The Review of Symbolic Logic | Penelope Maddy | 26 June 2007

"Submitted by Richard Zach on Tue, 06/26/2007 - 9:50pm

Please read the following message from the President of the Association for Symbolic Logic. The terms of office of the editors begin July 1, by then information on how to submit papers should be online at the RSL webpage (not yet functional--but the submission email is rsl@uci.edu, I can tell you that much).

'Dear Colleagues, It is a great pleasure to announce an exciting new undertaking of the ASL: a new journal, The Review of Symbolic Logic, will begin publication in June 2008. Joining The Journal of Symbolic Logic and The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic as the third official organ of the Association, the RSL will publish research papers in: Philosophical logic and its applications; History and philosophy of logic; Philosophy and methodology of mathematics.

The first heading covers all areas of philosophical logic, plus applications of these logics in such fields as computer science, linguistics, game theory and decision theory, formal epistemology, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. The second is intended to include the history of philosophy of logic, an area that overlaps substantially with what is often called ‘history of analytic philosophy’. The third area includes both the philosophy of mathematics and methodological studies of mathematical practice, past and present. These are lively and interrelated areas of contemporary research; the ASL is a natural common ground for workers in these fields, and we hope the RSL will quickly be seen as the leading outlet for publications.

The RSL is actually a successor to the Journal of Philosophical Logic. The JPL was founded in 1972; the Association assumed editorial responsibility in 1987. Since then, the editors have endured a succession of unsatisfactory relations with its various commercial publishers, most recently with Springer. In the spring of 2006, as publication of ASL books was shifting to Cambridge University Press, a CUP editor expressed interest in a joint venture, either to work with us to acquire the JPL or to start a new journal to succeed the JPL. This welcome opening presented us with the opportunity to control the publication more directly than we could ever have hoped for with Springer and to consolidate the journal and the book publishing operation ith an academic publisher of the highest quality.

In December of 2006, after a period of careful consultations among the officers, the JPL editors, the ASL Council and other experts, the Council authorized the officers to explore this possibility with CUP. Springer made no serious response to our proposal to acquire the JPL, so a contract for a new journal was negotiated and recently approved by the Council. CUP has agreed to share revenue from the journal with us, so proceeds from the The Review of Symbolic Logic will enable the ASL to support other new endeavors as well. The target date of mid-2008 for the inaugural issue of the RSL coincides with the effective date of our withdrawal from our contractual agreement with Springer for the JPL....'"