Publishing Discussion Notes
Over at Leiter Reports, there's an interesting discussion of the lack of venues for publishing discussion notes -- see here. The problem is that few journals these days publish discussion notes (which I take to be distinct from full-length articles that discuss some article or book), and those that do tend to publish only discussions of articles appearing in their journal. What is needed is a journal willing to publish discussions of articles appearing in other journals. BEARS did this, but I suspect it was ahead of its times and that that's what resulted in its unfortunate demise.
Now Jamie Dreier has said that "If there's a lot of interest, I suspect the editors (Dave, Julia Driver, Andrei Marmor, I) would be happy to set up a portion of JESP especially for discussion notes."
Well, who's interested? I certainly am!
Doug,
I'll second that sentiment!
Troy
Posted by: Troy Jollimore | March 01, 2007 at 08:30 AM
I'd also be very happy to see JESP incorporate a section devoted to discussions.
[I've just had a discussion note rejected by a journal because I discussed 2 articles in the note - one published in the journal itself, another from another journal (and did not adequately focus on the former, according to the rejection letter). It's a rather frustrating position - the two articles I discuss defend essentially the same thesis, and it would be poor scholarship to focus on just one of the papers... I've since sent it off to the journal which published the other article; I'm not expecting much...]
Posted by: Jason Kawall | March 01, 2007 at 08:51 AM
I think that would be good. I recently had an experience similar to Jason's. I wanted to make a quick point about an article that appeard in an invitation-only journal. There doesn't seem to be a place for things like that.
Posted by: Justin Klocksiem | March 01, 2007 at 01:13 PM
I think that is a fantastic idea.
- Kris
Posted by: Kris McDaniel | March 01, 2007 at 05:13 PM
I also think it's a great idea.
Posted by: Josh Glasgow | March 01, 2007 at 07:31 PM
I'll third that notion, good idea.
Posted by: David Hunter | March 02, 2007 at 03:47 AM
This is certainly a terrific idea.
Posted by: Dan Boisvert | March 02, 2007 at 07:57 AM
Over at TAR there is another post relevant to this topic:
http://tar.weatherson.org/2007/03/01/short-journals/
Posted by: Scott Wilson | March 02, 2007 at 09:09 AM
Sounds great to me!
Posted by: Shyam Ranganathan | March 03, 2007 at 10:57 AM