You know how all the journals always frighten you with stuff like “must be original work, never published before”? I’m reading Critchley’s essay on Rousseau in the latest Continental Philosophy Review (great essay, I’m thinking of writing something about it on the blog soon) only to discover that it is the exact same essay already published in the first issue of Law and Humanities in 2007. I mean it is the same text:
Simon Critchley, “The catechism of the citizen: politics, law and religion in, after, with and against Rousseau,” Law and Humanities, 1:1 (Summer 2007), 79-109.
Simon Critchley, “The catechism of the citizen: politics, law and religion in, after, with and against Rousseau,” Continental Philosophy Review, 42:1 (February 2009), 5-34.
I mean, I don’t really care, I think the policy of single submissions is rather idiotic, considering how much time it takes for a journal to review your submission and get back to you – I say everyone should just submit their work to as many publications as they feel like and let the editors deal with it – not fair? Tough shit, deal with it – authors should be deciding where to publish their work and publications should be competing for good work. In any case, how is it possible that Critchley can publish the same text twice? It’s kind of strange, is it not?
I assume this is the same Simon Critchley who is the author of “The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Critchley ).
Somebody feeling more clever than me insert a joke please.
Ha, you’re right – maybe it is acceptable in that sort of way? I’m sure one can publish the same piece several times but I always thought it would be in different media, right? In both of the above cases it was probably a solicited publication, I’m just thinking about something like this ethical move: “Ok, this one already been published in A, but if B wants to publish it too, why not?” Maybe in the future academics will compete based not on how many publications they have – let’s face it, if the previous generations needed no publications to get a job and the present one cannot get one without them, in the future kids will start publishing in high school and so on – but on how many times they’ve managed to publish the same piece in as many prestigious journals as they can?