Over at Leiter Reports, there’s an interesting discussion of the lack of venues for publishing discussion notes — see here. The problem is that few journals these days publish discussion notes (which I take to be distinct from full-length articles that discuss some article or book), and those that do tend to publish only discussions of articles appearing in their journal. What is needed is a journal willing to publish discussions of articles appearing in other journals. BEARS did this, but I suspect it was ahead of its times and that that’s what resulted in its unfortunate demise.
Now Jamie Dreier has said that "If there’s a lot of interest, I suspect the editors (Dave, Julia
Driver, Andrei Marmor, I) would be happy to set up a portion of JESP
especially for discussion notes."
Well, who’s interested? I certainly am!
Doug,
I’ll second that sentiment!
Troy
I’d also be very happy to see JESP incorporate a section devoted to discussions.
[I’ve just had a discussion note rejected by a journal because I discussed 2 articles in the note – one published in the journal itself, another from another journal (and did not adequately focus on the former, according to the rejection letter). It’s a rather frustrating position – the two articles I discuss defend essentially the same thesis, and it would be poor scholarship to focus on just one of the papers… I’ve since sent it off to the journal which published the other article; I’m not expecting much…]
I think that would be good. I recently had an experience similar to Jason’s. I wanted to make a quick point about an article that appeard in an invitation-only journal. There doesn’t seem to be a place for things like that.
I think that is a fantastic idea.
– Kris
I also think it’s a great idea.
I’ll third that notion, good idea.
This is certainly a terrific idea.
Over at TAR there is another post relevant to this topic:
http://tar.weatherson.org/2007/03/01/short-journals/
Sounds great to me!