Andrew Cullison

I’m seeing a lot of conferences now that result in edited volumes. This might be an easy way to start a high quality open access publication.

Suppose we set up some kind of society (e.g. The Society for Open Access Philosophy) to throw a yearly summer philosophy conference. The process for getting into the conference would have to be highly selective. We want the screening to be as good as the screening for a high-quality, peer-review journal. So, I think we’d need a review board of established, highly regarded philosophers.

The purpose of the conference would be two-fold. First, it would be a workshop for these high quality papers. Second, it would be a kind of meeting space for people interested in open-access philosophy. Hopefully, it would forge connections that would lead to other open-access projects. ]

After the conference, participants would have some set time to revise their papers. The papers (or some sub-set of them) would be published in a yearly volume. Each paper would be available as it’s own PDF on some website.

As an added treat, the collection of papers could be made available through a self-publishing press (see here for more on that idea). Philosophers would be able to purchase a bound copy of this edited volume at a fraction of the cost of current edited volumes, and the 80% profit share could be distributed among the authors as a kind of reward for supporting open access philosophy.

Filed under: open access, the academy, the profession by Andrew Cullison