Editorial Statement

The Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy is an open-access, peer-reviewed, online journal of moral, social, political, and legal philosophy. The journal welcomes submissions of articles in any of these and related fields of research. Articles submitted to the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy will be reviewed by the editors and external referees according to the highest academic standards. All submissions that pass initial editorial review are sent out to two double-blind referees and discussed blind by the team of associate editors. The journal is committed to speedy and efficient review, normally not exceeding 6 to 8 weeks from submission. Each article is published online as soon as it is ready for publication.

The Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy is founded on the principle of publisher-funded open access. Public access to articles in the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy is free of charge, at no charge to authors, and is available to all readers under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 license. Funding for the journal has been made possible through the generous commitment and support of the Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences at the University of Southern California. The Journal articles are fully indexed with Philosopher's Index, Lexis, and Westlaw.

Articles submitted to the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy should only be submitted electronically, through this website.  Submissions may be designated either as 'articles' or as 'discussion notes', and each category is handled separately.

The Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy does not require exclusivity in submission for review. However, if you have submitted your article to another journal, we do require that you let us know about it, and notify us without any delay about other journals' decisions about your article.  JESP will not publish articles that have already been previously published, either in whole or in part.

While the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy will consider longer articles, in general the journal would prefer articles that do not exceed 15,000 words. Footnotes should be kept to the necessary minimum. Appropriate references to all relevant academic publications should be incorporated, and the accuracy of references is entirely the author's responsibility. Any standard system of reference is acceptable for submissions, as long as it is consistent throughout the article.

All the articles in the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy will be published online in PDF, and once published, no further changes will be allowed.  The Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy has taken every precaution to ensure that all articles will be available for the indefinite future.  The journal is fully committed to maintaining the website and its entire database for the indefinite future and has taken every possible measure to that effect.