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Open Access Philosophy Press Survey

March 19, 2015

Philosophers: Please take the following survey to help us assess the feasibility and interest for an open access philosophy press, by following this link. It should take no more than 5 minutes to complete. https://surveys.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0pSC4gW1ciPOgWF

This survey aims to gage the interest of professional philosophers in helping to create, operate, and sustain an open access philosophy press.

Philosophers aim to disseminate ideas and knowledge as widely as possible. For-profit publishers introduce a price barrier that, with the wide availability of the internet, is unnecessary.

The success of high quality, open access philosophy journals, like Philosophers' Imprint and Ergo, has erased concerns about the viability of open access, electronic publishing.

But there is no similar venue for books. We see no reason that a successful open access philosophy press shouldn't follow in the wake of the open access philosophy journals.

While the details would be worked out by an Advisory Board or Board of Directors and would follow best practices, the basic idea of the press is to

publish high quality books in philosophy
that are rigorously peer reviewed
and made freely available online to read, download, copy, distribute, print, and otherwise use in legal, non-commercial ways by all without financial barriers.

We ask you, therefore, to answer these few short questions to help us gauge the interest in and viability of an open access, philosophy press.

— Andrew Cullison, Helen De Cruz, Jonathan D. Jacobs, Mark Lance, Kevin Timpe

Posted in Academic publishing, Improving the philosophy profession

7 responses to “Open Access Philosophy Press Survey”

Sebastian Lutz

March 19, 2015

College Publications seems to occupy something of an intermediate position between commercial publishers and open access publishers (http://collegepublications.co.uk/about/). Could this is already be close enough to open access publishing?

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Helen De Cruz

March 19, 2015

Thank you, Sebastian Lutz – this sort of feedback is very helpful for us to assess whether there is sufficient interest, motivation etc for a specialized OA philosophy book press. My sense is that by having a specialized press for philosophy books, we’d have more control over the editorial practice, peer review, etc (all aspects of quality control that philosophers might be concerned about).

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Angus

March 19, 2015

I just filled out the survey, but I’ll also add this comment here. I’d take at look at the Open Humanities Press http://openhumanitiespress.org/index.html potentially for a model of a successful open access press.

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Josh May

March 20, 2015

I’m all about open access, but is there anything wrong with the Open Book Publishers? Velleman recently published a monograph with them. http://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/181/foundations-for-moral-relativism
Also, the survey link isn’t working for me. Page just keeps trying to load and load.

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Anonymous Coward

March 20, 2015

The cover art on Velleman’s monograph is either a thing wrong with that press, or something really really good about their ability to choose provocative cover art.

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Patrick Flack

March 23, 2015

Excellent initiative! My personal impression is that there would be a big demand for such a press and a lot of enthusiasm to tap into.
Also, we are launching an open access publishing platform for phenomenology (www.ocoph.org), along with a print series in early phenomenology. We are open to collaboration/synergies so don’t hesitate to get in touch!

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Martin Stokhof

March 23, 2015

Hi, I tried to fill out the survey but got stuck on the question asking for my whereabouts: the webpage became unresponsive. What I wanted to suggest anyway is to take a look at OAPEN: http://www.oapen.org/home.
Martin Stokhof

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