Editorial standards

These are the standards for everything Coordinates of Thought publishes in its own name: the Learn guides, the question cards of The Coordinates, the thinker, school, tradition, concept and book pages, and posts by The Editors. Essays contributed to the Journal by members and guests are held to the same minimum.

We would rather be useful than impressive. A reader should be able to check what we say, see who said it, and tell us when we are wrong.

Sourcing

• Any claim a reader might want to check should be traceable: dates, attributions, quotations, figures, and words such as "first", "only" and "most".
• For primary texts we cite the author, the title and a standard locator: Stephanus or Bekker numbers, sūtra or verse numbers, book and chapter, or a Talmud folio.
• For reference works we prefer the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, specialist handbooks and named translations. Wikipedia can be further reading, but never the only support for a disputed claim.
• Thinker pages, question cards and guides end with a "Read further" list. We add an entry only after opening it and checking that it is the right one.

Citations

• In the text we use a short author-and-date form, such as "Gettier (1963)", with the full reference at the foot of the page where one is needed.
• Quotations are short, exact and located. If we are unsure of the exact wording, we paraphrase instead.
• Dates follow one convention: "c." for approximate dates, "trad." or "traditional dates" where a tradition's own dating differs from the scholarly one, and both where scholars disagree.

Fairness on contested questions

• Explainers set out the main positions fairly, give each its strongest reason and its best-known objection, and say where professional opinion lies only when it has been surveyed, with the survey named.
• A question should not be worded so that it assumes its own answer.
• The Coordinates are one proposed arrangement of philosophy's central questions, taken from The Coordinates of Thought. They are not the only way to divide the subject, and we say so.
• The mark △ means that philosophers disagree about the question itself, not only about the answer.
• Opinion pieces, including the founder's, may argue for a view. They are presented as one person's argument, not as the site's verdict.

Conflicts of interest

• Authors tell us about any financial, institutional or personal interest in what they review or argue for.
• The site was founded by Syed Raheel Shahzad. Where his own books appear on the site, they are marked as his, and where his company, The Syed Group, is named, for example as a publisher, we say that it is his.
• His books are not reviewed by the site's team accounts, and they are not placed in "Beginner" or "best of" lists unless they meet the same test as every other book.

Who is responsible

• Publisher: Syed Raheel Shahzad, the founder, who answers for what the site publishes in its own name.
• Editors: the Coordinates of Thought Editors, the team that writes, checks and corrects the guides, profiles and pages credited to "Coordinates of Thought Editors". You can reach them through the contact page; every message about content is answered.
• The 131 Coordinates: each question card's question, definition, rival answers and figures are from Syed Raheel Shahzad's book The Coordinates of Thought, and are credited to him. The links, reading lists and conversations around them are the editors'.
• Specialist reviewers: named on a page only when a qualified subject specialist has actually read it (see below).

How we review

Every page credited to the editors goes through these steps, and each page says which it has passed:

1. Draft. The editors prepare a draft from the reference works and primary texts it will cite. Drafting and research use writing and research tools, including AI assistance.
2. Source check. Before publishing, every statement a reader might rely on is checked against the sources the page lists, by a second, independent check. Errors are corrected, unsupported claims are removed, and where sources disagree the page says so rather than choosing silently. Our own translations are never shown as quotations, and a date we could only work out ourselves is not published.
3. Editor's approval and a review date. The page then carries "Last reviewed" or "Last updated" with the date of that check.
4. Specialist reading (being built). Our aim is a reading by someone trained in the subject or tradition. When that happens, the page will name the reviewer, their field and the date. Until then, pages say plainly that they are not peer-reviewed, and no page claims a review it has not had.

• Contributed essays are read by an editor for accuracy, sources and fairness. You can ask for a specialist reading.
• We aim to answer every correction and every submission within 14 days.

Citing our pages

Pages that meet our standard for citation — an author or responsible editor, listed sources, a review date, a permanent address and a route for corrections — show Cite this page with APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX and RIS references. See How to cite Coordinates of Thought. Today this covers the in-depth thinker profiles, the 131 Coordinates cards and the Learn guides that have passed their source check; other sections join only when they meet the same standard.

Corrections

• If you find a mistake, please write to the editors and choose "A correction, or a report about a post". On any post you can also use Report under it.
• Factual corrections are made within seven days of being confirmed. Where a correction changes something a reader may have relied on, a short note at the foot of the page says what changed and when.
• We correct mistakes in the open. A piece we withdraw is labelled as withdrawn, not quietly deleted. We change text without a note only to fix spelling and typing errors.

Reviewing these standards

We review these standards every six months and publish the changes here. Suggestions are welcome through the contact page.