By Shiraz Noorani, Graduate Student Researcher, Center for the Humanities, UC Merced  

The Public Philosophy Journal and Collaborations: A Journal of Community-Based Research and Practice are both rooted in the same commitment to public engagement and accessibility. The Public Philosophy Journal rethinks the discipline of philosophy through the lens of collaboration and accessibility. On the other hand, the key strength of Collaborations is the journal’s emphasis on the value of community-based participatory research and on the role of universities in fostering a mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge between communities and higher education institutions. Thus, comparative analysis of these journals can demonstrate how humanities scholars can engage with the public sphere. 

This comparison not only pays attention to how journals engage with the public, but it also highlights fundamental distinctions in how they produce and evaluate knowledge within the sphere of public scholarship. For instance, The Public Philosophy Journal addresses how knowledge is understood, evaluated, and discussed by introducing new ways of thinking about peer review through its Collaborative Community Review framework, focusing on the importance of ethical conversation, inclusion, and accessibility. Collaborations, in contrast, addresses how knowledge is created in practice by focusing on community engagement, participatory processes, and the quantifiable impact of research. 

Both journals frame their work as alternatives to traditional academic journal publishing, yet they pursue this aim through distinct intellectual frameworks. They are clearly committed to public participation and a participatory approach to knowledge creation, and each takes a unique disciplinary and methodological approach to these values. It is easy to see how Collaborations focuses on community-based partnerships and research, while The Public Philosophy Journal reimagines philosophical journal publications around ethical public discourse and a collaborative review process. 

Collaborations is a peer-reviewed and open-access journal focused on scholarly research and practices emerging from university-community partnerships. The journal clearly emphasizes research that explains, analyzes, and critically assesses various types of collaborations, and its editorial policy supports this mission by having separate portals for submissions, including a Scholarly-Research Portal, a University-Community Collaborations Portal, and a Reflections on Experiential Learning Portal. This indicates that the journal prioritizes research not only in the academic setting but also in the community setting, along with student (undergraduate and graduate) reflections, making it especially suitable for scholars whose work is grounded in participatory and practice-based methodologies. Recent publications on topics such as refugee governance, sustainability, and nonprofit-community collaboration further demonstrate the journal’s focus. 

In contrast, The Public Philosophy Journal is more oriented towards the transformation of philosophy as a public and collaborative practice. From the information provided on the submission guidelines page, it seeks to engage in scholarship that would enhance people’s understanding and deliberations about issues that affect the community. What makes the journal unique is the Collaborative Community Review process that differs from the traditional peer review process through its formative nature and ethics-oriented approach.  The journal is not simply implementing an administrative and editorial process such as paper acceptance and peer review. It also puts into practice all that it stands for like ethics, inclusiveness, and collaboration. 

One notable similarity between the two journals is that both journals resist the idea of scholarship viewed as isolated and disconnected from real life. In addition, both journals appreciate research that is engaged in society and responsible toward the wider community outside of universities. Each journal emphasizes accessibility in its scholarly work. However, the difference lies in the type of contribution each one foregrounds. Collaborations emphasize collaboration, community-based research, institutional collaboration, and engagement for the sake of producing social impact in disciplines like public health, education, nonprofit organizations, and participatory action research. Whereas The Public Philosophy Journal invites scholarship to be analytical and theoretically informed, it compels philosophers to communicate their views in a clear and ethical way to the public. 

The submissions requirements of the two journals highlight the differences in the focus of each journal. Collaborations follows a more recognizable research-journal structure, with articles commonly organized around abstract, introduction, background, methods, findings, discussion, and implications. However, the guidelines of the journal place more emphasis on collaborative practices such as trust, reciprocity, authority-sharing, and cultural sensitivity, illustrating the connection between methodology and ethics in the editorial policy of the journal. On the other hand, The Public Philosophy Journal integrates academic and public aspects in its submission requirements. While the journal requests an abstract, it also expects authors to include a Community Ethics Statement. Such a statement necessitates the involvement of scholars and communities affected by the issue being addressed in the article. 

In terms of audience, Collaborations is likely relevant to researchers practicing community-based participatory research, public scholarship, nonprofit/civic engagement, education, and social research applications. This publication will be very appropriate for those whose main aim is to publish the result of their collaboration and joint efforts toward collaborative problem-solving. The Public Philosophy Journal suits scholars seeking to address philosophical, political, or ethical issues while writing for both academic and nonacademic audiences. The publication will interest people involved in topics like justice, public discussion, race, gender, disability, civic ethics, and the social relevance of the humanities. 

In general, the two journals have a common focus and commitment to challenging current conceptions of how knowledge is produced, evaluated, and distributed, although they do so from different starting points. Collaborations views knowledge as an object created through a process of mutual engagement between universities and communities, focusing strongly on the practical applications and the impact of the research. On the other hand, The Public Philosophy Journal looks at knowledge as an ethical and intellectual enterprise that must be open to discussion in a public forum. Overall, both journals reflect a trend away from the isolation of academic publication towards a new approach to scholarly publishing. 

This is one in a series of five essays reviewing public humanities journals. This series was inspired by Wendy Belcher’s website Reviews of Peer-Reviewed Journals in the Humanities and Social Sciences