Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy

I will be joining Gennaro Chierchia and Jeff Pelletier as a series editor for “Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy”:http://www.wkap.nl/prod/s/SLAP (SLAP), published by Kluwer. I’m replacing Polly Jacobson, who will take on the position of editor-in-chief of the journal Linguistics and Philosophy.

As I take on this job, I am planning to make sure that, as much as possible, principles of cheap and easy access to scientific work will be put into practice. You may have noticed a pledge that Kluwer made in the silver anniversary edition of L&P:

bq. ANNOUNCEMENT: Kluwer is pleased to announce its decision to publish all future titles in the Linguistics programme (series: SNLT, SLAP, SITP, TLTB, ARGU) simultaneously in paperback. We are aware that in the past the price of our publications has become a strong issue with the linguistics community. Kluwer is committed to the importance of research being widely available, accessible and affordable and we hope that our paperback editions will bring our titles back within reach for everyone.

Having the books be affordable is a good step. Another big step would be to have online accessible files of chapters/papers from upcoming volumes. Kluwer does this for journals like “Synthese” and “Philosophical Studies”. No reason why this shouldn’t be possible for books (especially collections of papers).

And finally, it would be good if authors retained the right to have preprint manuscripts on their personal websites.

In any case, if anyone has interesting book ideas in linguistics and philosophy, get in touch with me (or with Gennaro or Jeff), and we’ll talk.

PS Like “Peter Suber”:http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/20031102_fosblogarchive.html#a106833823009542977, I am not impressed with the newest statement from a consortium of science publishers, including Kluwer, on open access to scientific work.

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