The journal had implemented the optional fee in 2020 in order to defray the costs of operating the journal. It had also launched an institutional sponsorship plan to get philosophy departments and libraries to support the journal. The plan has been successful. Ben Bradley (Syracuse), one of the journal’s editors, writes:
We are very pleased to announce that we have secured enough institutional commitments to cover the journal’s expenses. We have received sponsorships from over 30 departments and libraries for 0-0 each. We’d like to single out Cornell, Gothenburg and Toronto as giving especially significant support. Most crucially, we have recently received a substantial long-term commitment from the Syracuse University philosophy department that will cover the majority of our costs for the next three years, and likely longer. As a result, we will be discontinuing the practice of requesting donations from authors, at least for now, and hopefully forever. (Of course, we still welcome any such donations, but they are no longer necessary for us to continue operating.) We expect to make this change on the journal website in a few weeks. We are very excited about this development, and grateful to the SU department as well as the many others who are making this change possible! We also thank the hundreds of authors who have donated to the journal over the last couple of years; your assistance helped us reach this point.
The philosophy journal Ergo will no longer be asking authors for a fee or “donation” to consider a manuscript for publication.
You can view the list of institutional sponsors here.