So the earlier poll, with more than 500 votes, is now complete. The results struck me as fairly sensible. Oxford University Press was the hands-down winner, and Cambridge University Press was a distant, but clear, second. Blackwell came in third, and Harvard University Press fourth. Three presses were fairly close to each other in the poll, but distant fifths from Harvard: MIT Press, Routledge, and Princeton University Press. Then there was another drop in votes before Cornell University Press and University of Chicago Press, which were very close. Yale University Press was a somewhat distant 10th, with Kluwer/Springer not far behind.
Some readers pointed out that Oxford may get an advantage from the fact that it publishes more philosophy than any other press--though the fact that OUP publishes leading work in every sub-field of the discipline probably ought to count in OUP's favor. But Oxford certainly has a much larger catalogue than most of the others. PUP, which may have the smallest catalogue, also, in my opinion, may have the highest 'per capita' quality. OUP, CUP, MIT, and Routledge all publish work in Continental philosophy quite regularly. Harvard is an unusual case, and not just because their catalogue is small, but because, as one friend put it to me, their catalogue actually has "a philosophical position" (roughly anti-naturalist, and whatever is on the agenda at Harvard and Pittsburgh, plus some ethics): this means Harvard publishes important books within the "party line," but nothing at all in many of the most lively areas of current research.
Thoughts from readers on the results? Signed comments only, meaning a full name and an e-mail consistent with that.
