There’s a new research foundation called the Northern Institute for Philosophy (NIP) that will be starting up at Aberdeen this September. That by itself is kind of exciting. Then I learned that they have a journal in the works. [HT:Dan Cavedon-Taylor] From the description it looks like it is Analysis-esque. This makes it even more exciting.
They don’t actually mention Analysis by name, but here’s the description from their prospectus.
Journal: Plans are well advanced for the inauguration of a new quarterly journal, provisionally titled Aurora, to be housed by the Institute, specialising in the publication of short sharply focused papers within the areas of remit. A proposal is under consideration with Oxford University Press. Subject editors include JC Beall (Logic), Richard Heck (Philosophy of Maths), Ross Cameron (Metaphysics), Tim Crane (Mind), Jonathan Schaffer (Language), and Brian Weatherson (Epistemology). The executive editors will be John Divers and Crispin Wright.
Check the bolded-portion. That smells like Analysis to me.
At the risk of looking a gift horse in the mouth, I will say that it’s a shame this won’t be open access.
I will say this. When Analysis made the switch to OUP, I bemoaned the fact that it didn’t go open access. We had a nice little discussion there about the feasibility of open access.
I’ll echo one thing that I said there. OUP seems like one of the better non-open access options. I’m told that they divert a sizeable chunk of profit back to academia. They also offer free access to a lot of their recent journals more regularly than other publishers (as far as I can tell).
It’s possible that the members have explored this option, but determined it’s not viable. I wonder if it’s worth emailing Crispin Wright or John Diver to find out.
I share your sentiments. The few open-access journals up and running so far seem to be doing great (Imprint and JESP, e.g.). I could understand if the atmosphere still wasn’t right for open-access journals to get the cred necessary, but the Imprint is already climbing the ranks! And I imagine it will keep climbing some more. And I can sort of understand the hesitation of current journals to switch over the open-access given that they have long ties with a publisher or something. But I don’t see why a new journal wouldn’t do it. Ugh.
I’ve emailed John Divers, highlighting the invitation (in comments here) from Michigan’s Scholarly Publishing Office to support other quality journals besides Philosophers’ Imprint. It’ll be interesting to see whether anything comes of it…