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In our January “how can we help you?” thread, a reader writes:
Do people have an idea of the best specialist journals for publishing on AI or tech ethics? And by “best,” I mean “best regarded by philosophers.”
One reader submitted the following response:
I work in AI ethics. Of the specialist ones, Philosophy & Technology and AI & Society are fairly well regarded, but given the infancy of the field, none are particularly distinguished yet (imo).
What do other readers think?
I consider Phil & Tech and Minds and Machines as the best journals in the area, maybe roughly similar in terms of “prestige” as the second tier of philosophy of science journals like EJPS or SHPS. Getting into both journals is also quite demanding. I deem AI&Society to be at least a tier below, on par with AI & Ethics, Science and Engineering Ethics, or Ethics and Information Technology. For more philosophy of science oriented work in the area, I would also say that Synthese has become the home base. I am a bit torn how I would assess publications in CS ethics conferences like FAccT or AIES in terms of philosophical value, though having one or two papers in your publication list is pretty valuable.
I agree with the comment above that Philosophy & Technology and Mind & Machines are the standout here. FAccT is an excellent venue as well, especially for your work to have uptake beyond philosophy. FWIW regarding AI and Society… I found the editorial practices there to be borderline predatory (for example, long emails from handling editors pressuring authors to cite more AI and society papers before sending the paper out to review). This can be quite challenging, especially for jr. folks, to navigate. I tend to discourage people from sending their work there. As a general note, I feel there is still a sense that the phil tech specialist journals have a wider variance of paper quality than perhaps other specialist journals in other subfields of philosophy. So getting papers published on the topic in general philosophy journals will still be seen as better regarded by philosophers.
These are not AI/tech ethics specific journals, but it is probably most valuable to publish in generalist journals or purely ethics journals, from a CV standpoint. I get the sense that many highly regarded generalist or ethics journals don’t publish (or just haven’t yet published) such articles, but some have. Off the top of my head, Phil Studies, Ergo, PPA (now Free & Equal), Nous, and Political Philosophy have all published at least one obviously AI ethics paper. I’m sure I’m missing some.
One thing to keep in mind when considering publication strategies is that the job profiles for PhilAI can vary considerably. For instance, in my “bubble” (roughly, more empirically informed philosophy of machine learning), many of the people end up being employed in split positions between philosophy and CS/data science. For that reason, many of them publish in the traditional philosophy of science and epistemology journals, alongside Phil&Tech, Minds&Machines, FAccT, and so on. However, those that aim more for a purist career in philosophy are probably well advised to try their luck with more generalist journals. However, from own experience and those of my more “prestigious” friends, publishing Phil AI in generalist journals can still feel like a fighting an uphill battle—unless we are talking about special issues.
Just want to add another data-point supporting the prestige of Philosophy & Technology and Minds & Machines, as well as the doubts about AI & Society. Regarding FAcct, the – philosophical – quality can vary quite a bit, but I think it’s essential for anyone working in this area to try and bridge the cap with AI researchers, and that is the best venue for doing so.
Confirming that Philosophy & Technology and Minds & Machines are great journals. I would also add Ethics & Information Technologies – it is quite selective. I also had great experience with Science & Engineering Ethics: they publish great stuff and the peer-review process was serious and rigorous. AI & Society used to be a good journal, but now it is overwhelmed by papers. AI & Ethics, I think, has a very very low bar, but papers published in it get cited a lot
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