Things to know before you submit a paper

• Most importantly, make sure we’re the right journal for your paper (for example, we are not the British Journal for Political Science!). We publish papers aimed primarily at readers in the academic discipline known as philosophy of science.

• One paper per ‘author’: We will not consider more than one submission at a time from an author. By ‘author’, we mean the same single author or the same author team. Where author teams differ in composition, a new paper can be submitted.

• Three-month embargo: We will not consider a second paper from the same author within three months of a final decision on the first paper. By ‘author’, we mean the same single author or the same author team. Where author teams differ in composition, a new paper can be submitted. 

• Discussion notes: We apply a much higher bar for the acceptance of discussion notes compared to fully fledged articles (since notes are usually small interventions and we want to save our pages for substantial, novel contributions). Consider whether your note might be better submitted as a Letter to the Editors.

• Presubmission enquires: Do not contact any of us directly about your paper. To do so would reveal your identity and we operate a triple anonymous review process. If your query concerns the suitability of your paper for the BJPS, simply submit it. If it is not appropriate, you’ll usually find out within a fortnight.

• Timeframe: If your paper is accepted, it will not appear in print for a long time. We will make your final draft available online within a few weeks, and this will generate a DOI. For most purposes—hiring committees, funding applications, and so on—your paper will count as published.¹Why the delay? There has been a substantial increase in the number of submissions we have received in recent years. At the same time, our acceptance rate has remained fairly stable. Thus, there are many more papers that need to be carefully guided through the production process. There are two ways to deal with this increase: (1) Impose a substantial pause on accepting new papers. This option would particularly harm early-career philosophers of science, who have a limited number of suitable venues for their work and can’t afford to wait as long as later-career folks. (2) Substantially increase the cost of the journal to cover the labour costs involved in publishing more pages per year. This option would particularly harm low-income readers and institutions. Because a delay in production is closer to an inconvenience than a harm, we’ve chosen this path.

• We follow both the British Philosophical Association/Society for Women in Philosophy (UK) Good Practice Scheme, and the Barcelona Principles for a Globally Inclusive Philosophy.

Please read these guidelines with care to avoid disappointment. Papers that fail to meet the following criteria will be unsubmitted.

It must be anonymized in these specific ways:

• Refer to your own work as though it was written by someone else (‘As Smith (2020) argues…”)
• Avoid excessive self-citation
• If the paper has been posted online or presented using the same title, change the title and paraphrase the abstract. If the paper is accepted, the title may be changed back to the original, subject to editorial approval.
• Delete any and all acknowledgements, and not merely the name of the person or people to be thanked. (Avoid ‘thanks to X for pressing me on this point’—delete this entire sentence—and do not include blank acknowledgements sections.)

For more on this, read How to Anonymize Your Paper.

It must be formatted in these specific ways:

• It should include the title and the abstract with the main text.
• It should not exceed our non-negotiable 24-page limit, which applies to both new submissions and resubmissions. This includes footnotes and appendices, but does not include the title, abstract, or reference list.
• It (main text, appendices, and footnotes) should be written in Times New Roman, 12pt, 1.5 line spacing, and 1-inch margins.
• LaTeX users may find the .tex file here useful for ensuring papers meet the formatting requirements for BJPS submissions.

• Referees and editors must be given access to all relevant data/code.

• If the paper is published, data/code must also be available to readers.

• Data/code should not be uploaded with your paper, but rather uploaded to a suitable third-party venue (see below).

• Data/code must be suitably anonymised (the author’s identity must not be listed anywhere).

• A link to the data/code should then be added to a footnote at the first reference to it.

• Please contact the editorial office directly if:
  • data includes information about specific human subjects;
• • data or code cannot be shared, because they belong to a third party or because they contains sensitive information.

• Suitable venues
  • Avoid personal websites, dropbox (and similar), and institutional repositories.
  • Suitable venues are those that allow you to generate links to the data that keep your identity hidden and that enact version tracking, so it is obvious if and when the data or code have been altered. Some examples:
    • Zenodo
    • Anonymous GitHub

We only accept papers via our online submission system.

What files to upload:

• Please upload your original files (.doc., .tex, etc.). We need more than just pdfs.
• If you use LaTeX, upload the tex, bib, jpg files too, so that the paper will fully compile in Overleaf. Please also include the pdf, so we have something for reference.
• We do not need cover letters and we do not read them.