Journal Guidelines #

There are a vast number of journals in which our lab’s work has appeared and will appear. Here’s a rough set of guidelines, with some brief notes about what kinds of things (in my experience) have best fit in different places. I have almost certainly left venues off of this list; get in touch to make me add more!

• Pure philosophy of science

  • British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (BJPS) — incredibly high quality papers, on a vast array of topics, but usually requiring at least some connection to more general issues in philosophy of science or philosophy as a whole for publication.
  • Philosophy of Science — very similar to BJPS, though with perhaps a slightly higher tolerance for engagement with science in practice. I believe this focus is in the process of changing, as well.
  • Synthese and Erkenntnis — see above; often happy to publish works in the philosopy of biology, especially if there’s angles to more general problems or formal treatments.
  • History of Philosophy of Science (HOPOS) — if you’re working on the history of PoS, this is a fantastic place; they do notably interpret philosophy of science quite broadly, broadly enough to include Darwin and similar philosophically inclined scientists, for instance.
  • European Journal for Philosophy of Science (EJPS) — still a very new journal, so I’m not quite sure what their scope is going to wind up being (e.g., I’ve yet to submit any really integrated HPSy stuff to them, so I don’t know how they’ll react). But it’s getting really high quality papers and being widely read, so I recommend it.

• Philosophy of science and (biological) practice

  • Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology (PTPBio) — I’m a co-editor here, so definitely biased, but this is a great journal for articles with a genuine engagement with practicing biology (and all open-access, without author fees!). Feel free to submit here, I will make sure that I am not involved with the editorial process and there will be no conflict of interest. (I will not submit my own papers here, however, while serving as editor.)
  • Biology & Philosophy — has recently changed editors and broadened a bit in focus, now accepting basically anything that engages with biologists. Here and for PTPBio, you may well get a biologist as a reviewer, so think about that as you’re considering submitting there.
  • Biological Theory and Acta Biotheoretica — in both cases, very good journals for very technical work that engages very seriously with the biology.

• Integrated HPBio

  • Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (“Studies C”/SHPSC) — really remains the flagship journal for properly integrated stuff, though you will find people who have a weirdly low opinion of its quality (in part because of the unfortunate “C” in its full name).
  • History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences (HPLS) — a nice outlet, the quality of which has risen quite a bit in recent years. Quite similar otherwise to SHPSC.
  • Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (“Studies A”/SHPSA/SHPS) — actually a completely different and non-overlapping editorial process to SHPSC. If you have stuff that is less purely biology-focused, or you want to use integrated work to draw a more general philosophy of science point, this is the spot.

• Digital Humanities

  • Note that all of the above philosophy of science journals have been increasingly willing to publish digital analyses in recent years (I believe we’ve now seen things get printed at HOPOS, Phil Sci, and B&P).
  • Otherwise, if something is too strange or technical for the philosophy journals, I’ve just placed it at PLoS ONE. The page charges are expensive, but distribution is wide and open-access is nice.

• History of Biology

  • Journal of the History of Biology (JHB) — straightforwardly the field’s flagship, if you have some very high quality historical research to print.

• General Philosophy Journals

  • Most general philosophy journals don’t want much of anything to do with philosophy of science, especially anything that’s really practice-oriented. That said, Australasian Journal of Philosophy has been printing more stuff of late, and if you can be one of the people to get in the one philosophy of science paper per year or two that they print in Journal of Philosophy, then more power to you. Expect long review times.