A 'replies-only' journal?

A while ago, I suggested that there may be an underappreciated barrier to philosophical engagement. The barrier is this: with a few exceptions (see e.g. JESP), most philosophy journals do not accept "replies" to articles in other journals. In practice, this means that, by and large, reply pieces can only be sent to one journal. My sense is that this is a real deterrent to philosophical discussion. Although I published two reply articles early in my career, I've largely given up on writing them. Why spend time writing a piece you can only send to one journal?

This potential barrier to philosophical dialogue concerns me given how rare engagement with published articles seems to be. According to this study:

• More than 90% of published humanities papers have received no citations two years after publication.
• About 82% have never been cited five years after publication.

Kieran Healy's research on citation rates indicates philosophy is similar ("on the average hardly anyone is getting cited"). I think this is unfortunate. While I've heard some people say most published philosophy isn't worth engaging with, I think this is terribly cynical, overly dismissive of the hard work of our colleagues, and mostly serves to uphold hierarchies (viz. engagement with Big Names, ignoring No-Names). Further, the more I read, the more I think there are a lot of people doing interesting work--work that, unfortunately, given the incentives in place, just isn't being engaged with.

I've long wondered what the profession might do to incentivize greater engagement with people's work. One obvious possibility would be for existing journals to be more open to replies to articles in other journals. However, I do not see that happening any time soon. Which got me thinking about one other possibility: a replies-only philosophy journal that might serve as a central forum for engagement with other articles in the literature. While such a journal would, obviously, only increase the number of places one could submit replies to by one, I cannot help but wonder whether--with the right kinds of editorial standards and review process--such a journal might substantially incentivize greater philosophical engagement.

What do you all think: would such a journal be a good idea? If so, that brings me to my next question: what exactly are the steps one must take to create such a journal? I'm sure it would be a fairly massive undertaking (logistically speaking)--and I'm far from sure whether it's something I would ever sensibly pursue myself--but still, I'd like to learn about what it might involve. What does it take to get a new journal started? Anyone have any experience or tips they're willing to share?

Comments

[another postdoc]

There is one, just for business ethics: https://businessethicsjournalreview.com/ A couple months ago when I found out about it, I kicked around the idea of doing one for political philosophy with friends on facebook and ended up getting connected with the founding editors of the business ethics one, who were quite open about the process. It seems to be flourishing.

[Nevin]

I think that there are actually more journals that will publish replies to articles in other journals than people realize; these journals just mostly don't advertise that fact. A couple years ago I had a short reply piece rejected by the journal with the article it was replying to, and did a little digging to see what journals had previously published replies to articles in other journals. The list I came up with included: Phil Studies, Analysis, Thought, Ergo, Philosophy of Science (which is where my article was ultimately published), and European Journal for Philosophy of Science. I don't know how common it is for these journals to publish such replies, or how much harder it is to get them accepted, but if one is unsure in a particular case, one can always E-mail the editor and ask.

It is also often possible to reframe a reply piece so as to make it of broader interest: make one's interlocutor a representative of a more general view, note the possible application of one's response to said interlocutor to other similar arguments in the literature, etc. This requires a bit of extra writing, but can often still preserve the same core paper, and may make reply-style pieces attractive to a wider variety of journals.

[Al]

I kicked around this very idea as well after working as editorial assistant for another journal (I thought it might be called Philosophical Replies). My biggest worry was how do decide which papers merit replies and which don't. Let's face it, some papers aren't great and replies are forthcoming and some papers are the 40th time around in an epicycle and it's hard to justify needing a 41st. This kind of issue seemed to me really hard to sort out and also, I admit, worried me relative to various climate issues in the discipline. One work around is just let anything in but such a journal might be a bit of a mess and would probably suffer in quality. If there is a good way to figure out which papers are viable to be replied to, this still seems like something the profession could really benefit from. Maybe the right way to look at is more from the side of the writer reply rather than the paper it is a reply to...

[Peter]

I think this is a great idea. I am impressed that there is one dedicated to business ethics, especially given their dedication to keeping it free for all. I am unsure whether I think it is better to have reply journals for specific sub-disciplines or more generalist reply journals, but I think both are good ideas. Sadly, I have no idea what might be involved in starting one, so I have no tips to add.

[GoodIdea]

That would be a good idea