Due to popular demand (much of it PEA-Soup-originated), the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy will open a section for short comments under the link "Symposia and Short Comments".

The idea is to publish short comments on existing articles (JESP articles or otherwise), much as BEARS used to do.

The Comments page will include a ‘submit comment’ button, which will open an email to the Comments editor (that’s Julia Driver). We’ll be accepting comments on (or possibly before) January 1st.

9 Replies to “JESP Opens a ‘Comments’ Section

  1. Hi Jamie,
    This is great! I hope that the word gets out, because there is definitely a need for this: a venue in which to get discussion notes on articles from a range of journals published in a timely fashion.
    By the way, I couldn’t find the ‘submit comment’ button. Why isn’t it more prominent? Shouldn’t it go right below the ‘submit article’ button in the menu to the left?
    Also, are there plans to have something about this in the editorial policy? I couldn’t find anything on the journal’s web site that said how long “short comments” should be or what they are. Nor could I find where it says that comments on articles not published in JESP are welcome. Lastly, why call them ‘short comments’ rather than ‘discussion notes’? Is there a difference? I think that there should be an effort to differentiate these discussion notes from the short comments that one leaves on a blog post. There is, in some circles, a prejudice against electronic journals, and so non-tenured faculty might be more reluctant to submit a discussion note to JESP if it’s going to be viewed by their colleagues as a comment left on a blog. Thus it would be good to say what sort of vetting these comments will go through and whether it differs in any significant way from the ordinary vetting that discussion notes go through in print journals. This is especially important because I think that there has been, with some new electronic journals, talk of opening up a comments function on each article that is really no different than moderated comments on a blog.
    Also, I think that it would be good to say something about what the vision is for this new thing. On BEARS, I believe that there was some kind of mission statement, explaining the need for a venue in which critical commentary on other articles could get published in a timely fashion.
    I really want this to take off, so I hope that these comments are constructive.

  2. Doug,
    There is no ‘Submit Comment’ button yet. But sure, we’ll think about putting one along with the ‘Submit Article’ button. Also good point about calling them ‘Discussion Notes’, we’ll think that over too.
    There will definitely be an explanation in the Editorial Policy section.
    I’m just giving PEA Soupers advance notice, is all. The thing isn’t quite up and running yet.
    So nobody knows how to make superscripts, huh?

  3. Jamie, thanks to you and the others for making this happen. I think this will be very beneficial for all concerned.
    (About the SUP and SUB tags…I’m afraid I have no idea why they aren’t working. They are being “read” as tags, but obviously are not functioning properly. I’ll try to get to the bottom of it.)

  4. Here’s the response from Typepad’s customer service:

    Hi Dan,
    Thanks for the note, but the HTML that can be displayed in
    comments is limited so that people are not able to leave
    malicious scripts or the like in this section. At this
    time, there is not a way to use super or subscript tags
    within the comments section.
    Thanks for letting us know that you’d find this useful,
    though. We are always looking for ways to enhance TypePad
    for our users, so we will keep this in mind as a possible
    future feature for the system.
    Please let us know if there is anything else we can do for
    you.
    Thanks,
    Kymberlie

    Jamie, when I sent my query to customer service, I assumed the problem was with the SUP and SUB tags in the Comment box, since the tags seemed to work properly when placed in the Edit HTML box when creating a new post. So, did you use the SUP tag in the Edit HTML box, or were you using the SUP tag in the WYSIWYG box?

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