Libertarian Papers

Note All subscribers to the Libertarian Papers Facebook GROUP: I have migrated that group to this Facebook PAGE instead. Please become a fan of this instead of the old group.

The O.P. Alford III Prize in Libertarian Scholarship is a $1000 prize awarded by the Mises Institute each year for the the article published in the preceding volume of Libertarian Papers that best advances libertarian scholarship, as chosen by the journal’s Editor and Editorial Board.

There were forty-four articles were published in Libertarian Papers in 2009. The 2009 award was given by Mises Institute President Doug French at the Austrian Scholars Conference 2010 to Gil Guillory and Patrick C. Tinsley, for their article “The Role of Subscription-Based Patrol and Restitution in the Future of Liberty.” This paper is a pioneering effort to advance the theory of the private production of justice. Guillory and Tinsley integrate and blend the theoretical and the practical, and set forth a detailed and practical plan to begin to establish such private institutions. Their article is creative and bold, informed by existing libertarian theory while extending it. As one member of the journal’s Editorial Board noted, “This paper presents a carefully worked out business plan for organisations that would provide an effective, superior alternative for tax-funded monopolies in deterring common types of crime and providing restitution to victims of such crimes. It is an original and path-breaking effort not only because of its concern with practical matters but also because of its deep understanding of the issues involved in developing a libertarian theory of social organization. While the paper’s primary focus is on the United States of America, a relatively young but highly developed and complex society, it opens up lines of enquiry and suggests methods that are bound to be of interest to libertarians everywhere.” Guillory and Tinsley are to be commended for their careful, meticulous, and systematic study.

The video of the award presentation is in the first 5 minutes of the following:

Libertarian Papers was launched a year ago, in late January 2009. I’d like to explain how the journal came to be. It was born in a 15-minute IM chat. The ideas tumbled out effortlessly and quickly because their time had come. FULL ARTICLE by Stephan Kinsella

For those who like paper, Libertarian Papers is offered in a Print Archive version, at cost, via print-on-demand. Our second print archive is Vol. 1 (2009), Part 2: Articles 18-44 (555 pages). It’s available for $16 (our cost), from Lulu. It may be ordered from our Print Archive page.

Libertarian Papers now has 810 Twitter followers and its Facebook group has 750 members.

Libertarian Papers was launched in late January, 2009. The Editorial Board and I are extremely pleased with our progress to date. At this point it is appropriate to briefly assess our first half-year.

First, we were lucky to acquire such an outstanding Editorial Board, with world-class scholars working in the libertarian tradition–a veritable who’s who of Austro-libertarianism. Second, with the generous support of the Mises Institute, we were able to design this handsome and useful website in a short time.

The journal is already included in a number of leading indexing/abstracting services, including Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory; Cabell’s Directory of Publishing Opportunities; International Political Science Abstracts; The Philosopher’s Index; Mises Institute Literature Index; Directory of Open Access Journals; HeinOnline; EBSCOhost; and Gale/Cengage. And we have already established the O.P. Alford III Prize in Libertarian Scholarship, a $1000 prize awarded annually to the best article published in Libertarian Papers in the preceding calendar year.

Just as we hoped, the online format of Libertarian Papers has given us the flexibility, speed, and accessibility readers–and authors–love. I am personally most proud of the quality and variety of the 35 articles we have published to date, which include submissions from young and independent scholars–as well as from established libertarian intellectuals such as Narveson, Higgs, van Dun, Salin, Kukathas, Block, and Machan. And, astoundingly, in our first half year we have published five previously unpublished (or, in the case of Leoni, obscure and unavailable) works by towering thinkers such as Mises, Rothbard, Bruno Leoni, and Adolf Reinach.

Further, although we are an online journal, we have produced our first print archive covering the first 17 articles; a second print archive is in the works. And incredibly, we have recruited an army of libertarian volunteers to turn many of our articles into audio versions for our free podcast, and to help copyedit articles. These (mostly young/student) libertarians are amazing, and give reason for optimism about the future in these dark times.

My personal gratitude, therefore, to our Editorial Board, outside referees, volunteer podcast narrators and copyeditors, the Mises Institute, authors, readers, and other supporters.

Stay tuned for things to come! As always, comments and suggestions–and submissions–are welcome.

Yours in liberty, Stephan Kinsella

If you are interested in volunteering to provide occasional copyediting work for Libertarian Papers articles, please contact me.

Homepage Revisions – May 19, 2009 (annotated)

In an effort to increase the usability and highlight the user-interactivity features of Libertarian Papers, we have made some changes to the home page:

• Content is now organized by section.
• RSS and iTunes icons appear next to their respective section headers for increased prominence.
• Content lists appear in a more compact summary format.
• All content is more prominently “dated for freshness.”
• In addition to linked section headers, tabs at the end of each section alert the reader to additional content.
• The “Latest Comments” section has been added to make this particular user-interactivity feature more prominent. Hopefully this will encourage more frequent discussion of the articles contained on this site.
  • Clicking on a commenter’s screen name will lead the reader directly to the contributed comment.
  • Clicking on a title in this section will lead the reader to the article, podcast or news item.

See the accompanying full-size annotated screenshot (PNG, ~179KB) to see the above decsription of the revisions in context.

We hope that this revision proves beneficial to all existing and future readers. Please let us know of any display issues by using the comment box below.

Libertarian Papers is pleased to announce that Butler D. Shaffer, professor at Southwestern Law School, has joined the Editorial Board.

Libertarian Papers is indexed in a large number of indexing and related services, and, as of today, has been added to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

In just three months, this journal has published 25 great papers, and been indexed in a number of leading services. It has quickly become a key journal of libertarian scholarship.

Since 2002, the O.P. Alford III Prize in Libertarian Scholarship, a bi-annual $1000 prize, has been awarded to the paper published in the preceding two-year period that best advances libertarian scholarship. The award was named for a great entrepreneur, O.P. Alford III, whose friendship to the Mises Institute and dedication to the cause of liberty will not be forgotten.

I am pleased to announce that the Mises Institute has generously decided to grant the $1000 Alford prize annually–instead of every other year–to the article published in Libertarian Papers that best advances libertarian scholarship. The next such prize will be awarded at the Austrian Scholars Conference 2010 to the best article from Libertarian Papers published in 2009, as chosen by the journal’s Editor and Editoral Board.

Interesting post on orgtheory.net, broadening the scientific conversation, which discusses “some interesting advances in how some journals and online media are broadening the scientific conversation.” Among some developments lauded by this post:  fostering dialogue online and in print; having open access; podcasting the journal’s articles; and doing “a great job of packaging things online”.

Here at Libertarian Papers, we are striving to be part of this process.

Libertarian Papers, not even 3 months old yet (first published Jan. 22, 2009), made the list.

Libertarian Papers has entered into an agreement with Gale/Cengage to have its content included in this service.

Libertarian Papers has entered into an agreement with EBSCOhost to have its content included in this service.

Libertarian Papers has entered into an agreement with HeinOnline to have its content included in this service.

We have finally been assigned an ISSN: it is 1947-6949.

In an effort to make discussions easier to follow, LibertarianPapers.org now features AJAX-enabled threaded comments.  Simply click the ‘Reply to this comment” link immediately following a comment that you want to address directly, and the comment entry form will appear immediately underneath.  Please note that you will need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser to take full advantage of this functionality.

If you wish to start an unrelated discussion, use the comment entry form found at the bottom of each page.

Also, if a discussion thread becomes particularly large, it will be separated into multiple pages to make the discussion more manageable.  (Currently, twenty comments are displayed per page.)

If you find any bugs, please let me know in the comment box or send e-mail to aristotle@mises.com.  Thanks for your help and participation.

For those who like paper, Libertarian Papers will be offered in a Print Archive version, at cost, via print-on-demand. Our first print archive is Vol. 1 (2009), Part 1: Articles 1-17. It’s available for $10 (our cost), from Lulu.  It may be ordered from our Print Archive page.