I have used Tim Crane's prices, and compared them to the number of published pages for each journal in 2006. When this is taken into account, the difference in pricing becomes less pronounced. It is interesting, for example, that Phil Studies compares in price to Phil Quarterly, and that the most expensive journals (in this admittedly narrow sample) on a pr page basis are with Blackwell, not Springer. While none of this justifies the high prices, or the profits made on this by non-academic investors, I think it should be included for a fair picture.

Mind (OUP): 180 USD. 1214 pages in 2006 = 14.82 USD/100 pages
Phil Review: 65 USD. 555 pages in 2006 = 11.71 USD/100 pages
J Phil: 100 USD. 592 pages in 2006 = 16.89 USD/100 pages
Ethics: between 210 and 300 USD. 825 pages in 2006 = 25.45-36.36 USD/100 pages

Blackwell journals:
Philosophy & Public Affairs 152 USD. 423 pages in 2006 = 35.93 USD/100 pages
Ratio: 627 USD. 504 pages in 2006 = 124.4 USD/100 pages
Philosophical Quarterly: 357 USD. 602 pages in 2006 = 59.30 USD/100 pages
European Journal of Philosophy: 535 USD. 474 pages in 2006 = 112.8 USD/100 pages
PPR: 210 USD. 751 pages in 2006 = 27.96 USD/100 pages

Springer journals:
Erkenntnis 1079 USD. 869 pages in 2006 = 124.1 USD/100 pages
Phil Studies 2328 USD. 3450 pages in 2006 = 67.47 USD/100 pages
Synthese 2517 USD. 3288 pages in 2006 = 75.55 USD/100 pages

[Suzanne Bertrand]

As managing editor of PPR, I would like to make the following correction: PPR published TWO volumes, of over 750 pages each, in its 2006 journal year, and the 210 USD subscription covered BOTH volumes. So the cost per 100 pages is about half of 27.96, which means that, of all the journals listed, only Phil Review has a lower subscription cost.

[David Hunter]

Having recently been trying to set up automatic table of contents for most ethics and general philosophy journals I must say that many of the free online journals let themselves down in that they do not allow subscription to their latest table of content in an RSS feed format. I personally am quite keen on promoting these journals but this is difficult if all you can give is a link to their home pages.

[David Manley]

Eric wrote: "Maybe this is also an opportune time to question the concentration of so much editorial power in one person?"

Not at all, because he's done a phenomenal job. We should be thankful that a philosopher of Sosa's ability and scope is willing to put so much effort into running two journals. In my view, it's a remarkable service to the philosophical community.