Futures of altruism special issue?
There is interest in having a special issue in the journal Futures on the futures of altruism. From reading this forum, I have identified a few possibilities:
the endgame for animal product consumption offsetting
next steps in Singer’s expanding circle
the endgame of most people becoming EAs
Of course there would be many others. But the big question is, “How many people would be willing to write papers that would be appropriate?” Please indicate in the comments whether you would be interested in doing this and what your topic(s) might be. The recommended length of the paper is 5000 to 8000 words. The impact factor is 1.242. Here is the description of the journal:
“Futures® is an international, refereed, multidisciplinary journal concerned with medium and long-term futures of cultures and societies, science and technology, economics and politics, environment and the planet and individuals and humanity. Covering methods and practices of futures studies, the journal seeks to examine possible and alternative futures of all human endeavours. Futures® seeks to promote divergent and pluralistic visions, ideas and opinions about the future.”
As for the special issue, I think people with many different backgrounds would be appropriate. At this point we are gauging the level of interest.
For EAs that don’t know, if might be helpful to provide some information about the journal, such as the size and general characteristics of the readership, as well as information about writing for it, such as what sort of background is likely helpful and how long the papers would probably be. Also hopes and expectations for the special issue, if you have any.
Thanks for the feedback-I have put some more description in.
I wish I had a better idea of what an impact factor of 1.242 actually cashes out to, in terms of academic influence/prestige. (Though maybe me not knowing that is a good indication that I’m not the right target audience for this post!)
It means in the first five years, the average paper gets 1.242*5 ~6 citations. The citation rate generally increases in the first decade, and then falls off. So the average paper might get a few dozen citations. This is decent for a peer-reviewed journal. As I say in a comment here, the number of reads is likely much greater than the number of citations.