BJPS Short Reads

The readership for the Short Reads is broader than the philosophers of science who form the core of the journal’s audience. Your Short Read should be written for philosophers outside of philosophy of science, for scientists, for policy makers, or for anyone else whose interests you see as abutting your research. This has important consequences for how you write your Short Read.

• Your reader is intelligent but likely not au fait with the usual philosophical and/or scientific terms of art commonly found in a BJPS paper. This does not mean you must avoid all such terms, but they will need to be explained.

• You cannot take it for granted that your reader will immediately grasp the relevance of your work to their own. For example, the implications of your research may need to be made much more explicit for your readers. Alternatively, while it might be obvious to philosophers of science why one might be interested in the research question you are pursuing, the Short Reads audience may need you to take a few steps backwards, before your argument gets going, to motivate the issue. In sum, one of the first things you need to do in your Short Read is to answer the (dreaded!) ‘so what?’ question.

• Short Reads should be 1500–2000 words in length.

• We aim to make every Short Read available in audio. This imposes certain constraints on how you write your piece, since what makes sense on the page doesn’t always translate well. You are strongly encouraged to read your Short Read aloud and alter any text that might interfere with a coherent recording before sending your essay to us.

• We work on the assumption that you (your co-author, a friend with a particularly nice voice…) will be the person to read your Short Read for the audio version (we will provide you with all the support you might need for this, and we perform all post-production work). Where it isn’t possible for you to provide the audio version, but you would still like to have an audio version available, we will do our best to find alternative readers, but we cannot guarantee this. (We will give preference to those who do not have English as a first language and anyone else who may have particular difficulties in this regard.)

• Publication remains at the editors’ discretion.

• The editors reserve the right to edit Short Reads to meet the journal’s house style.

Note! It is very important that you do not record your Short Read until you have received the script from the editors.

• The good news is that this shouldn’t take you more than 15 minutes. But please read these instructions carefully, to avoid wasting your time recording audio that isn’t usable.

• You need only do one take. If, for example, you need to cough or you fluff a line (and be reassured, everyone does—usually many time over!), simply return to the start of the sentence and read it again. We’ll take care of removing these moments in the edit.

• It’s simple to edit out things, but trickier to fix overlapping sounds. So, for example, if you read from a print out and need to turn a page, pause while you turn the page (likewise, pause while you click your mouse button).

• Please follow the script exactly. It is important that readers and listeners get the same material.¹If you spot a typo, as often happens when reading aloud, do fix it in the reading and mention it to us, so that we can fix this in the text version too.

• Speaking slowly is helpful for listeners, but note that long gaps between words isn’t what helpfully slow speaking amounts to; rather, it’s the speed of the words themselves.

The best voice recorder is usually the one in your phone:

• Using your phone’s voice memo app, hold the phone no less than six inches or so away from your face and press record. (You might want to play around with the exact distance here—‘mouth sounds’ vary by person in terms of how far they travel!)

• Use your phone’s own microphone, rather than, for example, one internal to your earphones.

• Record directly to your phone (rather than to the cloud).

• If you have a high-end microphone (Yeti or similar), then you can record directly into your computer (by, for example, hitting record on a zoom meeting and sending us the audio). Again, save the recording locally rather than into the cloud.

• Make sure to listen back to the recording to ensure there are no unintended sounds picked up during the recording (these are easy to miss when you are busy speaking).

Naturally enough, the quieter your environment, the better the quality of the recording. Perhaps less obviously, the smaller the space, the better too (though avoid tiled spaces, such as bathrooms and kitchens). If you’re keen on sounding your best, record from inside a wardrobe or under a duvet (yes, really).

• You need only do one take. If, for example, you need to cough, you mispronounce a word, or you fluff a line (and all this is completely normal), please return to the start of the sentence and read it again. It is easy to delete lines but difficult to fix them, so we’d much rather you tried the line again (from the start of the sentence).

• As a general rule it’s simple to edit out things, but trickier to fix overlapping sounds. For example, if you are reading from a print out and need to turn a page, pause while you turn the page and we can edit out that noise.

• Please follow the script exactly.²If you spot a typo, as often happens when reading aloud, do fix it in the reading and then let us know about it, so that we can fix this in the text version too. We want to ensure readers and listeners get the same material!

• Speaking slowly is helpful for listeners, but note that long gaps between words isn’t what helpfully slow speaking amounts to. Rather, it’s the speed of the words themselves.

We’re happy to accept the audio file by whatever method is most convenient for you. We can accept pretty large email attachments, but your own email server may not permit this. If email is a problem for you, we can send you a dropbox link to which you can upload your file; you can upload your file to your own cloud storage space and send us a link; or you can register for a free account at wetransfer.com.