New Publishing Arrangements for “Thought: A Journal of Philosophy” | Daily Nous

“We are delighted to announce that the Thought Trust has now concluded new publishing arrangements with the Philosophy Documentation Centre. We are most grateful to have the opportunity of continuing production of the journal.

We would like to take the opportunity to record our thanks to Eric Piper and the team at John Wiley Inc. for their role in bringing Thought into existence just over a decade (and just under 400 published original articles) ago, and for their sustained high standards in its production hitherto. We are confident that the PDC will maintain those high standards going forward. 

We would also like to make special mention of and express our gratitude to our authors who have been infinitely patient whilst the change in publisher has been underway. During this period, our systems have moved very much slower than the normal Thought processes, frustratingly for all concerned. We are exceptionally grateful for your patience and understanding throughout. 

Our submissions and editorial processes are going to remain unaltered, but one significant change is that Thought will now be an Open Access journal. The PDC will collect a fee of US$1500 for publication of each article. Authors of accepted papers should note that, in cases where they have no recourse to funds to meet this cost from their own institutions, research sponsors, or other outside source, the Thought Trust itself and generously, the PDC, will make every effort to cover the costs of publication….”

 

Assigning Public Philosophy Projects to Undergraduates (guest post) | Daily Nous

“In several recent undergraduate courses, I’ve offered students the option to design a creative “public philosophy project” in lieu of writing a traditional term paper. Typically, around 10-15% of students choose this option, and I’m consistently impressed with the quality and creativity of their work.

I let students know about this option at the very beginning of the semester, and I direct them to a blurb on my syllabus with some examples of what their projects might look like, including:

Create a YouTube video or podcast.
Propose a substantive edit to a Wikipedia article or propose an entirely new Wikipedia article.
Write a philosophical op-ed or blog post.
Conduct a philosophically substantive interview with someone whose work is related to course content (philosopher, academic, artist, journalist, etc.).
Utilize another online medium or social media platform (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), perhaps by designing some way to engage non-course participants in philosophical activity….”

New Visualization-Based Interface for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | Daily Nous

“Data engineer and developer Joseph DiCastro has created a visualization of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) through which users can search for entries and see the connections between them. It generates attractive visualizations, but is also a well-designed, useful, and approachable tool for navigating the SEP.

 

“Visualizing SEP” provides clear visualizations based on a philosophical taxonomy that DiCastro adapted from the one developed by the Indiana University Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO).

Type a term into the search box and suggested SEP entries will be listed. Click on one of the entry titles, and a simple visualization will appear with your selected entry at the center and related entries surrounding it. A brief summary of the SEP entry appears on one side of the screen, with a link to the full article, as well as a notation of the entry’s “primary domain,” (usually a philosophical subfield). On the other side is a list of the primary domains of the related entries. The domains and their corresponding entries are color-coded, too. If you’d like, you can flick a switch and the related entries appear as a list. You can also see the tallies of incoming, outgoing, and bidirectional links between the selected entry and others, and mouse over those indicators to highlight the corresponding linked entries….”

An Interactive Visualization of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | Open Culture

“The online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or the SEP, dispensed with the need for philosophy encyclopedias in print years ago. It’s “the most interesting website on the internet,” wrote Nikhail Sonnad at Quartz in 2015. “Not because of the content — which includes fascinating entries on everything from ambiguity to zombies—but because of the site itself. Its creators have solved one of the internet’s fundamental problems: How to provide authoritative, rigorously accurate knowledge, at no cost to readers. It’s something the encyclopedia, or SEP, has managed to do for two decades.” …

Visualizing SEP “provides clear visualizations based on a philosophical taxonomy that DiCastro adapted from the one developed by the Indiana University Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO),” Justin Weinberg writes at Daily Nous. “Type a term into the search box and suggested SEP entries will be listed. Click on one of the entry titles, and a simple visualization will appear with your selected entry at the center and related entries surrounding it.” At the top of the page, you can select from a series of “domains.” Each selection produces a similar visualization of various-sized dots….”

BSPS Open: All You Need To Know – YouTube

“BSPS Open is an Open Access book series for cutting edge philosophy of science monographs, which are published Open Access and freely downloadable online at no cost to readers or authors. Here, four philosophers of science discuss BSPS Open: What it is, why publish open access, what are Creative Commons licenses are, and how to submit.”

Publishing Philosophy Open Access Without a Particle Collider | Impact of Social Sciences

Open Access often appears to be a monolithic concept, covering all fields of research and publication. However, in practice its application is to a large extent determined by the needs and resources available to different academic communities. In this post, Bryan W. Roberts and David Teira discuss open access publishing in philosophy and how an emerging generation of open publications has developed to meet the needs of an academic discipline where funding for publication is scarce.

New Philosophy Magazine: The Raven – Daily Nous

“Edited by philosopher-turned-journalist David V. Johnson (Stanford) and philosopher J. David Velleman (NYU/JHU), The Raven aims to publish philosophy “written for intellectually curious readers with or without academic training in the discipline.”

The magazine will not be publishing unsolicted manuscripts. Rather, would-be authors will first submit pitches for one of three types of articles: long features, short essays, and reviews. Assisted by an editorial committee consisting of Helena de Bres (Wellesley), Zena Hitz (St. John’s College), Chris Lebron (JHU), and Kieran Setiya (MIT), the editors will help authors whose pitches are accepted edit their manuscripts to “improve style without compromising philosophical rigor.”

The first issue is scheduled to appear in the fall. Subsequent issues will appear biannually, with the possibility of switching to a quarterly schedule. The magazine will start as an online, open-access publication, but may end up publishing print editions….”

The Challenges of Open Access Publishing in Philosophy | Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method

“Join us on 13 January 2021 for this free workshop on the future and the challenges of open access publishing in philosophy, organised by the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science and BSPS Open.

Publications that are Open Access are freely downloadable as a PDF, under a Creative Commons Licence, often with an option to pay for print copies on demand. Making a publication Open Access is well-known to increase its impact, accessibility, and citation numbers. The problem is, typical publishers will only allow Open Access for authors who can pay large fees, making Open Access inaccessible to many.

What are the best strategies to make Open Access options widely available in philosophy? This workshop brings together philosophers and experts involved in open access publishing to share and debate their experience. All are welcome, and publishers in particular should get in touch with the organisers if they would like to participate….”

American Philosophical Association & Exact Editions Form Partnership For New Digital Book Project

“The new project comprises the digitisation of philosophy books written by APA authors and the posting of time-limited links to the complete books online through Exact Editions’ innovative Reading Room technology….”

Quantum Interest: Notre Dame restores forgotten letters of scholars’ physics debates

” “I had the whole series sitting in my basement,” Howard said, peering from behind stacks of books in his cluttered office on the third floor of Malloy Hall. And yet, “I hadn’t realized I had this rarity.”

He would know.

With a bachelor’s degree in physics and advanced degrees in philosophy, the former director and current fellow of the Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values at Notre Dame has spent his career exploring the history and philosophy of modern physics. He is a fellow with the American Physical Society. He co-founded the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science. And he is an expert on the works of the acclaimed physicists Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr.

Still, a key piece of the collection — the first issue — was missing.

Leveraging his connections in the physics community, Howard issued a social media appeal for the fugitive newsletter. The appeal reached Howard Stein, an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. A close personal and professional friend of Shimony, Stein happened to have two copies of the missing issue, Howard said, and gladly gifted one to Howard and Murgueitio Ramírez….”

Philosophers Assemble Archive of Obscure but Prescient 1970s Physics Newsletter – Daily Nous

“A Notre Dame philosophy graduate student, Sebastián Murgueitio Ramírez, who had heard of the newsletter, went looking for articles from it for research on a paper for a course, only to be unable to find it online, nor any hard copies of it.

Professor Howard had been a subscriber to the newsletter, and between his collection and the help of Howard Stein (University of Chicago), who supplied copies of the newsletter’s first issue, they had a complete set. Mr. Murgueitio Ramírez then decided the newsletter, which had been “‘printed in the crudest way,’ hand-assembled from mimeographs,” should be archived online, and began to scan them in. It took 18 months….

It’s a fun and interesting story, which can be read in its entirety here. The online archive of Epistemological Letters can be accessed here….”

PhilArchive: The Philosophy E-Print Archive

“PhilArchive is the largest open access e-print archive in philosophy. Formerly known as the PhilPapers Archive, it is built on and integrated with the PhilPapers database. Access to items on PhilArchive is free without a user account. PhilArchive is a non-profit project supported by the PhilPapers Foundation.

PhilArchive consists entirely of articles submitted by users. You can contribute by submitting your work….”

Why You Should Self-Archive and How to Do It | Blog of the APA

“First, self-archiving your AMs is good for philosophy. It makes it possible for researchers without journal subscriptions to access your work quickly and easily, which in turn helps them to make their own contributions to the field. For example, if there’s a paywalled article that I’m interested in, I’ll search for it in online repositories or check out the author’s website. If a self-archived AM is available, I can download it instantly and start reading and making connections with my own work. If no self-archived AM is available, then I email the author to see if they are willing to send me a copy. Sometimes the author is kind enough to send me their paper quickly, but other times my email goes unanswered and I never get to read the paper. This can slow down my progress on a project; I often need to email multiple philosophers who haven’t self-archived their papers. Some might say that the solution to this problem is to use Sci-Hub, but Sci-Hub distributes journal articles illegally and is allegedly involved in cybercrimes.

Second, self-archiving your AMs is good for you. It enables more people to engage with and cite your work and so can help you become well-known in your field. For example, if your paper’s title and abstract sound relevant to my work and I’m able to download your self-archived AM, then I can read it in full and potentially discuss your arguments in detail in my own paper. If you haven’t self-archived your AM, I might instead decide to discuss and cite ideas from a different paper that has been self-archived. Studies confirm that papers that are self-archived can have a significant boost in citations compared with papers that are not….”