Readers are welcome to suggest additional questions. Editors, please take a moment to respond. Thanks.
[Louise Bourgeois, plate 4 from The Puritan]
Alex Guerrero (Rutgers) suggested a post on journal policies and practices regarding book reviews, and I’d like to invite book review editors at philosophy journals to share theirs. Here are some questions I’d hope they’d consider answering:
- How do you decide which books to solicit reviews of?
- Do you ever accept review proposals from prospective reviewers?
- How recently must a book have been published to be considered for a review?
- Would you ever publish a review of a self-published book?
- What general restrictions, if any, are there on selecting books for review at your journal?
- To what extent are review decisions a function of publisher behavior (emailing you about books, proactively sending the journal review copies)?
A recent discussion on social media of a book in metaethics, self-published five years ago and authored by someone who had left academia, prompted questions about whether a review of the book would ever appear in an academic philosophy journal.
