So Now You’re a Referee… | Beth Hannon

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It hardly needs saying that referees are essential to the functioning of journals, and the discipline as a whole. Refereeing a paper is a service to the academic community. Those that take this duty seriously don’t just help the editors and the authors; we all benefit from having published papers be as polished as they can be. I’ve written before about the fact that the production of excellent papers is by no means an individualistic endeavour. It takes an academic village to raise a paper! And we all know how busy everyone is, and how refereeing has to be managed alongside all the other teaching, research, and administrative duties that demand attention. All this is to say that we in no way underestimate the hard work done by our referees; on the contrary, we are very grateful indeed.

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Triple-Masked Peer Review Is GO!

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We are very pleased to announce that the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science has adopted a triple-masked system for peer review, whereby neither the referees nor the editors know the identity of the author(s), and vice versa.

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Envoi | Marc Lange

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I am honored to have been an Associate Editor of BJPS. I thought of my role not so much as a gatekeeper, but more as a teacher. My aim was to do whatever I could to help authors make their papers as strong as they could be. I often found this to be very gratifying […]

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All Is Change

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There have been some changes in our editorial make up over the last couple of months. First, the sad news. Michael Wheeler and Marc Lange have both stepped down from their roles as Associate Editors for various reasons, including the pressure of other responsibilities. Both have been with this editorial team from the word go and have put a lot of time and energy into supporting the journal. We’d like to thank them both for all their support, and for their careful and thorough reports that helped not just us but also many authors.On a happier note, we have two new additions to the team: Alyssa Ney and Lara Buchak! We are delighted to have both on board.

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Dude, Where’s My Paper? | Beth Hannon

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Often when authors email to ask about the progress of their paper, they begin with, ‘I’m sure you get lots of these emails…’, or words to that effect. They’re right, we do. Lots and lots, even with our pretty respectable turnaround times. I don’t mean to suggest that authors should never chase up a paper—sometimes […]

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How to Avoid a Desk Rejection | Steven French

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This is the first in our new ‘how to’ series. Various members of our editorial team will be sharing their dos and don’ts for authors hoping to have their papers published with us, or elsewhere. Along the way, the mechanics of academic journals in general, and the BJPS in particular, should become plain. In this series, we’ll cover common questions we are asked, and we welcome suggestions for topics you would like to hear more about. Our first installment comes from Co-Chief Editor Steven French, with advice on how to dodge the dreaded desk rejection.

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Acknowledgements

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The lone philosopher, working in a dingy attic by the scrap end of a guttering candle might have some cultural purchase, and certainly the working conditions might sometimes be a little Dickensian, but what’s apparent from working behind the curtains at the BJPS is that good philosophy is not the result of the heroic efforts of single individuals. We are lucky enough here to receive submissions from the best and brightest in our field, but the distance between that first submission and the finished product should not be underestimated. That gap is bridged by the time, hard work, and thoughtfulness of our referees, in conversation with our authors. For myself, I have learnt more about how to do philosophy in reading the back-and-forth between author and referee than I could ever have imagined, and it has been a huge privilege to be able to eavesdrop on these conversations.

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The Sir Karl Popper Prize for 2014

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The decision of the Co-Editors of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science is that the Sir Karl Popper Prize for 2014 should be awarded to Rachael L. Brown for her paper ‘What Evolvability Really Is’ (Br J Philos Sci [2014], 65, pp. 549-72).

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A Process Ontology for Biology | John Dupré

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Reflection on the last hundred years of physics might naturally lead one to suppose that the ancient debate as to whether the world was ultimately composed of things or processes had been resolved in favour of the latter. Quantum physics, whatever else it may be, seems to constitute a decisive rejection of the atomism at […]

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Getting Tough on Armchair Models | Anna Alexandrova & Robert Northcott

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Models and modelling practices in science were once ignored in philosophy of science; however, in the past fifty years they have been anything but. From Mary Hesse’s pioneering work in the 1960s, to the writing of Ron Giere, Uskali Maki, Nancy Cartwright, Mary Morgan, and Margaret Morrison in the 80s and 90s, to today’s contributions from Michael Weisberg, Mauricio Suarez, Wendy Parker, and too many others to mention, scientific models are now studied left and right. This work is no longer quirky or marginal, and it spans many scientific fields. There are detailed and intricate accounts of what models are, the variety of different models, and the epistemic and social roles played by models. But we would like to suggest that in one respect, more should be done.

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