About Articles

Articles

As a journal, we are seeking to publish scholarly, persuasively argued, insightful, and accessibly written pieces in a forum open to equally-intelligent disputation with minimal editorial interference.  Articles, therefore, should be exceptional not only as to scholarship, clarity of argumentation, and quality of writing, but also of genuine philosophical interest and insight.  Articles of the style, “A New Wrinkle in the Debate between Two Scholars’ Interpretations of a Dispute in Antiquity, as Discussed in the Footnotes of their latest Monographs” should be submitted elsewhere.

[Submission Guidelines] [Reviews]

Evaluation Criteria

One of the most significant difficulties with academic publishing is a lack of transparency of how work is evaluated.  We would like to be as open and transparent as possible.  Thus, Article submissions are evaluated on four criteria:

  • Realism: is the position taken by the author realist—that is, written from the perspective that human knowledge is not a fiction of the mind or mere description of experience, but the true grasp of what has an intelligible existence irreducible to the mind’s contributions? While reviews and responses will be accepted from non-realist positions (for the sake of dialogue), the journal only accepts Article submissions written from the realist perspective except by solicitation (in which case, a pre-arranged realist response can be expected).
  • Interest: is the Article interesting? This might seem an arbitrary criterion, and to a certain extent, it is the criterion most likely to arouse controversy; however, we are trying to be above board.  The fact is that there are many journals in which someone can publish a piece of pure scholarship which may be of great interest to a niche audience, but too few journals that publish content of serious weight.  We want Articles that deepen understanding, challenge uncritically-adopted perspectives, and propose ideas that catch the attention of readers—rather than Articles which are sought simply because someone is writing a paper or doing research.
  • Scholarship: is the Article well-researched? That is, while we are seeking weighty, interesting Articles above all else, this does not mean it should come at the neglect of scholarly rigor.  The most compelling Article that misses fundamental points in primary texts or well-known, important points in the literature suffers a fatal flaw.  This does not mean we are looking for exhaustive scholarship—if some recent author made an important but minor point in the footnote of an article published in an obscure journal, this is not something deemed necessary to acknowledge—but a minimum of scholarship sufficiently supportive for one’s philosophical claims.
  • Writing quality: is the Article clearly and accessibly written? We are looking for submissions that can appeal to a broad philosophical readership: though we love nuance, we do not want Articles crammed with highly-specific terminology, especially if no explanation is given for the use of the terminology.  That is, if some technical term is required for making one’s argument, this is fine—but the term should at the very least be explained in a footnote, if not the body of the text itself.  Moreover, we want pieces that are persuasively written; at the very least, that induces serious consideration of the author’s argument by the reader.

Submission Guidelines

Length: 8,000-15,000 words.  We understand length restrictions as guidelines.  If an article is a few hundred words over or under—or even a thousand—this will not be cited as a reason for rejection.  If it is considerably under, we may suggest publication as an Essay; if considerably over, we may suggest publication as a multi-part piece.

Footnotes: all references must be placed in footnotes; submissions containing endnotes will not be accepted.  Bibliographic sourcing and footnote formatting may be done either according to Chicago Style or to the Lyceum Institute Style Sheet, although in either format the editors recommend the practice of historical layering (including date of composition in all footnotes, rather than date of the particular version’s publication).  We also insist that the full title of the work be given in the first footnote and abbreviated titles in all subsequent (i.e., no citations of date alone) if it seems prudent.

Abstract: all submissions must contain an abstract of between 150-400 words. This facilitates the evaluation process for Editors.

Keywords: it is recommended that Article submissions contain 5-10 keywords sometime before publication.  If the submission is received without a list of keywords, an Editor will request them before the Article is published.

Reviews

Reviews are of two kinds: Comments and Responses, which are evaluated on the same criteria as Articles, and follow the same Submission Guidelines, with the addendum that they should be explicit as to which Article they are responding (by inclusion of title and/or link), and that it is expected that Comments will be 2,000-6,000 words, and Responses 5,000-12,000 (though these are again rough guidelines only).

If you would like to submit a review for an Article marked as “Open”, please use the Contact page and include the following:

  • Title of Article you would like to review.
  • The Article’s online URL.
  • Your name, institutional affiliation or other credentials.
  • A short (150-300 words) description of the grounds on which you would like to write your review.

Reality retains exclusive copyright on all Articles and Reviews for a 24-month period from date of publication.  Requests to republish material within the timeframe of exclusive copyright will be considered on a case-by-case basis.  It is kindly asked that any republication of material originally published with Reality receive some attribution of its original publication.