ANN ARBOR—With the cost of journal subscriptions soaring more than 200 percent since 1986, a new, online University of Michigan publication aims to provide a different model that takes money out of the driver’s seat.

Edited by philosophers, published by the U-M Digital Library, and available free to readers of the Web, Philosophers’ Imprint is up and running with a provocative prototype article, “The Dear Self,” by the eminent Princeton University philosopher Harry Frankfurt.

U-M philosophy Profs. Stephen Darwall and J. David Velleman are the editors of the refereed journal, along with a distinguished board of academic philosophers from a wide range of top academic institutions and philosophical fields.

“Philosophers Imprint is designed to overcome some of the most common drawbacks of Internet publishing, which have thus far prevented online journals from attaining the prestige of their paper-and-ink counterparts,” says Velleman. “Articles will be rigorously refereed on an anonymous basis, composed with a finished typeset appearance, and made available at stable Internet addresses that will allow them to be cited by future authors and located by future readers.

“The target audience for the journal consists primarily of academic philosophers and philosophy students,” says Velleman. “But it also aims to attract non-academic readers by making excellent scholarship available without license or subscription fees.

“The result is that academic libraries, faculty, and students will not have to pay for a source of philosophical scholarship—a cost-reduction that is miniscule in this one instance, of course, but that would revolutionize scholarly communication if replicated across the range of academic journals.”

The Imprint plans to issue papers at irregular intervals, he explains. Because it has no obligations to paying subscribers, the Imprint can publish only those submissions which meet the most rigorous standards, but it can publish as many such submissions as it receives, at whatever length is most appropriate, because it incurs no costs for printing, binding, or mailing.

Readers can receive periodic notices of recent publications by subscribing to an electronic mailing list. (Send an e-mail to philosophers-imprint-general-request@umich.edu with the word “subscribe” in the subject field.) Instructions for submitting work to the new journal are posted on the journal Web site.

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