I’m interested in selecting journals to publish my research on AI Governance.
I heard that “Futures” is good: “For the interdisciplinary study of futures, anticipation and foresight. Futures aims to build substantive research and knowledge about the relationships between humanity and its possible futures. It welcomes: new knowledge about humanity’s diverse anticipatory practices and how to understand, challenge, develop or enhance them; novel futures-oriented research emerging at the intersections between and beyond disciplines that provides insights into humanity’s (and posthumanity’s) changing relationship with the future; and the highest quality scholarship in the field of futures/prospective studies.”
What are other good places to publish?
EDIT: Separate note on Why it’s important to publish AI Governance research
We may have the (very nice to have) problem that the EA Forum is so good that AI governance researchers publish stuff here instead of in peer-reviewed journals, or they publish on their blogs to avoid lengthy processes.
I don’t have publishing requirements for my PhD, but I still think that publishing research in peer-reviewed journals is very important for the field of AI Governance in order to 1) Attract new researchers to the field; 2) Gain feedback from other researchers and test our ideas; 3) Increase the legitimacy of EA-aligned research.
There is a significant trade-off between “publish online fast and make progress fast” and “build a respectable, legit academic field”; and I’m generally inclined to favor the first option, but would highlight that in some specific cases (e.g. writing papers for a PhD), it makes more sense to publish in peer-reviewed journals because your research is already “academically-formatted” anyway.
All things being equal, I’d recommend you publish in journals that are prestigious in your particular field (though it might not be worth the effort). In international relations / political science (which I know best) that might be e.g.: International Organization, International Security, American Journal of Political Science, PNAS.
Other journals that are less prestigious but more likely to be keen on AI governance work include: Nature Machine Intelligence, Global Policy, Journal of AI Research, AI & Society. There are also a number of conferences to consider: AIES, FAccT, workshops at big ML conferences like NeurIPS or ICML. Another thing to look out for is journals with AI governance/policy special issues.
I find that one good strategy for finding a suitable journal is looking for articles similar to what you want to publish and seeing where they’ve been published. You can then e.g. refer to those in your letter to the editors, highlighting how your work is relevant to their interests.
strong +1 to everything Markus suggests here.
Other journals (depending on the field) could include Journal of Strategic Studies, Contemporary Security Policy, Yale Journal of Law & Technology, Minds & Machines, AI & Ethics, ‘Law, Innovation and Technology’, Science and Engineering Ethics, Foresight, …
As Markus mentions, there are also sometimes good disciplinary journals that have special issue collections on technology—those can be opportunities to get it into high-profile journals even if they are usually more aversive to tech-focused pieces (e.g. I got a piece into Melbourne Journal of International Law); though it really depends what audiences you’re trying to reach / position your work into.
Thanks so much, this is very helpful!
Note the unjournal is trying to build a sort of best of both worlds approach, gaining feedback and prestige/credibility without the inefficiencies of traditional journals. I hope that a top unjournal rating will end up having more cred in some circles than a publication in (E.g) Futures.
I think some AI governance work will be particularly relevant to the Unjournal’s scope. So consider submitting it to the Unjournal (as we get it going) while perhaps also submitting it to one of the journals you mention.
Unjournal will assess and link work; it does not “publish” it. So there is no exclusivity, no loss of options value.