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    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

Which Journals Publish “Discussion Notes”?

Brian Leiter

David Velleman (NYU) forwards to me a query he received from an author who had submitted a "discussion"-style piece to Philosophers’ Imprint, which (alas) does not publish discussion pieces.  The author wrote to Professor Velleman:

[I]t is actually quite difficult to find an appropriate place to
send it to, as most journals these days are quite reluctant to publish discussion notes. Even Analysis, where the target article originally appeared, was not interested. The author of the target article, to whom I sent my paper for comment, seemed to
agree with me that there were potentially issues with his arguments, which would need to be addressed. But how to make this public? Given the general inflation in publications in philosophy, it seems that space for "mere" discussion is disappearing. Can you recommend a
journal to a junior philosopher looking for a publishing venue?

I’m sure others have the same question.  Answers, anyone?  As usual, non-anonymous posts strongly preferred.  Post only once; comments may take awhile to appear.

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21 responses to “Which Journals Publish “Discussion Notes”?”

  1. Andrei Buckareff

    I have had a similar problem. But I have found some journals fairly receptive to discussion pieces on articles that appeared elsewhere. For instance, Philosophia (Israel) published a paper of mine that was a lengthy reply to a paper that appeared in Philosophical Studies. A friend of mine had a very short discussion piece also published in Philosophia (it was a response to an article that appeared in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy). Canadian Journal of Philosoph accepted another longish paper of mine in which I critique an argument that appeared in both a book and a series of articles by an author. So there are some decent to good journals that will take discussion/ish pieces.

    Reply
  2. Craig French

    The Philosophical Quarterly do discussions (at least, the last 5 issues on my shelf all had discussions, sometimes on a more than two topics).

    Reply
  3. Carl Seaquist

    I think this is an interesting question, but I'll bet that a lot of the debate will hinge on what we mean by "discussion piece". A lot of philosophy journals publish (full-length) papers that are responses just to one paper or one book, but I took the original question to refer to "notes" (maybe a page or two or three) not papers (fifteen to twenty pages or more). Some disciplines have a developed notion of the value of scholarly notes — classical philology, for example, where an observation of an alternate reading in a manuscript is worth publishing even if it isn't a part of a longer paper. So maybe it's useful at the outset to distinguish both between papers and notes, and also (separately) between discussion(ish) pieces and, what, original philosophizing? So there are four categories: discussion notes, discussion papers, non-discussion notes, and non-discussion papers.

    Reply
  4. Fritz Warfield

    When this topic came up back about 2000, I discussed it with some others who had been fairly active contributors to Analysis in the 1990s. Two main proposals were suggested in those discussions:

    1. There is likely room in the profession for a 2nd journal competing directly with Analysis. Proposal: start a new journal competing directly with Analysis.

    2. An online journal, with the obvious advantages of unlimited space and continuous/timely publication (and other advantages), would seem to be a natural outlet for high quality multi-round and multi-pronged discussions as sometimes appear in Analysis. The outlet would also be fine for the normal sorts of short substantive and sometimes critical papers that appear in Analysis. Proposal: start an online journal competing directly with Analysis.

    The two proposals, obviously enough, are compatible. Some thought the best route would be to try to convince OUP to compete with the Blackwell published Analysis. Others thought that online was a better way to go with this sort of project. I think either proposal would find quite a bit of support in the profession.

    The success of several online ventures suggests to me now that the online route might be best. What's most needed is someone willing to take the organizational and editorial lead.

    Reply
  5. Jacob T. Levy

    This was the purpose behind Jamie Dreier and Dave Estlund's noble experiment, the Brown Electronic Article Review Service. (See http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/bears/homepage.html) It was a terrific idea that in the end didn't take: online peer-reviewed symposia on and responses to articles in political and moral philsophy. There were a number of good pieces and symposia over its lifespan, but submissions dried up. I suspect that it got squeezed between the ease of blogging and the distrust of online publications as being academically "real" even if peer-reviewed. Maybe it could be resurrected, now that the latter distrust has probably diminished.

    Reply
  6. Matt Weiner

    The Philosophical Quarterly prints discussion notes (by which I mean short papers, capped at 4000 words or so), and they needn't be about papers that appeared in PQ; the most recent one seems to be a reply to an article in J. Phil. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research also prints discussion pieces, I believe, though I'm not sure if it encourages them to be about PPR pieces; it's not taking submissions at all until April so the submission guidelines aren't up.

    The online journal does seem like it could also be a good idea.

    Reply
  7. Ross Cameron

    The Philosophical Quarterly, as mentioned above, publishes discussions, and they're usually really good. That's probably the best place. Dialectica also publish discussions.

    I think there should definitely be a competitor to Analysis. And I think the future is in online journals. Maybe we should start a petition to OUP?

    Reply
  8. Doug Portmore

    There isn't much of a venue for discussion notes (as opposed to full length articles that discuss some other article or book). Even if a couple journals do publish discussion notes, most (if not all) will only publish discussion notes that discuss some article from their own journal. Most of the time, then, if the article you want to discuss is published in a journal that doesn't publish discussion notes (e.g., Philosophical Studies), then there's no place to turn. And even if the article you want to discuss is published in a journal that does publish discussion notes, then there's only one place to turn: that journal. Sometimes I hesitate to write a discussion note given that, if I do, I will pretty much have only one shot at getting it published. That’s a big risk.
    BEARS was a great idea. I think that it was just a bit ahead of its time. I think that if it were to start up again, it would flourish. I know that I for one would submit stuff to it now, when I wasn't inclined to do so before. The reputation and acceptance of online journals have come a long way since BEARS started. So I plea for the revival of BEARS. Or absent that, I hope that one of the great online journals will start up a discussion section that publishes discussion notes on articles from other journals.

    Reply
  9. Thom Brooks

    Of course, several journals publish shorter discussion pieces (i.e., papers discussing in only a few pages criticisms of full length articles previously appearing in that journal), not least the Journal of Moral Philosophy and many other journals.

    In my view, the best advice for would-be authors of discussion pieces is to first contact the journal's editor(s) noting the desire to contribute a discussion piece and the broad argument it will take *prior* to submitting the discussion/reply to the journal. This will save one from the disappointment of submitting replies to journals that don't normally publish them (not to mention saving the time of writing a piece that won't be considered).

    It is also worth mentioning the policy of most journals to only publish discussion pieces of articles appearing in their journal.

    Reply
  10. Varol Akman

    Running the risk of stating the obvious, maybe ANALYSIS editor and publisher may consider increasing the page numbers. A quick glance at the recent issues in my university library shows that they are pretty slim.

    Reply
  11. David Velleman

    I'm glad to see that this question has sparked a useful discussion. Several of the comments are relevant to our experience at Philosophers' Imprint.

    The main reason why we decided at the outset not to publish discussion notes is that we were determined to overcome the prejudice against online-only publication — a prejudice partly due to the widespread impression that material on the Internet is timely but ephemeral, and hence more like conversation than publication. The importance of counteracting that impression is what led us to collaborate with librarians as our publishers, because librarians are committed to overcoming the difficulties of archiving and preserving electronic materials. And the same reasoning led us to concentrate on work that would be valued for its longevity rather than its timeliness.

    Of course, this was seven years ago, and attitudes have changed — not enough for some of us, but significantly. Other commenters here are probably right that BEARS was ahead of its time and might well succeed if re-started today. I would love to see the folks at Brown give it another try.

    Reply
  12. Tad Schmaltz

    The Journal of the History of Philosophy occasionally publishes contributions, usually between 4,000 and 6,000 words, in its "Notes and Discussion" section. Contributions to this section can concern either primary or secondary literature in the history of Western philosophy. However, generally we accept discussions of articles only when the articles have appeared in JHP.

    Reply
  13. Jamie Dreier

    Hi,
    As a couple of people have mentioned, BEARS was originally intended to publish short discussion notes (we called them 'reviews') of very recent articles, and to do it very quickly, with a fairly undemanding refereeing process. We (Dave Estlund and I) beat the bushes for submissions for a couple of years, and had some success also running symposia, for which we'd invite a few people to discuss a recent article and then ask the author of that article to respond.
    But, we never reached our goal, which was to become sufficiently known that we'd get a bunch of unsolicited submissions. The current plan is to fold the symposium idea into the Journal of Social and Political Philosophy
    http://www.jesp.org/
    which has the advantage that it is permanently supported.

    If there's a lot of interest, I suspect the editors (Dave, Julia Driver, Andrei Marmor, I) would be happy to set up a portion of JESP especially for discussion notes.

    Reply
  14. Dylan Dodd

    Facta Philosophica is another journal that accepts discussion notes concerning articles that appeared in other journals.

    Reply
  15. Doug Portmore

    I've set up a post over at PEA Soup where people can express their interest in Jamie's idea that calls for the editors of JESP (which includes Jamie) to set up a portion of that journal that's especially dedicated to discussion notes — go here to express your interest: http://peasoup.typepad.com/peasoup/2007/03/publishing_disc.html.

    Reply
  16. Christopher Hitchcock

    As several people have noted, many journals publish short discussion notes on articles that have appeared in those journals. This is true, for instance, of the two leading journals in Philosophy of Science, namely *Philosophy of Science* and the *British Journal for the Philosophy of Science*. One thing that propspective authors of discussion notes need to be aware of is that timeliness plays a major role in decisions about publishing discussion notes. If you submit a discussion note on an article published in 1998, it is bound to be rejected, no matter how cogent your criticism. Another factor is whether the journal has already devoted space to discussion notes on that topic. This can be problematic, as there is often a long lag (12 – 18 months) between acceptance and publication of papers, and anyone who has seen a pre-print of the paper (typically those in the relevant inner circle) will have a commanding head start when it comes to writing discussion notes. This is yet another reason why more online publication would be highly desirable.

    Reply
  17. Mike DePaul

    I edit the Journal of Philosophical Research and I would be very happy to consider discussion notes for publication, even if the original papers were published in other places.

    I'm eager to have good articles to publish and do not much care whether they are quite long or short discussion notes.

    Anyone interested can submit by sending a version of their paper prepared for blind review as an attachment to e-mail to jpr.jpr.1@nd.edu.

    At the time of initial submission I do not require that the paper, references, etc. conform to any particular style. I strive very hard to make quick decisions (averaging 86 days for 2006 and 2007 to date). I solicit input from authors regarding potential referees, and I try hard to get detailed feedback from referees for nearly all submissions. For 2006 and 2007 to date I have accepted 12% of submissions, rejected, but either requested resubmission of a revised paper or espressed willingness to look at a revised version 42% of the time, and rejected 43% of submissions.

    Reply
  18. Tony Cole

    Picking up on a suggestion made by Doug Portmore, I'd note that some law reviews have now started publishing online-only supplements to their paper publication (see, for example, the Yale Law Journal's Pocket Part: http://www.thepocketpart.org/). This allows authors to submit short discussions of articles that have appeared in the paper journal (among other things), and have them published under a highly-regarded masthead (and after editorial review, such as it is for law reviews). The Pocket Part, in fact, has become reputable enough that it is now permanently archived in Lexis, along with the Journal itself. Perhaps those individuals involved in editing a paper journal could pitch a similar idea to their publisher, as a low-cost way of generating increased interest in the journal. It wouldn't be surprising if more people took the trouble of writing discussion notes if they could avoid the usual extended peer-review process (in favor of something more truncated, perhaps involving review solely by the editors, or one reviewer), and yet also be assured the piece wouldn't simply sink into obscurity (since we'd all pay more attention to a discussion piece posted online under the Philosophical Review's masthead, than one simply posted on someone's website).

    Reply
  19. Pablo Stafforini

    Prof. Portmore's post at PEA Soup can be accessed here:

    http://peasoup.typepad.com/peasoup/2007/03/publishing_disc.html

    (The link provided above is dead.)

    Reply
  20. Sebastiano Moruzzi

    I'm happy to be able to report that preparations for the establishment
    of a new journal mainly devoted to the publication of short articles
    are well under way. The editorial board will be composed by
    philosophers based mainly in the UK and the rest of Europe, and the
    journal will have quite a few surprises in store for its readers (e.g.
    innovative, fast editorial procedures, a new article format, and an
    interactive blog).

    Reply
  21. Thomas Baldwin

    MIND's 'Notes to contributors' say: 'Brief comments on work published in Mind (but not elsewhere) are welcome. In the case of acceptance, the original author will be invited to mke a very brief reply, and normally the exchange will be closed at this point'. And it's true: MIND's Jan 2007 issue has two such discussions – and that's not unusual. Sometimes, too, the discussions continue beyond a single episode: Nover and Hajek's 'Pasadena Game' has set off a continuing discussion.

    Reply

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