Hi—this sounds like something the forthcoming Oxford Institute for EA might find worth taking up.
It sounds like a good idea, although I have a few concerns:
-increasing dialogue between the EA community and academic philosophers
I think there could potentially be greater benefits from EAs publishing their ideas in other journals that have wider readerships. I’d be surprised if publishability was a serious bottleneck for EA researchers right now; as far as I can tell many EAs have already been able to publish their articles elsewhere.
Perhaps if there are specific topic areas the EA community generally is supportive of (maybe obscure x-risk ideas? Wild animal suffering / the finer points of population ethics?) that are heavily under-researched but cannot be published by conventional journals, it could be worthwhile to create journals based on those topic areas. Maybe if we have a specific academic goal in mind—e.g. pushing for higher research standards in a field—creating a journal could additionally allow EAs to have more influence in pursuing that goal.
-allowing readers to find the most important new contributions in one location
Do EAs actually learn about EA mostly through academic journal articles? I’m skeptical this is the primary way that EAs find their information sources. (But maybe I’m wrong).
Additionally, I’m not an expert on the world of academic publishing but some open access journals look very fishy and I’m not sure how seriously this journal would be taken. e.g. Jeffrey Beall annually publishes a list of predatory publishers.
I think the barrier to greater publication is that there are many EAs outside the academy with publishable articles who just feel like an academic journal would be the wrong place for their article. If there was a journal dedicated specifically to effective altruism and read by many in the movement, there would probably be more EAs submitting articles.
I would agree that most EAs currently learn about EA ideas in places other than journal articles, and I actually want that to continue even if a journal is started. However, I would imagine that many more people would read academic journal articles about EA if we have a single journal than in the current situation where EA articles are in many different journals.
It would probably be a good idea to make it free to submit and free to read, but that does require an EA organization to pay for the costs.
There does seem to be a tradeoff here: the more acceptable the journal is to the EA community, the less acceptable it will be to the academic community. For example, allowing the majority of the articles in the journal to be from nonacademics, allowing some reviewers to be nonacademics, and having an EA organization host the journal are steps that would make it more acceptable to EAs and less acceptable to academics.
I think an open access academic journal focused on effective altruism could also have significant benefits including:
-increasing dialogue between the EA community and academic philosophers
-creating a formal mechanism for receiving thoughtful feedback on new ideas
-allowing readers to find the most important new contributions in one location
-incentivizing serious research on topics that are important to the movement
-signalling the openness of the community to changing its mind on key issues
It could complement a database by highlighting the most important articles within the database.
I explore the idea of a journal in greater depth in this comment: http://effective-altruism.com/ea/us/call_for_papers_for_a_special_journal_issue_on_ea/7ud
Hi—this sounds like something the forthcoming Oxford Institute for EA might find worth taking up.
It sounds like a good idea, although I have a few concerns:
I think there could potentially be greater benefits from EAs publishing their ideas in other journals that have wider readerships. I’d be surprised if publishability was a serious bottleneck for EA researchers right now; as far as I can tell many EAs have already been able to publish their articles elsewhere.
Perhaps if there are specific topic areas the EA community generally is supportive of (maybe obscure x-risk ideas? Wild animal suffering / the finer points of population ethics?) that are heavily under-researched but cannot be published by conventional journals, it could be worthwhile to create journals based on those topic areas. Maybe if we have a specific academic goal in mind—e.g. pushing for higher research standards in a field—creating a journal could additionally allow EAs to have more influence in pursuing that goal.
Do EAs actually learn about EA mostly through academic journal articles? I’m skeptical this is the primary way that EAs find their information sources. (But maybe I’m wrong).
Additionally, I’m not an expert on the world of academic publishing but some open access journals look very fishy and I’m not sure how seriously this journal would be taken. e.g. Jeffrey Beall annually publishes a list of predatory publishers.
I think the barrier to greater publication is that there are many EAs outside the academy with publishable articles who just feel like an academic journal would be the wrong place for their article. If there was a journal dedicated specifically to effective altruism and read by many in the movement, there would probably be more EAs submitting articles.
I would agree that most EAs currently learn about EA ideas in places other than journal articles, and I actually want that to continue even if a journal is started. However, I would imagine that many more people would read academic journal articles about EA if we have a single journal than in the current situation where EA articles are in many different journals.
It would probably be a good idea to make it free to submit and free to read, but that does require an EA organization to pay for the costs.
There does seem to be a tradeoff here: the more acceptable the journal is to the EA community, the less acceptable it will be to the academic community. For example, allowing the majority of the articles in the journal to be from nonacademics, allowing some reviewers to be nonacademics, and having an EA organization host the journal are steps that would make it more acceptable to EAs and less acceptable to academics.