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With the first issue of Volume 89, I have taken over from Hannes Leitgeb as Editor-in-chief of Erkenntnis. Moreover, aside from Hannes, Peter Brössel (Review Editor) and Sven Rosenkranz (Metaphysics Editor) have also stepped down from their positions. This is an opportune moment to reflect upon the past decade or so, look towards the future, and to thank Hannes, Sven, and Peter for their many years of selfless service to our journal.
Hannes Leitgeb took the helm in 2011. During his time as Editor-in-chief, the aims and scope of the journal have not changed. We are, and strive to continue to be, the leading journal of scientific philosophy. We would never claim that science by itself solves all philosophical problems, but we do strongly believe that scientific methods are of great value everywhere in analytical philosophy. We therefore cover all areas of analytic philosophy. Our aim is to promote, in the spirit of logical empiricism, the use of scientific methods in all areas of philosophy, without, however, being wedded to the sometimes extravagant theoretical claims of logical empiricism. We take scientific methods to include mathematical methods in the broad sense of the word, including logical methods, methods of all areas of pure and applied mathematics (including probability theory and statistics), and methods from computer science. In the same breath we take scientific methods to include empirical and experimental methods from the social and natural sciences, and from the humanities.
The backbone of our journal is our team of (currently six) editors, each of whom is responsible for roughly one area of analytic philosophy. To a large extent, this team will continue unchanged, except that Xinhe Wu has taken over from Sven Rosenkranz as editor responsible for submissions in the area of Metaphysics.
We can look back with pride at all the book reviews that we have published. Nonetheless, one cannot help but notice that, over the past decade, only a relatively modest number of book reviews have appeared in Erkenntnis. Several prominent philosophy journals devote more space to book reviews than we do. Moreover, several dedicated journals have emerged that do not publish original articles but only high quality book reviews. For this reason, I have decided to phase out book reviews in our journal, so that in the future, no book reviews will be accepted for publication in Erkenntnis.
We have become an even more global and diverse journal than until a decade ago. As before, about half of our submitted (as well as of our accepted) articles are from the United States and North-Western Europe. However, the number of submissions from Central and South-East Asia has risen sharply. I expect this evolution to continue, and I wholeheartedly welcome it.
The number of submissions to Erkenntnis in general has risen very steeply since 2011. At the same time, the acceptance rate has remained relatively steady. Since our editorial standards are as high as ever, this means that the average quality of submitted articles has remained strong.
Gradually, this evolution gave rise to a backlog of accepted articles that had to wait a considerable time before appearing in print. We are now well on our way to eliminating this backlog, but it has resulted in the number of articles published per year to rise very steeply over the past decade, especially since 2019.
I am confident that we will continue consistently to receive high volumes of high quality submissions in the future. This means that even when the backlog problem will have been completely resolved (very soon!), Erkenntnis will in all likelihood continue to publish a much higher number of articles per year than a decade ago. This just reflects the fact that scientific philosophy has evolved from a somewhat niche part of analytic philosophy into occupying a substantial part of mainstream analytic philosophy. Erkenntnis has played a monumental role in this evolution; the future of scientific philosophy looks brighter than ever!
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Horsten, L. Editorial. Erkenn 89, 873–874 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-024-00795-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-024-00795-7