Over the past few months I have read the news, in various social media posts, that the future of two major journals in political philosophy are in jeopardy-
Philosophy and Public Affairs and the
Journal of Political Philosophy.
These two journals are among the most influential and prominent for mainstream topics/debates in political philosophy. So I admit I was very shocked and saddened to learn of their apparent demise. I am an outsider to the inner circle of both journals, so I do not know exactly what their future fates are and the reasons for this unfortunate development. It is not clear to me that the journals are ending, only that the editors/ editorial teams of both journals have left with intentions to create open access versions of the journals. I gather, again from the scant information I have read online (which I suspect is only part of the story), that this occurred because of disagreements/ challenges of working with the publisher.
Many years ago I decided to write and engage with a readership outside the scope of both of these journals, in part because I did not find the core of the field particularly engaging or interesting and so I sought out other venues/ interlocutors for my research and intellectual development. But I had hoped both journals would flourish, and perhaps evolve and develop in terms of both scope and interdisciplinary engagement. It can take many decades to build a journal's reputation, and both of these journals had a significant degree of respect among scholars outside of philosophy (e.g. in both law and political science). Perhaps new open access versions of the journals will inherit the reputable legacies of their predecessors. The resigning editors/editorial boards seem to think so. But I admit I am less optimistic, and to be honest I find it problematic that the future of the field has been dramatically altered by only a handful of scholars. I watched a similar issue arise with the journal Aging Cell a few years back, when the editorial team left to create the new online journal Aging Biology (though Aging Cell continued).
I can imagine the frustration and angst of junior scholars hoping to go up for tenure in a few years who will have published articles over the past few years that are now placed in potentially defunct journals. Or those who may publish future work in relevantly unknown/new open access journals, on the gamble that those journals will be sustained over time and achieve a high reputation. These junior scholars will face the additional stress of trying to convince deans and provosts that these publication venues are highly reputable publication venues for their research, despite being defunct/ new. The handful of scholars who resigned from the editorial boards of course are all tenured and gainfully employed, and so can weather the storm of this kind of professional uncertainty more easily than those trying to get established in the field. So I believe these developments could adversely impact both recruitment into the field, as well as mudding the indicators of the paths to success through the early stages of establishing oneself in the field.
And my larger worry is that these developments threaten to further marginalize the field within academia. A decade or so from now a clearer picture of the impact of these changes on the discipline should be apparent. But until then I guess we cross our fingers and hope things work out!
Cheers,
Colin
