Flagship Springer Nature journal flips to diamond open access at the OLH

We’re excited to announce the launch of a major new journal, following news of another mass editorial resignation (read open letter) at Springer Nature. 

This week, the Editors-in-Chief and Associate Editors of the Journal of Philosophical Logic published an open letter announcing that they will leave the journal and no longer work with Springer Nature. The editors are launching a new journal called Philosophical Logic at the Open Library of Humanities. 

Founded in 1972 by Nicholas Rescher with Bas van Fraassen serving as the first Editor-in-Chief, the Journal of Philosophical Logic was originally published by D. Reidel Publishing, later by Kluwer, and finally by Springer. The decision to set up a new journal was made by the Journal of Philosophical Logic’s Executive Board in November 2025, following increasing dissatisfaction with Springer Nature’s commercialisation of the publishing process. The editorial board leave behind what the academic community refers to as a “zombie journal,” defined as “an academic journal published by a commercial publisher that has lost the respect and support of its scholarly community.” 

OLH’s Executive Director, Professor Caroline Edwards, said of the move: “We’re delighted to be announcing the launch of another major journal in the fields of philosophy and logic. The editors of the Journal of Philosophical Logic were inspired by academic colleagues at the Journal of Political Philosophy and Philosophy and Public Affairs, both of whom left Wiley to set up new non-profit diamond open access journals at the OLH in 2024. Scholars are absolutely fed up with the behaviour of these large corporate publishers, who have been trashing academic standards for years. We are only just seeing the beginning of a co-ordinated movement to bring high-quality academic journals back into community governance and leave publishers like Springer Nature behind.”

Professor Thomas Icard, Professor Wesley H. Holliday and Professor Francesca Poggiolesi, editors of Philosophical Logic commented: “Science and culture should be public goods, open and accessible to everyone, without financial or institutional barriers. In recent years, academics across many disciplines have taken steps to realize this vision. We are pleased to make our contribution by founding Philosophical Logic as a Diamond Open Access journal. This work has been made possible by the incredible team at OLH, to whom we are deeply grateful. We hope that the philosophical logic community will support this endeavor and that the Diamond Open Access model will become standard across fields.”

Philosophical Logic is the fourth new OLH journal to be announced in 2025, following the migration of the European Journal of Psychoanalysis, Energy Humanities, and The Hythe Review to the OLH’s diamond open access model. There are 2 more journals flipping to diamond open access in 2025 at the OLH. These will be announced soon.

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