I would like to preface my comment by saying that I have enormous gratitude and respect for Ergo as a journal and for the work they do, and this comes from a desire to help solve the problem. But like the other commenters, I think that this step, as worded, is difficult to justify unless it is immediately necessary.
If peer review is only used to give an imprimatur to (almost) finished papers, it seems to me to serve no purpose at all. It benefits less sophisticated papers (that is, safer papers on topics more familiar to reviewers), and authors at well-connected institutions who can better train you in reviewing peers, and the implicit expectations of the specific clique of people editors need to appeal to. But when we think about reforms we want for the journal system, we want just the opposite. More room for sophisticated papers on topics so strange that some rethinking is probably necessary; and more openness to people who are not so familiar with the cliques of elite English-speaking institutions. Every author “polishes” their papers, almost every author presents first; the reason for “major revisions” is that you have a reviewer who comes from a different part of the philosophical world.
And like the other commenters, I think that if the problem is truly financial, it seems solvable. I have some professional background in nonprofit fundraising and management, and I would like to suggest two immediate actions and a few more ambitious ones.
Regarding immediate reforms:
FirstErgo’s demands on supporting institutions are too low, and Ergo’s tactics for obtaining that support are weaker than they could be. Ergo charges $200 from PhD-granting institutions and $100 from other institutions. These numbers have not changed in the time I’ve been checking, at least not in recent years. Journal prices are an order of magnitude higher; at most institutions they are in the thousands. And those prices have not only kept pace with inflation, they have outpaced it, while Ergo has not updated its demands during recent years of above-average inflation.
And on the other hand, Ergo needs to get a bit more aggressive in getting a higher percentage of institutions to support it. An example of a philosophy resource that has done this with great success is PhilPapers. It slows down access to the site, or adds a popup if you have an IP at an institution that hasn’t signed up yet. Ergo could try this, or create a form letter to send to your institution if you have an accepted paper and they don’t support Ergo yet.
In this sense, Ergo might try to leverage the funds available for APCs, which come from a separate grant pool, while maintaining the “support” structure. Perhaps Ergo has a notional APC that is simply waived by default for both philosophers at institutions that already pay for Ergo’s support and philosophers who do not work at well-funded institutions. Comparing its APC fee to that of colleagues ($2,000), and assuming that 10% of your 50 work at such institutions, that works out to be as much revenue as the entire list of supporting institutions.
SecondErgo does not have a campaign for individual donations. There are three major hurdles to implementing one: Ergo lacks financial transparency (a given for successful nonprofits), Ergo makes it difficult to give indiscriminately, and Ergo does not ask for individual donors.
At the very least, Ergo should start publishing unaudited financial statements. These allow a clear view of ongoing costs and make it easier to raise funds to prevent decisions like this. Many of the questions the commenters below have would be made redundant simply by the level of transparency required by the IRS for ordinary nonprofits (and most of Ergo’s journals are run as independent nonprofits). I understand that Ergo is not a nonprofit (yet), but presumably it has *some* kind of books.
On the second point, donating to Ergo is incredibly confusing right now. There are only two ways to find out if you can even donate. One is a small link that says “Individuals can donate here” that is in a small block of text on the homepage, and the other is an easily missed “here” that is under “Support Ergo” after a whole wall of text about institutional support. That is money being left on the table. Ergo should have a donation box on the homepage that requires 0 additional clicks, and after every article as well.
And the third point is that Ergo is currently simply not asking for it. Ergo should ask everyone on its email list for $50 a year, every year. There should be individual donation campaigns, perhaps individual memberships. It should ask for larger sums from those who have identified themselves as tenured or over a certain age. That data is there, and trimming newsletter lists accordingly is fairly straightforward. Many academic philosophers have financial resources; we are not young professionals. But you can’t get that money unless you ask for it, and even here, in a post about financial problems, Ergo has not asked for it.
As for the more ambitious goals, I will outline them schematically and in a little less detail. Broadly speaking, the proposals focus on ways to reduce costs and increase bargaining power (to generate revenue).
Whatever the marginal costs, we know that they are largely for proofreading and typesetting, not hosting. What might it look like if philosophers could be more easily helped to proofread and typeset their own papers? If we are already happy to accept volunteer work (as a “service”) in peer review, why not proofreading? My partner and I have both worked as for-hire proofreaders, and I suspect that a disproportionately large proportion of philosophers do the same. Are there good ways to connect this potential pool of volunteers to the specific work that needs to be done? As with money, you must first ask for it to get it.
And in the long run, I readily admit that asking institutions or individuals for help is probably not sustainable, especially given the increasing number of open access journals. (That is not to say that there are no more than enough for Ergo to fill the gap for now). We need an organization that coordinates large requests on behalf of philosophy publishing in general, that is able to deny publication to wealthy institutions (or charge a high APC) until they provide annual support, and that can work toward building sustainable endowment revenues for independent scholarly publishing. In an ideal world, Ergo, PhilImprint, and JAPA (as well as perhaps the two fledgling OLH journals) would be part of a larger nonprofit organization for philosophy scholarly publishing, perhaps coordinated by the APA, working toward building a long-term sustainable financial base. But that requires a lot of foresight, and we are not there yet.
