Open Access in Philosophy
In philosophy, green open access predominates. Whereas the traditional scholarly journals of philosophy do not yet allow free access, it is becoming increasingly common for authors to make their papers accessible in repositories (especially in PhilPapers). Green open access has thus greatly improved the accessibility of scholarly literature in philosophy. By contrast, open access journals that levy article processing charges (APCs) have been less well received. For example, in 2018, the British Philosophical Association came out in favour of green open access and against gold open access with APCs. A number of recognised open access journals that do not charge publication fees are listed below. The publication of preprints is not very widespread in the discipline to date.
Open Access Journals
As of April 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 375 entries in the sub-disciplines of philosophy under the rubric Philosophy, Psychology, Religion. Some of these open access journals charge authors publication fees.
Influenced by the open access idea and the development of free digital publishing software, over three dozen open access journals of philosophy have been established in recent years. Although these journals are sometimes narrow in scope, they complement the dominance of broad-scope journals from familiar sub-disciplines of philosophy. The following overview provides an impression of the range of these new journals.
Important open access journals of philosophy include:
- Philosophers’ Imprint DOAJ
- ERGO. An Open Access Journal of Philosophy DOAJ
- Zfphl. Zeitschrift für philosophische Literatur
- Zeitschrift für praktische Philosophie DOAJ
- Organon F DOAJ
- European Journal of Analytic Philosophy DOAJ
- Metaphysics DOAJ
- Journal of Modern Philosophy DOAJ
- Journal of Social Ontology DOAJ
- Polylog. Zeitschrift für interkulturelles Philosophieren
Besides journals published by non-commercial bodies, this list also contains open access journals from conventional publishers. Most open access journals are young, and established journals are rarely converted to open access. An exception is Faith and Philosophy, the leading journal of analytical philosophy of religion.
A list with an extended selection of younger open access journals can be downloaded here.
Video about the Funding of Open Access Articles
Open Access Books
As of April 2024, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) listed 1,110 titles under the keyword Philosophy. A further 10 sub-disciplines of philosophy are captured with their own entries, which are not included in the main category. OAPEN listed 389 titles under the rubric Philosophy (as of April 2024).
The Publishers of OA books list, which is part of the Open Access Directory, includes publishers whose portfolios include philosophy titles. University presses usually offer the possibility of publishing books open access. Whereas, conventional publishers generally require authors to grant them exclusive rights of use, university presses and other open access publishers content themselves with non-exclusive rights of use.
A considerable number of conventional publishers also offer open access options. The financial framework conditions of such offerings vary greatly.
Noteworthy among the publishers and book series are:
- Open Humanities Press. New Metaphysics
- Open Book Publishers. Philosophy
- Ubiquity Press. Open Scholarship. Philosophy
- re.press
- Open Edition Books
- Logos Verlag Berlin
Disciplinary Repositories
The most important repositories in philosophy include:
- PhilPapers: a comprehensive text archive and bibliographic search instrument
- PhilSci: an archive for natural philosophy and philosophy of science
- HAL-SHS: an archive for human and social sciences
- Cogprints: an archive for cognitive sciences
- Sammelpunkt: a repository for electronically archived theory
An overview of relevant repositories is also provided by the Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR).
In practice, scholars are happy to use para-academic publication platforms that require readers to register, and that restrict the rights of the authors who publish their works on the platform. However, the long-term availability of the materials is not guaranteed by publishing them on such platforms or on private websites.
Video about Self-Archiving Rights
Practical Tip
Finding Open Access Literature (in German)
Other Offerings
The platform Euporia aims to increase the discoverability of open science offerings in philosophy. It hosts open access primary and secondary literature in the field of philosophy as well as thematic collections and blog discussions.
On the platform Humanities Commons, there are philosophy publications, topics, and working groups.
The Radical Open Access Collective, a community of scholar-led not-for-profit publishers, journals, and other open access projects, was founded in 2015. The Collective also provides an Information Portal with general technical and bibliographic resources and radical open access literature.
The online archives JSTOR and Project MUSE now also provide open access content relevant to philosophy.
Further Reading
- Hrachovec, H. (2021). Jüngere Open Access Journale in Philosophie (Version v.1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5140827
- Laakso, M., & Polonioli, A. (2018). Open access in ethics research: An analysis of open access availability and author self-archiving behaviour in light of journal copyright restrictions. Scientometrics, 116, 291–317. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2751-5
- Roberts, B. W., & Teira, D. (2021, January 29). Publishing Philosophy Open Access Without a Particle Collider. LSE Impact Blog. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2021/01/29/publishing-philosophy-open-access-without-a-particle-collider/
- Sahu, R. R., & Parabhoi, L. (2019). Open Access Repository: A Comparative study of Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Library Philosophy and Practice. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/2511
- Sanjay, K., & Shiuli, K. (2018). A Bibliometric Study of Directory of Open Access Journal: Special Reference to Philosophy. International Journal of Information Dissemination and Technology, 8(3), 154–156. https://doi.org/10.5958/2249-5576.2018.00033.X
- Schroeder, M. (2017). Ensuring future for open-access publishing. Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 12(1), 1–5. https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/jetshy12&i=5
- Weinberg, J. (2018, September 20). What Is the Best Type of Open Access for Philosophy and Other Humanities Disciplines? (guest post by Roberta Millstein). Daily Nous. News for and about the Philosophy Profession. https://dailynous.com/2018/09/20/best-type-open-access-philosophy-humanities-disciplines-guest-post-roberta-millstein/
Content editors of this page: Prof. Dr Herbert Hrachovec (Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna) and Prof. Dr Dr Daniel von Wachter (Internationale Akademie für Philosophie im Fürstentum Liechtenstein) (Last updated: December 2021)