Question Is there any way to get published if you're not a professor in a university? For example, let's say I just pick up a philosophy magazine out of interest and want to respond to the article. Will I even be read or do I have to have a degree? Since people seem to agree that on the basic philosophy questions everybody asks them and has their own answers, it's theoretically possible that some non-professional has got a good answer right? And perhaps s/he wants to publish it. How might someone like this proceed? Separately, is it possible to know where philosophy presently is without being educated formally? I feel like the books in bookstores are mostly classics from at least 50 or so years ago. But can you get aboard of what's going on now without entering a university? For example, how would I proceed if I want to know the present state of deliberation on the...philosophy of mind, say? Thanks!!

Accepted:
May 1, 2006

Comments

Nearly all of the philosophy journals practice "blind review" of submitted articles. What this means is that those making the decision to publish or not to publish the contributed piece have no idea who the author is, or what his professional status (or lack of it) might be. So yes, it is certainly possible for someone who is not a professional academic to publish philosophical work where professionals will read it.

Even so, I think it will be difficult for someone without specialized training to get published in this way--the rejection rate at most philosophy journals is very high even for those with graduate training and years of experience, so getting one's work published can be quite challenging, and usually requires that the piece to be published demonstrates mastery of the field and the most recent work in thsi field.

As for how someone might keep up with what is going on now, many publishers (I would recommend Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Blackwells, who all publish such works) have excellent collections of work, selected by an editor who is presumably an expert in the field, who chooses articles to include on the basis of their special impact and current relevance to study in that field. Purchasing (or borrowing from a good library) books of this sort and reading the articles included in them is an excellent way to "catch up" with what is really important in the field right now. Obviously, reading what appears in the most competitive journals (such as The Philosophical Review or the Journal of Philosophy) would also be very valuable. One who has read and understood well the works in such recent collections, and has also read and understood well the recent work in several of the main journals in the field, who thinks that he or she has a contribution to make to the literature could then reasonably submit a paper to one of the journals in the field and know that the referee(s) will not be prejudiced by the author's lack of professional status, because of blind review.