York University's Undergraduate Philosophy Student Association

The Oracle is York University’s Undergraduate Philosophical Review Journal. The journal is published once a year through the efforts of York University’s Undergraduate Philosophy Student Association’s Executive Council, York University’s Philosophy Department, and York University’s Printing Services. Submissions are open to any current undergraduate student in North America. Hard copies will be available.

 

1. The Oracle 2007
2. The Oracle 2008
3. The Oracle 2009
4. The Oracle 2010
5. The Oracle 2011
6. The Oracle 2012
7. The Oracle 2013
8. The Oracle 2014
   
9. The Oracle 2015
10. The Oracle 2019

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Email submissions to the Editor-in-Chief: oracleyorku@gmail.com

Inquiries:
philclubyorku@gmail.com

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The Oracle is always accepting submissions for its upcoming issue. Anyone interested in submitting a paper for consideration is encouraged to do so. All manuscripts must be the original, unpublished work of an undergraduate student and should pertain to a topic of philosophical interest.

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Manuscript Format
Essays should be typed, double-spaced, and paginated. They should not exceed 3000 words. All personal information should be removed from the essay itself in order to allow for a blind review. Please send on a separate page a cover letter including your name, address, phone number, e-mail address, the name of your school and your major. Also include a small biographical note of about three sentences in your letter. Upon publication, an author’s biographical note will be included in the “Notes on Contributors” section, which will appear at the end of upcoming issues. Please prepare your submission as a word document (.doc or .docx), and send it electronically as an attachment to oracleyorku@gmail.com. The subject heading should clearly signify that the message includes a submission to the Oracle.

Submissions may be sent anytime throughout the year; however, the deadline for an upcoming issue is historically around January. Papers submitted past the deadline will be considered for the next issue.

Editing Process
Essays are evaluated in terms of their originality, style, organization, and overall quality. We use a double-blind system where peer reviewers are not known to anyone except the Executive Council of Philosophia and these reviewers do not know the author of the papers they are reading. Peer reviewers on the editorial committee will read every essay. Of all the submissions, each peer then selects her top papers (between five or ten, depending on the number of submissions received), and submits this list of papers to the Editor-in-Chief, who then using a point system scores every paper that was considered as a top paper.

Upon the final approval of the editorial committee, those papers, usually five, with the highest scores will be accepted for publication. Winners are given a slot to introduce their papers at the Oracle Journal Launch and a slot to present at York University’s National Undergraduate Conference. We have a separate Call for Papers for the Conference, which occurs at the end of March/April.

Response Time
Submissions that have been selected for publication will receive a response from the editors in mid-February. Writers that do not qualify for the journal will be notified as well as reasons for their lower score (e.g. poor editing, lack of originality, non-philosophically relevant subject, submitted past deadline).  Philosophia’s mandate is to act as a resource for the proliferation and success of philosophy students and to focus less on competition and more on student success. Minimal constructive feedback is given, but writers are always encouraged to consult us further.