Some ideas are controversial not just because some people think they are bad ideas, but because they think that they are the kinds of ideas that only bad people have. So writing about them, let alone advocating them, may have reputational costs. Here's a new (open access) journal that offers authors the option of publishing under a pseudonym if they wish, to avoid the harassment, hate mail and death threats that would otherwise come their way.
Journal of controversial ideas
"The Journal of Controversial Ideas offers a forum for careful, rigorous, unpolemical discussion of issues that are widely considered controversial, in the sense that certain views about them might be regarded by many people as morally, socially, or ideologically objectionable or offensive. The journal offers authors the option to publish their articles under a pseudonym, in order to protect themselves from threats to their careers or physical safety. We hope that this will also encourage readers to attend to the arguments and evidence in an essay rather than to who wrote it. Pseudonymous authors may choose to claim the authorship of their work at a later time, or to reveal it only to selected people (such as employers or prospective employers), or to keep their identity undisclosed indefinitely. Standard submissions using the authors’ actual names are also encouraged."
Editors:
Jeff McMahan (White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Oxford, UK)
Francesca Minerva (Researcher, University of Milan)
Peter Singer (Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, Princeton University, USA)
And Here's the first issue, with several pseudonymous contributions.
Peter Singer discusses the journal at Project Syndicate:
"A new academic journal permits authors to use a pseudonym to avoid running the risk of receiving personal abuse, including death threats, or of irrevocably harming their careers. That option has become necessary even in countries that we do not think of as repressive dictatorships."
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