A while ago, I suggested that there may be an underappreciated barrier to philosophical engagement. The barrier is this: with a few exceptions (see e.g. JESP), most philosophy journals do not accept "replies" to articles in other journals. In practice, this means that, by and large, reply pieces can only be sent to one journal. My sense is that this is a real deterrent to philosophical discussion. Although I published two reply articles early in my career, I've largely given up on writing them. Why spend time writing a piece you can only send to one journal?
This potential barrier to philosophical dialogue concerns me given how rare engagement with published articles seems to be. According to this study:
- More than 90% of published humanities papers have received no citations two years after publication.
- About 82% have never been cited five years after publication.
Kieran Healy's research on citation rates indicates philosophy is similar ("on the average hardly anyone is getting cited"). I think this is unfortunate. While I've heard some people say most published philosophy isn't worth engaging with, I think this is terribly cynical, overly dismissive of the hard work of our colleagues, and mostly serves to uphold hierarchies (viz. engagement with Big Names, ignoring No-Names). Further, the more I read, the more I think there are a lot of people doing interesting work–work that, unfortunately, given the incentives in place, just isn't being engaged with.
I've long wondered what the profession might do to incentivize greater engagement with people's work. One obvious possibility would be for existing journals to be more open to replies to articles in other journals. However, I do not see that happening any time soon. Which got me thinking about one other possibility: a replies-only philosophy journal that might serve as a central forum for engagement with other articles in the literature. While such a journal would, obviously, only increase the number of places one could submit replies to by one, I cannot help but wonder whether–with the right kinds of editorial standards and review process–such a journal might substantially incentivize greater philosophical engagement.
What do you all think: would such a journal be a good idea? If so, that brings me to my next question: what exactly are the steps one must take to create such a journal? I'm sure it would be a fairly massive undertaking (logistically speaking)–and I'm far from sure whether it's something I would ever sensibly pursue myself–but still, I'd like to learn about what it might involve. What does it take to get a new journal started? Anyone have any experience or tips they're willing to share?
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