ABSTRACT
One of the implications of the moral realist position outlined in the first section of this book is that all practices are embedded in a moral ecology; that is, they entail and enact stances toward the good and are thus “justified” within a moral framework. Understood in this way, justification is not fundamentally about warranting a claim logically or empirically, but about making just (right, true, virtuous, correct, etc.) the historical practices through which understanding is pursued and expressed. Justification of this sort entails a careful attention to the moral affordances of any given practice; an attempt to understand the moral questions and dilemmas raised by that practice and to meet the moral demands it inscribes. In this chapter, I provide a concrete example of this sort of attentiveness to, in this case, the moral affordances of academic (and, particularly, research) publication practices. In the chapter, I consider the publication process in terms of five areas of concern: collaboration and credit; style and representation; venue, availability, and audience; submission, editorial, and revision; and dissemination and use. In each of the sections corresponding to these concerns, I discuss some of the moral choices and dilemmas, the interpersonal relations and obligations, and the institutional challenges inherent to them.
