More stuff on Synthese

Leiter has a post up here where he asks 'what to do now' after the response of the Editors in Chief of Synthese was published. As far as I'm concerned, not too much. Enough digital ink has now been spilled over this issue, and I would suspect most people now have more or less a position on the issue and the matter will fall where it falls. From my perspective, no further organised action is required. Leiter having posts such as this one or this one for instance, is just beating a dead horse, and quite frankly smacks of an unhealthy Schadenfreude. And so do his suggested smears against 'European formal philosophers'.

For the record, here is my personal position. Yes, I did sign the petition. I did so because I believe that the Editors in Chief made a serious error of judgment in publishing the disclaimer, and one that ought to be rectified. The response of the Editors is in my view not a sufficient response to the demands of the petition, and the website on which it was published was surely strange (set up specifically for the purpose in such a way that the content is not searchable).

But I will not be signing on to some organised boycott of the journal. I somehow expect that to achieve little. Individuals will submit to Synthese and referee for it as they see fit, and given that journals such as Synthese play a key 'career making' role for starting and established philosophers I somehow expect that the journal will continue to stagger on on its present course for a few decades more. Philosophers are not people who like change, and matters of pedigree, prestige and reputation play a key role in the discipline.

Privately, I had already made a decision to look elsewhere for a number of reasons, among which are the following

• 'Career making' in philosophy is unimportant to me, which diminishes the attraction of high profile journals with all their attendant issues;
• Last time I looked, Synthese had an enourmous backlog of material only published on line, and the print journal was way behind;
• My last experience refereeing for the journal was not a good one, and I had already resolved to decline any such requests from them in the future;
• I believe initiatives such as sympoze will over time prove to be a better repository for the effort I put into academic work.

So in my case, the current hullabaloo only serves to reinforce a decision I had already made.