As part of Hypatia’s new governance structure, the journal is currently assembling an Outreach and Ethics Committee which will be tasked with outreach, public engagement, and ethics, including the development of an ethics statement.
Hypatia is committed to ethical publishing and, as a member of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics), works to abide by its core practices and values. In addition to consulting with the COPE Forum and actively participating in the COPE North American Seminar, the journal also consults a number of ethics resources specific to philosophy as a discipline.
Citational Practices: As part of our aspiration to foster a more inclusive, fairer, and more capacious philosophical and feminist intellectual life, we consider an author’s citational practices in our review and assessment of essays submitted to Hypatia for publication. We encourage authors to adopt an expansive view of what constitutes “the relevant literature” on a particular theme. It is not enough, in other words, to cite the standard-bearers of a particular position, without regard to traditions of critique or opposition to those views, or without regard to other positions that provide alternatives to dominant views. When discussing problems related to those who occupy marginalized social positions of any kind, it is never appropriate to take those subjects as mere objects of study, without regard for knowledge, perspectives, or practices that emerge from those so located. They should be treated as interlocutors in, rather than objects of, an inquiry.
*Listed below are resources on publication ethics that authors, reviewers, and guest editors can consult when considering submitting, publishing, and reviewing for Hypatia:
- COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) offers ethical guidelines specifically pertaining to peer review, anonymity, and questions of authorship. COPE offers a Short Guide to Ethical Editing for New Editors (also helpful for Guest Editors) including information on Conflicts of Interest, Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers, a guide on How to Handle Authorship Disputes for new researchers, and a flowchart for How to Spot Potential Manipulation of the Peer Review Process which is relevant for both reviewers and editors. In addition to task and role specific guidelines, COPE offers a helpful repository of case studies which illustrate, in a more comprehensive and contextual manner, examples of how guidelines can be interpreted, applied, and discussed. In the spirit of accountability, COPE also offers a brief description of the History and Context of its ethical guidelines.
- Developed through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, scholars Kris Sealey, Yannik Theim, Adriel M. Trott, Amy E. Ferrer, and Rebecca Kennison have produced a white paper on publication ethics titled “Just Ideas? The Status and Future of Publication Ethics in Philosophy.” Their research included a survey of 265 journals in philosophy, six focus groups with journal editors and members of the American Philosophical Association (APA), and two focus groups with representatives of both journal publishers and COPE. The white paper offers, not only insight into the status of publication ethics in the discipline, but also recommendations for how to work toward more rigorous and equitable ethical guidelines, recommendations Hypatia aspires to fulfill as it builds its own Outreach and Ethics Committee. For more information, on the white paper visit: “A White Paper on Publication Ethics in Philosophy” (Daily Nous).
- Cambridge University Press, a COPE member and Hypatia’s current publisher, offers ethics guidelines for authors, reviewers, and editors, from a publisher’s perspective.
