PPJ Style and Submission Guidelines
Our Mission
The Public Philosophy Journal seeks to do philosophy with the public by creating an inclusive space in which community voices are recognized, heard, and supported as vital to the practices of public philosophy. As an activity, public philosophy is responsive to public concerns and rooted in deliberative reflection. We nurture the creation of content, whether text-based or multi-media, that brings our philosophical commitment to enrich the world to our publication practices. Thus, we ask composers to submit content that speaks in a register that attends equally to the following style criteria: relevance, accessibility, intellectual coherence, and scholarly engagement.Submissions have relevance when they are timely and responsive to an issue of public concern. They are accessible when they connect with the public at large and resonate with publicly engaged individuals and organizations. This may require unpacking technical terms and concepts. They demonstrate intellectual coherence by reasoning for and providing evidence to support claims, as well as by identifying theoretical concepts that amplify understanding of the public concern under consideration. As examples of scholarly engagement, submissions are aware of and receptive to pertinent, ongoing dialogues within and beyond the academy, whether encountered in literature or other mediums of scholarly conversation.
As the review process unfolds, we ask peer reviewers to consider these four criteria, even as they offer other considered advice about how to improve the submission.
For more about the PPJl Formative Peer Review process, please visit this page.Guiding Questions for Composers & Reviewers
Please keep the PPJ mission statement in mind when developing the tone of your submission. The language of projects submitted to the journal should reflect this mission. This means that the use of specialized technical vocabulary should be minimal, and that explication and contextualization should accompany technical terms, whenever appropriate, in the body of the submitted projects. Some questions to consider as you prepare your submission to the Public Philosophy Journal include:- What issue of public concern does your submission address and why is this particular issue of interest to the public?
- To which audiences are you addressing your submission?
- What organizations and individuals are engaged in public initiatives associated with the questions or issues addressed by the submission?
- Does the work open doors to constructive communication with others interested in the topic but not directly engaged with it?
- Are the disciplinary terms that frame the submission accessible to a broad audience that might not be familiar with the specialized usage in an academic community?
- Can the more technical, academic framing be refined to increase a broader public’s understanding of the topic without undermining the academic credibility of the submission?
- How will the submission be recognized as excellent scholarship?
- How will the submission be recognized by the public as compelling and important?
Submission Guidelines
The Public Philosophy Journal (PPJ) reconfigures the relationship between the academy and the public by creating and cultivating material that speaks to both audiences. The stylistic consistency of submitted material helps ensure that this mission is realized. As such, original submissions and citations of curated material should follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition. Please refer to the remaining sections of this style guide for additional specifications for submissions to the PPJ Current.Formatting Original Content
Our digital platform allows the PPJ to accept textual, graphic, and audiovisual submissions without a minimum or maximum required length. The length of each submission should be in line with its scope and intended audience. The editors may request revisions of submissions that are overly long or excessively brief. The following file types are accepted:- Text: .doc, .docx, .pdf, .txt
- Audio: .aiff, .m4a, .mp3, .wav
- Images: .gif, .jpg, .pdf, .png, .tiff
- Video: .avi, .m4v, .mov, .mp4, .wmv
Submitting Text Files
Per the guidelines set in the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, the margins for text documents submitted to PPJ should be set to 1” on all sides. Text should be set in a readable 12-pt font, preferably Times New Roman, Garamond, or Palatino. The standard rules of academic style apply. Insert a single space after all punctuation. Text should never be bolded or underlined; italics may be used for emphasis, though sparingly. The PPJ uses the Chicago Manual of Style footnotes and bibliography style for citations. Although we expect the majority of footnotes to be citational, composers should feel free to expand on points in footnotes as needed. Composers are encouraged to use the Insert Note function on their word processor to append these notes to the text. When referring to the same source several times over the course of a paper, please provide the full citation for its first appearance in the footnotes, followed by a CMS style shortened citation for subsequent references. The required information varies by the source type, but, in general, citations should include the last and first name of the author(s), the title of the work, the publisher, and the date of publication. Please consider the following examples of full and shorted book citations and refer to the Chicago Manual of Style, chapter 14, for a complete explanation of this citation style and additional examples:- Firstname Lastname, Title of Book (Place of Publication: Publisher, Year), 1-14.
- Lastname, Title of Book, 15.