Ergo: Open Access Journal of Philosophy

Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy is a peer-reviewed, general-scope philosophical journal published by Michigan Publishing at the University of Michigan Library (EISSN 2330-4014). Founded in 2014, it operates on a diamond open-access model with no article processing charges (APCs) for authors or subscription fees for readers, and employs a triple-anonymous review process across all philosophical traditions.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 7 Nov 2026

What Is the Ergo Journal?

Ergo was launched in 2014 to provide an independent, high-standard open-access venue for scholarship across the full breadth of philosophical inquiry. In academic publishing, philosophy has historically been dominated by commercial subscription or hybrid journals; Ergo provides a diamond open-access alternative hosted by Michigan Publishing. Authors retain copyright under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, and all articles are immediately and permanently free to access worldwide without paywalls or author-facing article processing charges (APCs).

In accordance with the foundational principles of research ethics and fair academic evaluation, Ergo enforces a triple-anonymous review model designed to eliminate institutional, geographic, and demographic biases during editorial triage and referee appraisal.

Editorial Model and Peer-Review Workflow

The journal’s editorial workflow is organized to maximize evaluative fairness and rigor:

Triple-Anonymous Peer Review: Submissions are anonymized so that referee identities, author identities, and handling editors remain masked during critical evaluation stages.
Pluralistic Scope: Unlike specialist periodicals that restrict content to specific methodological factions, Ergo considers work from analytic philosophy, continental philosophy, formal epistemology, philosophy of science, and history of philosophy.
Preservation and Archiving: Content is deposited with the Library of Congress and indexed through Crossref and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), ensuring permanent digital stewardship.

Publishing Models: Ergo vs. Conventional Philosophy Journals

The following table compares Ergo‘s operating structure against traditional commercial philosophy periodicals:

Dimension	Ergo: An Open Access Journal	Commercial Subscription / Hybrid Journals
Access Model	Diamond Open Access (completely free to read)	Subscription paywall or hybrid open access
Author Fees (APC)	$0 (No author processing charges)	Often $2,000–$4,000 per paper for OA option
Peer Review Format	Triple-anonymous refereeing	Double-anonymous or single-anonymous review
Publisher / Host	Michigan Publishing (University of Michigan Library)	Commercial academic publishers (e.g., Wiley, Springer, Taylor & Francis)
Copyright Retention	Author retains copyright (CC BY-NC-ND)	Publisher transfer agreement or exclusive license
Indexing Status	DOAJ, Crossref, Web of Science, Scopus	Web of Science, Scopus, commercial abstract databases

Bibliometric Indicators and Responsible Assessment

Bibliometric indicators for Ergo reflect its established citation footprint in open research infrastructures. As indexed in open bibliographic registries (verified 2026-11-07):

OpenAlex 2-Year Mean Citedness: 2.37 citations per work across the preceding two years, with an overall h-index of 42.
Crossref Works: Over 588 registered DOIs maintained by University of Michigan Library.
Proprietary JCR Metrics: While commercial vendors calculate proprietary metrics such as the Clarivate Journal Impact Factor, access requires paid institutional licensing. In keeping with CASRAI editorial integrity standards, only open, independently verified metrics are published here.

Furthermore, under the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), research administrators and hiring committees should assess individual papers on their substantive intellectual merit rather than treating journal-level metrics as proxies for individual scholarship quality.

Sources

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), EISSN 2330-4014 Record: https://doaj.org/api/v2/search/journals/2330-4014 (accessed 2026-11-07).
Crossref API, Journal Metadata for 2330-4014: https://api.crossref.org/journals/2330-4014 (accessed 2026-11-07).
OpenAlex Registry, Source Record for Ergo (EISSN 2330-4014): https://api.openalex.org/sources/issn:2330-4014 (accessed 2026-11-07).

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Ergo: Open Access Journal of Philosophy"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/ergo-journal" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/ergo-journal",
  "name": "Ergo: Open Access Journal of Philosophy",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/ergo-journal",
  "description": "Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy is a peer-reviewed, general-scope philosophical journal published by Michigan Publishing at the University of Michigan Library (EISSN 2330-4014). Founded in 2014, it operates on a diamond open-access model with no article processing charges (APCs) for authors or subscription fees for readers, and employs a triple-anonymous review process across all philosophical traditions.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/publishing#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/ergo-journal",
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "author": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#editorial-team"
  },
  "datePublished": "2026-11-07T08:43:06",
  "dateModified": "2026-11-07T08:44:31",
  "inLanguage": "en-GB",
  "isAccessibleForFree": true
}