Precollege Philosophy and Public Practice

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Precollege Philosophy and Public Practice (P4) is an open access publication sponsored by the Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization, the Kegley Institute of Ethics, and the Squire Family Foundation. It is published in cooperation with the Philosophy Documentation Center.

P4 accepts submissions year-round from scholars and teachers that employ empirical, critical, or theoretical models. The journal supports high-quality research in philosophy for young people as well as scholarly work about public philosophy and invites new approaches to this work. 

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• The relationship between philosophy, education, and public philosophy
• Advocacy work including creative approaches to public and K-12 philosophy
• Interdisciplinary approaches to public and/or K-12 philosophy
• Comparative research on approaches to philosophy and dialogue-based education
• Empirical research on:

• impacts/outcomes of philosophy and dialogue-based education, human development, social-emotional learning, and/or outreach programs
• assessment and evaluation of philosophy programs in non-traditional spaces

Submission Procedure

The journal welcomes submissions at any time, and forthcoming articles will be available online prior to final publication in the issue. A complete submission includes a cover letter and appropriately formatted original manuscript (see format information below). Manuscript files should be in Word format. The cover letter should include:

• Author(s) names and institutional affiliations
  
• Contact information for one author, including at least email address and telephone number
  
• Confirmation that the manuscript is not currently under consideration by any other publication

Manuscripts should be submitted online here: https://p4.manuscriptmanager.net.

For questions about submission procedure please contact Roberta Israeloff at [email protected].

Manuscripts

General Requirements

• Submissions should be between 5000-7000 words (not including bibliography and notes).
• Manuscripts must be original, unpublished works not under consideration at another publication.
• Submissions should include a cover page that lists the article title, an abstract (150-200 words), the total word count of the manuscript, and the author's name affiliation, and contact information.
• To facilitate double-anonymous review (neither authors nor reviewers disclose identity or affiliation) the authors' names should not appear anywhere on the manuscript. Please strip the file of any other identifying notations, including references in the document’s properties, title, or first-person language in-text of references.
• Manuscripts should be prepared according to The Chicago Manual of Style. A helpful resource on The Chicago Manual of Style is available here.
  
• Citations should be author-date style (in-text). Manuscripts should include a complete reference list.
• Use of notes should be limited. When needed they should be entered as endnotes.
• In order to be considered for publication, empirical research manuscripts should show strong evidence of sound methodology in qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-methods areas as is appropriate for the study in question.

Formatting Guidelines for Accepted Papers

• References and Citations style Manual for Authors

The editors reserve the right to make changes to manuscripts where necessary to conform to the journal's stylistic and bibliographical conventions.

Submission Requirements for Book Reviews

P4 welcomes book reviews, primarily for newly-published, stand-alone volumes. Classics in the field and series may be considered at the editors’ discretion.

The following information should appear first on each submitted review:

• Author/Editor Name(s)
• Title
• Publisher
• Year of publication
• ISBN
• Number of pages
• Price
• Format (print, EPUB, Kindle, iBook, PDF, etc.)

General Guidelines

• clearly present the theme and major components of the book
• address the author’s intent but avoid summarizing the book
• evaluate the book in the context of other significant work in the field
• assess the book the author has written rather than relate the reviewer’s own views
• back up criticisms with reference to specific instances in the text wherever possible.
• discuss relevance of book to intended audience

Length: 1200-1500 words

Submission Requirements for Notes from the Field

P4 welcomes submissions from those doing philosophy, construed broadly, with young people and in the public sphere.

Submissions should take the form of exploratory essays focusing on reflections, questions, and challenges relating to the author’s work.

All submissions should be formatted as described in the P4 Manuscript Guidelines above. In addition, authors submitting to "Notes from the Field" should:

• Clearly articulate the nature of their work and their affiliations
• Reflect on or analyze a question, challenge, complication, or aspiration that arises when doing philosophy with young people and/or in public philosophy. Examples of kinds of questions one might consider include (but are not limited to):

• Strategies for engaging greater community members and/or non-academic audiences in philosophy-informed programming (broadly construed)
• Effectively working with English Language Learners in philosophy sessions;
• How your identity and positionality complicate, trouble, and/or inform your work with students and/or the community;
• Logistical constraints on time, resources, etc. that create challenges for your work and potential solutions to those challenges.

• Explore the importance of the issues raised and the benefits that may accrue from discussing these in a public forum.
• Offer suggestions for how one might answer the issues raised and next steps that might be taken to address them.

Submissions, which will undergo editorial team review rather than peer review, should be emailed directly to Karen Emmerman at [email protected].

Length: 1200-1500 words

Open Access Publication Agreement

If the manuscript is accepted for publication authors will be asked to complete a publication agreement that gives the Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization (PLATO) the necessary permission to publish Precollege Philosophy and Public Practice in any format in perpetuity. Articles will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives publishing license (CC BY-NC-ND) that permits wide distribution of the journal's content. Authors retain the right to use their text in any other project they write or edit without further permission from the journal.

Publication Ethics Statement

The editorial team of the Precollege Philosophy and Public Practice is committed to ensuring the integrity of the publication process. Conformance to standards of ethical behavior is therefore expected of all parties involved: Authors, Editors, Reviewers, and the Publisher.

Authors should present an objective discussion of the significance of research work as well as sufficient detail and references to confirm a chain of reasoning or experimental result. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable. Review articles should also be objective, comprehensive, and accurate accounts of the state of the art. The authors should ensure that their work is entirely original works, and if the work and/or words of others have been used, this has been appropriately acknowledged. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Authors should not submit articles describing essentially the same research to more than one journal. The corresponding author should ensure that there is a full consensus of all co-authors in approving the final version of the paper and its submission for publication.

Editors should evaluate manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic merit. An editor must not use unpublished information in the editor's own research without the express written consent of the author. Editors should take reasonable responsive measures when ethical complaints have been presented concerning a submitted manuscript or published paper.

Reviewers must treat received manuscripts as confidential documents. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviews should be conducted objectively, and observations should be formulated clearly with supporting arguments, so that authors can use them for improving the paper. Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors or institutions connected to the paper.

The Publisher will respond to alleged or proven cases of research misconduct, fraudulent publication, or plagiarism in close collaboration with the editors. The publisher will ensure that appropriate measures are taken to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question if necessary. This may include the publication of an erratum, clarification or, in the most severe case, the retraction of the affected work. The publisher, together with the editors, shall take reasonable steps to identify and prevent publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, and under no circumstances encourage such misconduct or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place.