ERIH Journals project: a total failure so far

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Cataloguing and ranking seems rather popular in this age of cheap computational power, pseudo-scientific projects and top-down control policies. If you have no ideas, make a list. Better still if you can self-appoint yourself as the judge of what makes it into the list and according to which ranking.
Now, it might be interesting to know what the very best, the good and the, well, not-so good (read: junky) journals in philosophy are, but the European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH) Journals Project is not, so far, reliable in any reasonable sense. Actually, it would be rather laughable, if it weren't a worrying waste of money and a dangerous step in the wrong direction (read: renewing or withdrawing subscriptions on the basis of such misconceived list, or using it as a yardstick to evaluate applicants and faculty members).
The attempt to rank all European and the best of non-European Philosophy journals by means of 4 categories (A, B, C and unclassified), may be worth pursuing, not least because graduates and librarians may often wonder about the value of a particular publication. But, at least three points should be kept in mind.

First, the ranking should be updated (it is not, some listed journals are no longer published or no longer under that name), pertinent (some inclusions and some exclusions are baffling) and done according to the actual scientific impact (see impact factor) of the journal. Simple, isn't it? Of course, even the calculation of the impact factor is a difficult and risky business. If this is inappropriate in the humanities, this should teach a lesson about any further attempt at drawing arbitrary lists. In any case, no one can possibly believe that Dilthey Jahrbuch fuer Philosophie und Geschichte der Geisteswissenschaften is a top journal (rank A), better than, say, Archiv fuer Geschichte der Philosophie (rank B).

Second, philosophy is a family of disciplines, and the best journal in a field, specialized in a particular area, may not be seriously compared to a generalist journal. If you work on Fichte, I guess the best place were to publish your work is the Fichte-Studien (rank C). So why dividing all journal into only two lists, philosophy and history and philosophy of science? There are, for example, enough journals dedicated to the history of philosophy alone, which could make a nice sub-group. Of course the examples could be multiplied.

Third, it might be useful to check other attempts at cataloguing and evaluating philosophy journals, well-known and available on the web, such as
unfortunately, once these and other similarly common-sensical points are taken into account, the truth is that the list is as useful as a list of best dishes in European cuisine. And the above distinction into two groups should annoy anyone in philosophy as a distinction between, say, European and Italian dishes. Solution? The list and the project belong to the dustbin, the sooner they get there the better.

Comments

  1. AnonymousTue Apr 13, 03:38:00 pm

    I was looking for some information about this Index and I found your blog. I think your point of view is very interesting. Thank you for this post! Probably in my field (Translation Studies) is not different at all.

    ReplyDelete

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