Informationsplattform Open Access: Philosophy

Philosophy

In this section we have compiled some information on Open Access (OA) in the field of philosophy. If you have any comments or suggestions, please do not hesitate to send us an E-mail.

 

General information on Open Access in the field of philosophy

In many areas of academic philosophy fewer publications are made freely accessible than in other disciplines. This is probably due to the fact that the opportunities and advantages afforded by Open Access are still relatively unknown. Since philosophers do not generally receive remuneration for their texts, which could possibly be reduced if the work was made openly accessible, Open Access has many advantages but no disadvantages for authors in this field. The main advantage is the fact that freely accessible texts enjoy wider and more rapid dissemination. Other advantages are that documents can be searched electronically; that links are clickable; that the texts can be printed out as needed; that readers can transport them on their laptops; and that it is no longer necessary to store hard copies of texts. Hence, the provision of Open Access to journal articles and books in the field of philosophy is both possible and useful. However, to date the two main German philosophical scholarly societies, the German Society for Philosophy (DGPhil) and the Society for Analytic Philosophy (GAP) have not taken a discernible position on Open Access.

Publications in Open Access journals are freely accessible without restriction from the very beginning. These journals do not differ from paper periodicals in terms of quality control because, like their paper counterparts, they have editors and a peer review system. The number of OA journals of philosophy is growing. The US journal Philosophers' Imprint, which publishes contributions from all subfields of philosophy, is widely regarded as the most prestigious OA periodical in the field of philosophy. In German-language philosophy, the review journal KRITIKON is developing at a lively pace. And the German OA journal LOGOS - Free journal of academic philosophy, which was founded in October 2009, publishes non-historical essays from all areas of philosophy. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews publishes a large number of English-language reviews, which appear soon after the books are published. Further journals are listed below.

Many philosophers make the essays they have published in journals or collective volumes available on their personal websites. However, it is much better to deposit one's articles in an Open Access repository (also known as an Internet archive or a document server). This procedure is referred to as  "self-archiving" or "posting". For this purpose, the author generates a PDF-file which can be printed and read (for example, A4 format, serif font (e.g. Georgia), type size 12 pt, single spacing; or A5 format, 11 pt). Repositories use uniform metadata (those of the OAI), so that all repositories can not only be searched by general search engines such as Google but also by specialised scientific and scholarly search engines such as BASE, which conduct more targeted searches. Hence, documents in repositories can be retrieved much more easily than texts which are posted to normal web pages. Furthermore, documents archived in repositories are assigned a permanent Internet address (URL); they are stored on a long-term basis; and the date of archiving is officially recorded.

Sammelpunkt is a philosophy repository which can be used by all authors. In addition, most universities have their own repositories, which can generally be used only by members of the institution in question. These repositories can be found in ROAR or DOAR. A number of other repositories are listed below. Thanks to the fact that all repositories are linked to each other, it does not matter which repository one uses. While most physicists, for example, use the repository arXiv.org, there is as yet no philosophy repository favoured by most philosophers. However, the comprehensive and fast-growing English-language directory of online philosophy articles and books PhilPapers.org acts as a virtual subject-based repository or network. It offers annotated links to philosophy publications stored in diverse locations throughout the Internet. Hence it is possible to search the directory for texts on specific topics or by a particular author. Although it is also possible to upload files to PhilPapers, this is not to be recommended because the directory does not use the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. It is better to use Sammelpunkt or an institutional repository instead.

Authors can maximise the findability of their texts as follows

  • first, by depositing them in a repository
  • second, by submitting the bibliographic details to PhilPapers.org and
  • third, by generating a list of their own texts (with links to the entry in the repository) o on their personal websites.

At what point may or should one archive a contribution which has appeared in a paper journal or a collective volume? The answer is: either immediately after completion; before submission to a journal/publisher; or upon expiry of a set time period after print publication.

 

In contrast to other disciplines, self-archiving a version of a work before submission to a publisher is not common practice in philosophy. However, there is no legal barrier to doing so because, at that point in time, the author holds all the rights to his or her text. Although a journal could refuse to publish an essay which has already been archived, this is hardly feasible and is not common practice. We are not aware of any philosophy journal which has such a rule. The condition imposed by many journals that the text must not have been
'published' before, refers only to publication in a journal or edited book. In the case of the journal Mind, for example, the Oxford University Press restricts self-archiving more than do other publishers by forbidding the archiving of preprints (i.e. the submitted version) after submission and by permitting the archiving of the postprints of articles in some journals only 24 months after the article is published. However, even the Oxford University Press does not forbid archiving prior to submission ("Preprint can only be posted prior to acceptance."). The SHERPA/RoMEO website provides details of journal publishers' policies with regard to self-archiving. Authors can, however, reach an agreement with a journal or publisher which deviates from these policies or can opt to publish their work in another journal.

Archiving a work before submission has various advantages. First, the text can be made available to readers much sooner and can be disseminated more rapidly and more widely. Another decisive advantage is the early establishment of priority. Once one has deposited a contribution in a repository, one is considered to be the author of the ideas contained in the work at the automatically recorded, and therefore verifiable, point in time at which it was archived in the repository. If one does not archive one's work until after the print publication appears, one risks being pre-empted by somebody else because submission to a journal does not establish authorship. Authorship is not established until the work is published. Normally a lot of time elapses between submission to and publication in a journal. During this time, one can be pre-empted by somebody else, or one's ideas, which are revealed to the editors and the anonymous reviewers, can be plagiarised. If the publishing agreement contains no provisions to the contrary, the author may archive the essay in the form of a self-generated PDF twelve months after the date of publication. However, the publisher's PDF may only be self-archived if this has been agreed with the publisher. If you, as an author, enter into a publishing agreement with a publisher or a journal, you should take care to reserve the right to self-archive your work and you should avoid granting an exclusive right of use in your work. More information on this topic can be found here.

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Open Access Journals

As of Septmeber 2010, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) featured some 114 journals in the field of philosophy. Even more journals are listed in the  Electronic Journals Library (EZB). They include:

Other freely-accessible philosophical texts:

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Subject-based repositories and databases

Most universities maintain repositories which can be used by members of the institution. They can be found in ROAR or DOAR.

  • Sammelpunkt: a philosophy repository which can be used by all philosophers
  • PhilPapers: a fast-growing virtual repository of philosophy; language: English; see above
  • PhilSci: repository of texts in natural philosophy and the philosophy of science
  • Cogprints: a repository for the "cognitive sciences"
  • Swiss Philosophical Preprint Series (only for philosophers resident in Switzerland)
  • Phonline: small virtual repository of philosophy; language: English
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Open Access to books

Like essays, books are more widely read if they are not only sold in print form but also made freely accessible via an online archive. If the profit motive is not an issue for the author, then, as in the case of essays, the provision of Open Access to books has many advantages but no disadvantages for the author. If, on the other hand, an author wishes to make a financial profit from the sales of a book, he or she must ponder whether self-archiving a book in document form in an OA repository is likely to reduce profits from sales of the print version. In many cases it has turned out that sales of the print version have risen rather than fallen as a result of Open Access (see here, here and here. However, especially when the book is expensive, the provision of Open Access could prove detrimental to sales. 

There are countless other advantages associated with making a book freely accessible online as well as selling it in print form:

  • readers can search the document electronically
  • readers can carry the document with them at all times on their laptops
  • parts of the document can be projected onto a screen, for example during a lecture
  • readers can print out parts of the document when needed, can mark the printout and can print out the text again if required.

How can one make a book freely accessible? The answer is: by generating a readable and printable PDF and archiving it in a digital repository. As in the case of essays, book manuscripts can also be deposited in an online archive before submission to a publisher.

In order to be able to make your book freely accessible on the Internet, you must  avoid granting to the publisher an unlimited ("for the duration of the statutory copyright" - i.e. up to 70 years after your death) and exclusive contractual right of use in your work. A publishing agreement can allow Open Access in three ways: 

  • First, the author can grant the publisher a non-exclusive rather than an exclusive right of use in the work.
  • Second, the grant of an exclusive right of use can be limited to a period of some months or years (thereby avoiding a situation where the dissemination of the book is impeded for up to 70 years after the death of the author because the publisher has the exclusive right of use and sells the book at such a high price that the sales figures are low). The book may be made freely accessible after the expiry of the stipulated period.
  • Third, in addition to or instead of options 1 and 2 above, the author can be expressly permitted to archive the text in an Internet repository at any time or after the expiry of a certain embargo period. (Further information can be found here.)

The conventional philosophical publishers in Germany tend to present authors who do not express any wishes with publishing agreements in which the author grants the publisher an exclusive right of use with no time limit thereby excluding Open Access. Therefore, it is important that you, as an author, articulate your wishes and demands to the publisher and, if necessary, choose a different company. Nowadays, many publishers do not automatically demand an exclusive right of use and are willing to accept a non-exclusive right. That is the case with so-called print-on-demand publishers, some of which specialise in scholarly works, and with more and more newly-emerging scholarly publishers (for example, the University Presses, MV-Wissenschaft and Meine-Verlag; or for English-language books Open Humanities Press or Bloomsbury Academic). OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) offers an overview of scholarly publishers which use Open Access business models. Furthermore, when choosing a publisher it is important to check whether an author-side contribution to publishing costs is payable and how high it is (it can range between zero and several thousand euros); how high the author royalties are; and what the sale price of the book would be (it can vary greatly from publisher to publisher). As mentioned above, it is not necessary to choose an Open Access publisher. Indeed, it is just as good to combine Open Access self-archiving in a digital repository and print publication with a conventional philosophical publisher by making sure that the publishing agreement is formulated accordingly.

In the last few decades in Germany, the number of copies of philosophical works sold by specialist publishers has dropped drastically and is sometimes under 200 per book. One reason could be the rise in book prices which was facilitated by the fact that libraries buy books even at a high price and publishers therefore have no incentive to increase sales through more intensive advertising and lower prices. Lower prices and more advertising would boost sales. However, they would also reduce turnover and profits. Furthermore, state grants towards printing costs (for example those paid by the German Research Foundation, DFG) mean that it is still worthwhile to produce a book even without the higher sales figures which could be achieved through more advertising and lower prices. In any case, from the authors' point of view, the dissemination and scholarly impact of philosophical books is unsatisfyingly low. Open Access offers a way to counteract this. 

Digital printing technology has rendered the production of paper books so cheap that even circulations of less than 100 copies or the printing of individual copies at low cost are economically viable, especially when authors typeset (for example with the cost-free typesetting programme LaTeX) and proof read their books themselves. Nowadays, even conventional specialist publishers use this print-on-demand technology.

 

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Links for further reading

A radio interview about Open Access in philosophy conducted on 2 March 2010 with Professor Herbert Hrachovec. The interview covers the theoretical foundations of Open Access and its potential to change philosophy as an academic discipline.

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Content mentor

Edited/compiled by:

Prof. Dr. Dr. Daniel von Wachter, Academia Internacional de Filosofía en la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

 

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