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Grad Student Questions about Publishing

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO THE FRONT FROM MAY 18 GIVEN THE LIVELY AND INFORMATIVE DISCUSSION

This week I've gotten questions from three different graduate students (not here at Chicago) related to publications, so I thought I'd bundle them for discussion.  Here they are:

(1)  I am a doctoral student in a top-25 ranked program and it has been made extremely clear to us grads that publications are one of the strongest predictors of job market success. Recently, I have written several very short papers (around 1,000 words) that I am proud of. I think it would be a waste of space to flesh them out to a standard article length, but I have also been told there are several journals that will publish short "notes" in these cases. However, it's been hard for me to find a list of such journals in my area (besides, say, Analysis). I'm interested in journals that would publish notes in history, religion, and ethics, although I'm sure your readers would also be interested in publishing notes in other fields. Is there any chance you could create an open thread to solicit recommendations from the brain trust for journals that publish shorter papers?

(2)  Recently I have received conflicting advice on best strategies for publishing papers as a PhD student if one plans to seek academic employment. On the one hand, I have been told that having one or two strong full-length publications in good journals is better than having the same plus one of two solid, but shorter and less exciting, reply pieces. On the other hand, I have also been told that additional reply pieces will only add value. I (and I expect others) would be interested to hear what your readers think about this issue in particular, and the broader issue of just what publishing strategies are optimal for graduate students (e.g. is it better to try to get multiple good, but not great, articles out there, or is it better to try for one standout piece?)

(3)  I hope that you might publish my question anonymously on your blog. I am wondering how wise it is for graduate students to submit to new journals? I was particularly curious about Thought.  The editorial board is impressive and a journal that competes with Analysis is long overdue, but I fear that submitting here will be at best a wasted paper and meaningless line on my CV, and at worst a wasted paper and a stain on my CV.

 On (1), I'm not sure, but hopefully readers will have ideas.  On (2), I have a few thoughts:  first, don't spend time on publications that could be spent on the dissertation; second, publications generally help the vast majority of candidates for the vast majority of jobs; third, a reply piece in J.Phil., say, is, all else being equal, going to be worth more than a full-length article in a relatively weak journal; fourth, when things aren't equal, go with the real article, not the reply piece.  On (3), one certainly gets more mileage out of publishing in established fora over new ones, but a journal that has a distinguished editorial board is likely to get off the ground quickly–Philosopher's Imprint, for example, in a decade has managed to crack roughly the "top ten" in the polls we've run here in the past.  The distinguished editorial board helped bring in high-quality contributions, and those in turn have turned the journal into a desirable place to publish for both junior and senior scholars.  PI, to be sure, had two advantages:  being on-line, thus guaranteeing wide visibility for its publications, and also publishing across a wide range of sub-fields, including history.  Thought enters a field already overloaded with journals publishing in what appear to be its main areas, though as I understand it much or all of the content will be free on-line initially.

Comments welcome–faculty must sign their name, students may post anonymous, but have to include a valid e-mail address (which will not appear). 

 

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50 responses to “Grad Student Questions about Publishing”

  1. Mark Alfano

    The Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy (http://www.jesp.org/) and Mind (http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/mind/for_authors/index.html) both accept notes.

    Reply
  2. Grad Student 1

    I have the same questions as (3) about Philosophy Study (davidpublishing.com/journals_info.asp?jId=741)

    Reply
  3. Charles Pigden

    I think that Student 3's worries about THOUGHT are a bit far-fetched. True, an article in THOUGHT is not going to look as good on your CV as an article in ANALYSIS since THOUGHT is just starting up and has yet to make its way in the world. Nonetheless it has a distinguished pair of editors and a distinguished editorial board, and being given the OK by any of these people would, to my mind, count as a badge of academic merit. As a (by now) seasoned member of several search committees, I can assure Student 3 that *I* would not look down my nose on a paper published in THOUGHT (a journal I might well submit to myself), and I don't think many other people would either. It would certainly not be a 'meaningless line' on your CV, and as for its being a 'stain' that's just silly (the kind of paranoid thinking to which we are all prone when desperately seeking employment). So if you've got an ANALYSIS -type paper up your sleeve, my advice would be to send it to ANALYSIS first and to THOUGHT second or third.

    I would add that the AJP is another top journal that often publishes relatively short pieces, and that, as I can testify from personal experience, a short piece in the AJP can sometimes get you a decent number of citations.

    Reply
  4. ben w

    In Mind's case, however, the policy may not be so helpful to Leiter's correspondent: "Brief comments on work published in Mind (but not elsewhere) are welcome".

    That is certainly a reasonable policy, but it is frustrating in two kinds of case:

    (a) one has a brief comment but not one that is specifically about any one work, published in Mind or elsewhere;
    (b) one has a brief comment on work not published in Mind, but rather published in a journal that either doesn't indicate whether such comments are welcome, or does indicate that they aren't.

    In (a) there may be other fora that work out fine, e.g. Philosophical Explorations says "Critical notices and discussions of recent developments (in any discipline) that may contribute to a better understanding of mind and action are encouraged. They should not exceed 3,000 words"so it depends on the topic, but that's fairly broad. But even they don't "accept critical discussions of articles that have been published elsewhere", so that doesn't help with (b).

    Reply
  5. AxeI GeIfert

    Regarding Grad Student 1's question, anyone considering getting involved with David Publishing should read this blog post: http://thetrialwarrior.com/2010/09/12/good-grief-bait-switch-law-publishing-version/

    Reply
  6. Steven Gross

    Dialectica — a solid journal — publishes brief pieces, and not just on work previously published in Dialectica.

    Reply
  7. Student

    AJP no longer accepts short pieces unless they are responses to works published in AJP.

    Reply
  8. Owen Flanagan

    Good advice. But I worry about graduate student's #1 report that he has been told that publication success is one of the strongest predictors of job market success. Is this true? Are there data on this? For myself, I do take notice of a cv with a publication in Nous, or JPhil, or Phil Review. But i now see many cv's with minor publications in so-so venues. I worry that grad students who do this kind of publishing are being given some form of the "publication success is important" message. Again for me, and I'd say my colleagues, we rarely mention publications. We simply read the work, the dissertation especially, very carefully. Also if memory serves, most candidates from places like NYU, Princeton, Berkeley, Arizona, and UNC, who have advanced far in recent searches at Duke had no publications (unless they held post-docs in which case, we expected it.) So my personal advice for graduate students would be to do really excellent dissertation work, work that will impress readers, and that will already have impressed your advisors. Aim to publish pieces of the dissertation after it is finished, very polished, etc.

    Reply
  9. Fred Rossoff

    Although perhaps not in the field Grad Student 1 is looking for, The Teachers College Record publishes short notes: http://www.tcrecord.org/Opinion.asp

    Reply
  10. Nevin Climenhaga

    I recently had a fairly short piece (originally under 2000 words, though it grew by about 1000 words in response to reviewer suggestions) accepted at Philosophical Studies, and I know others who have papers as short as 1000 words accepted there.

    Reply
  11. Job Marketeer

    My sense of things is that if you come from a place like NYU, Princeton, Berkeley, Arizona, or UNC, and aspire to land a job at a place of the same or similar stripe, then Owen Flanagan's advice is the advice to take. But for those of us whose pedigree is a bit more pedestrian, I think it is essential to have a publication or two when you go on the market – even in a good-but-not-amazing venue. Remember – jobs at departments on the PGR make up an extremely small percentage of the available jobs out there. The vast majority of jobs are of the less glamorous variety at regional and mid-tier state universities and liberal arts colleges with 3-3 or 4-4 teaching loads.

    Reply
  12. Philosophy Graduate Student

    I've seen a disconnect between recent grad students and faculty perceptions on the need for publishing and I wonder of if any of it has to do with the fact that most faculty at R1 PhD programs have only been at similar schools, yet most students don't find jobs at R1 institutions. So, I would be especially curious to hear perceptions about publishing from faculty members who aren't at R1 schools with grad students, and how they view publishing when on hiring committees. Also, are publications really only looked upon favorably if they're in the top journals Owen Flanagan mentions above (Nous, JPhil, Phil Review)? What about specialty journals (e.g., Ethics) or general journals in the second level (e.g., Mind, PPR, Phil Studies)?

    Reply
  13. David Sobel

    I'm at a program that doesn't currently have a PhD program (viz., Arizona State), and I have been a part of one junior search committee here. Before that, I taught at Cal State Northridge for five years and served on three search committees (for junior positions) there. I got my Ph.D. at UCSB. When I first went on the market I had publications in Ratio and Phil Studies (and this was a time when it was less typical for grad students to publish), but I ended up with only two interviews for tenure-track positions and no campus interviews. I did end up with a temporary position at the College of Charleston and I know that my publications were helpful in my getting that position. I've been on the job market many times and have had countless interviews. In my experience, no one has ever read any portion of my dissertation (thankfully!) and no one on any of the search committees that I've worked on have read the dissertation of any candidate. (Who has the time when you're teaching 6-8 courses a year?) I've had many interviews where it's been absolutely clear that no one interviewing me had read any of my work, not even my writing sample. On most of the search committees that I've served on, it seems to me that most candidates are cut before anyone takes a serious look at any of the candidate's writings. Most times, candidates will be cut based mainly on a quick review of the candidate's CV, letters, and evidence of teaching effectiveness (the last of these was taken quite seriously at Cal State Northridge). Perhaps, some members of the committee will take a cursory look at the writing sample or some other article of interest to them, but that's usually it. When I served on searches at Cal State Northridge, having a number of publications in good journals (such as Phil Q, Phil Stud, Pac Phil Q, etc.) was pretty much a necessary condition for getting the job.

    Bottom-line: The advice to focus on writing the best dissertation you can and to not worry too much about publishing except in journals like Nous, JPhil, and Phil Review seems like bad advice for the great majority of candidates. It's good advice if you think that you have a real shot at getting a job at a top-ranked department with a Ph.D. program. But if you think that, realistically, your best prospect is with getting a job at a university like some Cal State, then the quality of your dissertation only matters insomuch as your letter-writers take that into account when writing your letters. (And quite frankly I think that my letter-writers were able to write me stronger letters in virtue of my publications and that the quality of my dissertation didn't matter nearly as much as having published.) What matters most, it seems to me is having a record of steady publications in good (but not necessarily top-tier) journals as well as evidence that you can successfully teach (not just TA for) a range of bread-and-butter courses (think: history of philosophy and business ethics, not Phil of Language) and successfully teach the sort of students that you're likely to encounter at the typical state school (which are, I assume, quite different from the students that one typically encounters at say Princeton or Harvard).

    Reply
  14. Charles Pigden

    Not so. The AJP only accepts *Discussion Notes* if they are addressed to AJP papers. But not all short pieces are replies or discussion notes. Thus an Analysis-sized article if it not of the form 'A Reply to X's criticisms of Z's reply to B' might well find a home in the AJP as in many other journals. The fact that some journals specialize in short articles does not mean that other journals are against them. On the contrary. I suspect that many editors would welcome a short punchy piece on whatever, provided it was something a bit more than a mere reply to somebody else.

    However 'Student's' post raises an issue which is of particular importance to job-seekers, though it is also of more general interest. Most journals are such that they are not that keen to publish 'replies' to articles not published in that journal. And of course the prospects of publishing a paper in any given journal are often rather slim. This suggests that young people anxious to bulk out their CVs, should not be wasting too much of their time on 'mere' replies as they are unlikely to pay off in terms of longer cvs and better job prospects.

    There's another issue too. Suppose that the intellectual merit of a paper is roughly correlated with the prestige and the exclusiveness of the journal in which it is published. Then the fact that many journals discourage replies to articles not published in those journals means that the more a paper is worth replying to, the more difficult it will be to publish a reply. If this is in fact the case then maybe it something that we ought to be worrying about!

    Reply
  15. Fritz Allhoff

    I've been on a bunch of search committees (at a terminal MA program), and have to agree with Doug and disagree with Owen: there is just no expectation that candidates publish in a small subset of the journals, particularly when many faculty don't even publish there. And, agreed: we just don't read writing samples, dissertations, etc., at least not until *way* down the line (e.g., campus visits). So it's *really* dangerous to write a great dissertation–e.g., instead of publishing–when (at least some) search committees won't get past your CV because it doesn't have publications on it. I'd still go for respected professional journals; graduate student journals don't count, and really bad "professional" journals definitely mar your CV. But there are *so many* candidates for every position who have *multiple* publications. And it would take *so much* time to read enough materials to countervail those first impressions from the CV. I agree, too, with Doug's comment that most of the advice people get in this regard is from their advisors, who necessarily work at Ph.D.-granting institutions; most of the jobs, however, aren't at those places. Therefore, this is often just the wrong advice.

    Reply
  16. Daniel Kaufman

    I've chaired two search committees and served as a member on one.

    We are not a ranked program, on any list, and do not have a graduate program. However, it is such an employers' market right now—because of the grotesque number of PhDs being granted, even when there are no jobs for them—that we never had to hire someone straight out of graduate school, even for a junior position. There were more than enough desperate professors with years of experience and publication records to choose from.

    –Dan Kaufman

    Reply
  17. Student

    "Apart from Discussion Notes of the sort already described, the Journal will not consider short papers (for example, of the kind or length published by Analysis and Thought)." (From AJP's editorial policy section of their website). It's a recent change in policy.

    I agree, however, with the rest of your post.

    Reply
  18. Charles Pigden

    To Student: I stand corrected wrt the AJP.

    On other issues:
    Well I just checked the definition and Otago definitely counts as an R1 university which means that my opinions may not be of interest to 'Philosophy Graduate Student'. But I can say that so far as we are concerned, publications are generally a plus. We like quality and and we like quantity though I think we would be much more impressed by a few papers in good venues than a plethora of publications in not-so-good venues. Indeed somebody piling up publications in really low-grade venues would probably be doing themselves a disservice. However we are a lot less picky than Owen Flanagan who seems to be suggesting that nothing published outside a top ten journal weighs with him. We are a bit less elitist (or perhaps a bit less elite) than that, and articles in top forty journals are plenty good enough for us. There's something else that Owen says with which I take issue: 'Again for me, and I'd say my colleagues, we rarely mention publications. We simply read the work, the dissertation especially, very carefully.' Perhaps this is possible with a sufficiently large search committee and sufficiently small number of applicants but at Otago such a conscientious policy is simply not practical. For our last vacancy we had far too many applicants to plough our way through every dissertation 'very carefully' and it was a tough job doing justice to the writing samples. For a job with sixty applicants (surely not that uncommon) each with a dissertation of 50,000 words, reading their dissertations 'very carefully' would require carefully reading three million words! (Indeed I rather suspect that Owen himself is thinking about his policy once the long-list has been selected, forgetting about the procedures employed in pruning down to the top ten or twenty candidates.) If the applicants are numerous, you have to have filters, and the quality and quantity of a candidate's publications (weighted against the length of time they had been in the business) are important (though not necessarily decisive) considerations in helping to select the long-list. (Other things being equal, somebody with five publications two years out from their PhD would do better than somebody with ten publications eight years out from their PhD.) Once the long-list has been established, perhaps you can afford to approximate the Flanagan ideal. But even then, given the rigorous vetting procedures required for publication in a decent journal, the fact that somebody has been published is obviously evidence of research potential, which is one of the three or four things that we tend to look for. To ignore this information would be like getting a free dog and officiously barking yourself.

    As 'Philosophy Graduate Student' suggests, things may be a bit different at institutions that don't care much about research. But if research potential is even ONE of the things you are looking for, research performance is clearly relevant. And a publication in a decent journal is an instance of research performance. Why WOULDN'T this be relevant information for a research-focused committee?

    One other point (since I am shelling out advice): 'Under submission' doesn't impress me much as a line on a cv, but an honest 'forthcoming' is as good as a publication. 'Under submissions' are, in my opinion, best omitted. But what do other people who have served on search committee's think?

    Reply
  19. Daniel Kaufman

    Well, because there is such a large number of applicants, as a practical matter, this issue never arose for us. We didn't have to parse peoples' "under submission" and "forthcoming" lines, as we had more than enough people with multiple publications and past experience to choose from.

    I must admit to finding this conversation (not the query) curious. If my undistinguished school is getting 150 applicants for an Assistant Professor position, then what kind of numbers are you R1 people getting? And if you're getting that many or more, then how can the question of whether a graduate student has publications arise in any realistic sense? Undoubtedly, you have scores more qualified people already flooding the market…and your in-boxes.

    ==Dan Kaufman

    Reply
  20. Michael Kremer

    On Charles Pigden's last question: I think it is misleading and off-putting when papers "under submission" are listed in a CV under the heading "publications." They aren't "publications." They may well never be published. But "forthcoming" papers do count as publications — they will be published.

    But I think it is perfectly reasonable to have papers "under submission" on a CV, only they must be in their own section. Their placement on the CV means that a search committee can, if desired, ask for a copy.

    Reply
  21. ben w

    "So it's *really* dangerous to write a great dissertation–e.g., instead of publishing–when (at least some) search committees won't get past your CV because it doesn't have publications on it."

    To be honest, this fact strikes me as as worrisome as, or more worrisome than, the issue Charles Pigden raises (that the more worth replying to a paper is, the harder it is to reply to it). It suggests that the priorities for a grad student should be, in descending order, quality/number of publications, quality of writing sample, quality of dissertation. Perhaps that is not *so* bad, in itself, though it's not the way most programs are set up; it would be unfortunate if the de facto standard for progressing from one phase to the next of an academic career diverged too much from the de jure standard.

    I would very much *like* it to be the case that one could simply take Owen Flanagan's advice—concentrate on a stellar dissertation—in part because I hew to the conception of what one should be up to in grad school of which I take it to be a piece, writing a large-scale work that exhibits mastery of a field or problem area (just like in a guild, you know, the ancient and honorable company of scholars and all that), but in part because such engagement at length and depth seems to me to be a very valuable thing. And not something well served by also trying to publish at the same time (not that some don't pull it off, or even that there are *always* conflicts).

    Reply
  22. David Sobel

    I largely agree with this. I see the issue as being, in part, how much to focus on your best two chapters of your dissertation. Likely not many people besides your committee will ever read the third best chapter from your dissertation. So how much energy to devote to such chapters hinges on who is on your committee and what they care about. But surely it makes sense to devote more energy to your best two chapters. These are the ones which, if things go well, you will send to journals and be using for APA interviews and call-backs. I would think it makes some sense, at least from a employability perspective, to care more about having two very good chapters than that your dissertation make a sweeping and unified point (unless your committee feels otherwise).

    Reply
  23. Anon ABD

    1. Phil Quarterly publishes discussion notes, which need not be responses to anything published in the journal.

    2. The importance of having publications when you go on the market depends on where you're applying for jobs:

    2.1. Don't expect to get a job in the UK if you have no publications. UK departments' funding depends in part on the RAE (google it), which looks at the number of publications by faculty and the rank of the journals they appear in. A British department is extremely unlikely to take a chance on someone who hasn't already proven his/her ability to get his/her work into top journals.

    2.2. "Job Marketer's" claim that less highly ranked depts are more likely to value publications in their hiring sounds right. I think I know of a reason for this. (I speak from experience: I was a grad student rep on two search committees at a PGR ranked but not top department in North America.) People at not-so-highly ranked departments are less likely to feel competent to evaluate your work, and so more likely to use the only reasonably objective metric of research quality available to them: your publication record. Even if a search committee member happens to have done work in your AOS, he/she may feel out of touch with the field and defer to the referees and editors of Phil Review/Nous/whatever on the quality of your work. This happens even at research-oriented departments that are quite desirable places to work.

    2.3. Publications are of no importance at the very top depts where people have the attitude, "I know better than whoever refereed candidate x's paper for Phil Review", but you can't count on getting a job at one of those places, so having at least one paper in a good journal seems advisable for everyone going on the market [unless, of course, you want a teaching job].

    3. The importance of pulication venue. Owen Flanagan says publications in so-so journals don't help. I think everyone agrees with that, but it would be good to have a bit more clarity on what is a so-so journal. Not everything that is not either Phil Review, J Phil, or Nous is a so-so journal. I think a paper in any of the journals in the top ten in recent polls on this blog is good to publish in. Phil Studies is not as impressive as Phil Review, but a paper in Phil Studies will definitely help. In fact, I'm inclined to think that a paper in any journal that you can easily think of will help. The so-so journals are the ones you can't easily think of, because you don't cite work that appears in them. Does that seem right?

    And I agree with Fritz Allhoff: a paper in a graduate journal or a bad professional journal does mar your CV. Some search committees will dismiss your application just because your only publication(s) are in bad or grad journals. I've heard some people — often, anonymous blog commenters — express exasperation about the fact that they have a "good" publication record, perhaps even as many as 4 original research papers published, but did not manage to get as much as one interview. It's no mystery, really. Having 4 publications in no-name journals is worse than useless. It will harm you.

    Reply
  24. Grad Student 1

    As many have said in reply to that blog post, THANK YOU!

    Reply
  25. Andrei A. Buckareff

    From my own experience on a search committee at a "teaching" school (a comprehensive master's granting college), having at least one or two papers published, even in so-so journals, is a plus. After all, even at institutions that emphasize teaching, there is still an expectation that a job candidate be a productive researcher. The committee on which I served did not interview anyone without at least one publication, and the finalists for the job all had more than one publication in at least B rank journals.

    Reply
  26. Charles Pigden

    Michael Kremer is right. What bugged me about some CVs was not so much the 'under submissions' as the 'under submissions' in the Publications section. It made reading the CVS that much more laborious, as I had to sift through them carefully sorting the wheat of genuine publications from the chaff of mere aspirations. Anything that wastes the search committee's time is not going to do you any favors, and though I tried to discount my feelings of irritation when reading such delinquent CVs, I am not sure that I always succeeded. It's a silly tactic anyway. It may help you to make it past the first cut (as the glazed eyes of the committee members miss the fact that the impressive-looking paper i is as yet unaccepted) but as soon as they look at it carefully the committee will realize that you have listed a non-publication publication and it will probably be worse for you than if you had never listed it in the first place.

    However, if the 'under submissions' are clearly distinguished from the the extant and forthcoming publications that's another matter. In that case they provide evidence that the candidate is an active and enterprising researcher which is one of the things that many departments are after. So long as the committee members are not made to feel that their time has been wasted or that the wool has been pulled over then eyes, it is probably a good idea to list your submitted papers especially if you are a very young researcher with not many runs on the board. However, as the real runs start to accumulate I think that the merely aspirational runs are better dropped. They make you look unconfident and over-anxious to impress. It's as if you don't believe in the papers that you have actually managed to publish.

    Bottom line: New researchers can list their 'under submissions' but only if they are clearly distinguished from their actual and forthcoming publications. (It's got to be easy on the glazed eyes of the search committee.) Researchers with several extant papers to their credit should probably omit them altogether.

    Reply
  27. Marcus Arvan

    I think Owen Flanagan's advice is correct for top students from top programs but Fritz and Doug are on the money for most everyone else. Some graduates from my program (Arizona) have gotten jobs at top R1 institutions on the basis of great dissertations and no publications. Jobs like this are far and few between, however. The vast majority of jobs out there are at teaching-centered universities like mine (Tampa), and it has been my experience that many such places don't give two hoots whether you've published in Phil Review or Nous. They mostly seem to care about sheer numbers. Accordingly, anyone who wants to play the probabilities — i.e. anyone who is not in line for a top, top job — seems better advised to focus on the sheer number of peer-reviewed publications they have.

    Reply
  28. Anon ABD

    Marcus Arvan,

    Anon ABD from above here again.

    I'm surprised that there are departments where the SC will focus on "sheer numbers" of peer-reviewed publications, but I'll take your word for it. I won't name any names, but there are actually *bad* peer-reviewed journals — far more of them than there are good ones. Peer review isn't a guarantee of quality. Publications in leading *non*-peer-reviewed venues (e.g., Phil Perspectives), I'm pretty sure, are going to impress most SCs more than publications in *most* peer-reviewed journals. Publishing in a bad peer-reviewed journal can hurt you–I've seen it happen. (I have been in SC meetings where people explicitly cite the fact that a candidate published only in journals of questionable quality as a reason for excluding them, and succeed in getting them excluded on that basis.)

    But let's suppose that you're right that there are departments that focus on "sheer numbers" (and, again, I don't doubt that there are such departments, though I find it surprising). Even assuming that's right, someone who follows your advice will thereby rule themselves out of *many* jobs — I suspect nearly all jobs at research-oriented places, but many is bad enough, and certainly many others as well. If your publication strategy is to focus on "sheer numbers", then you are, in effect, customizing yourself for the departments that themselves focus on numbers — namely (if you are right) "many" of the "teaching-centered" ones. It's a good strategy if you only want to get interviewed by those teaching-centered departments that focus on sheer numbers, but why would anyone want that, especially in this job market?

    BL COMMENT: I doubt there are many departments that accord no weight to where the articles were published. I suspect what Professor Arvan meant, which strikes me as plausible, is that a paper doesn't have to be in Phil Review in order to count favorably towards an application at most places.

    Reply
  29. Matthew Kramer

    Because section 2.1 of the 6:26am comment by Anon ABD might put off some high-quality American graduate students from applying for academic positions in the UK, I feel that I should correct the mistakes in that section. First, the RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) is now the REF (Research Excellence Framework). Second, the number of publications by each faculty member hasn't been the key factor for nearly two decades. Rather, each established academic included in the REF is required to submit no more and no fewer than 4 publications, whereas each early career researcher — the unlovely phrase is the official REF parlance — can be included without penalty while submitting fewer publications (down to 1 for someone hired after July 2011). Third, there is no official ranking of journals, and members of REF panels insist that there is no unofficial ranking, either. Fourth, although publications in high-quality journals are obviously advantageous for anyone seeking an academic position in the UK, they are not indispensable. Someone who shows sufficient promise can still get hired, even though his or her prospects would have been even brighter if he or she had already produced some published article(s).

    I do agree with Anon ABD that the range of high-quality journals extends well beyond the trio mentioned in Owen Flanagan's comment. There are at least a dozen general philosophical journals within that range, and there are quite a few major specialist journals. In my own fields (political, moral, and legal philosophy), much of the best work appears in specialist journals.

    Reply
  30. John Dupre

    Just a small correction in response to anon ABD for anyone interested in UK jobs. The REF (what used to be the RAE) doesn't count publications (only four can be submitted, and if you are early career you may be able to submit fewer) and doesn't officially care about the quality of venue, though no doubt this has some significant influence on readers' judgement, and has some genuine value as a marker of quality. The only thing that is of any (financial) use to a UK department is (what are judged to be) up to four very high quality publications. One or two top quality publications is therefore what UK departments are looking for, and in the next year and a half anyhow (because of the timing of the REF), given the buyers' market, I think that is pretty close to a sine qua non for any chance at a decent UK job.

    Reply
  31. Jobseeking

    Just a short reply to Matthew Kramer, though I'd be interested to hear if he thinks I'm missing something:

    (a) Though it's true that early career researchers can submit less to the REF, they still need to submit *something*, and so having *no* publications is still an absolutely terrible idea on the UK job market. And further down the line, not publishing regularly is an REF disaster, so committees do want some evidence that you can publish consistently, and good evidence of this potential is that you have, in fact, published more than one piece.

    (b) If I recall correctly, submissions for the REF are supposed to be assessed independently of where they were published, *but* where they were published is still made known the assessors, and it seems likely that overworked REF panel members consciously or subconsciously rely on that information when assessing work.

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  32. Daniel Kaufman

    Anon ABD:

    I must admit to not understanding your comments at all.

    Why do you dismiss jobs at "teaching-centered" institutions, which, as several have pointed out, are the overwhelming majority of institutions in the country? (Full disclosure: I have made my career at such an institution.) I understand that this was coupled with the point that search committees at such institutions are less concerned with whether you've published in a top 5 journal than whether you've published at all, but still… Would you rather be unemployed?

    The "especially in this job market" point doesn't support your position: it undermines it. Your chances of getting a job at a top, R1 institution are vanishingly small. Such a situation is exactly one in which you'd better be applying to a lot of places, at a lot of different levels, if you want to even have a prayer of getting a job as a professor.

    Is anyone else getting a bit of an "ick" reaction to reading this thread? The discussion of "worthy" versus "worthless" journals is really distasteful. I mean, doesn't anyone care how the people working their butts off to produce those journals feel? Or the people who publish in them? And are you really so sure that the "in-club" journals are so great? (I've read plenty of pure shite, written by big shot professors in big shot journals). And why is no one else mentioning the gigantic elephant in the room: i.e. the grossly unethical practice of continuing to pour newly-minted PhD's into a market like this, where we all know it is very likely they will never get jobs.

    Yuck.

    –Dan Kaufman

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  33. Anon ABD

    Dan Kaufman,

    I don't know why you accusing me of dismissing teaching-oriented places. The query to which we are all responding to seemed to be from someone who wants to get a job at a place that values research pretty highly (why else would you worry about the difference between Analysis and Thought)? My comments were directed to the person who asked the question.

    On the quality of journals: yes, of course there are bad peer-reviewed journals. The fact that some people work their asses off to produce crap should not earn any respect for the crap that they produce.

    To M. Kramer and J. Dupre: I stand corrected on the name of the exercise/framework/whatever. It's now called the REF. Though I did not say so, my first post could easily be read as suggesting that the RAE/REF has an official ranking of journals. It does not. But, like search committees, the evaluators for the REF are likely to use journal reputation as proxy. And J. Dupre and M. Kramer agree with me that numbers matter with the REF, even officially.

    Also, J.Dupre says that "One or two top quality publications is therefore what UK departments are looking for, and in the next year and a half … I think that is pretty close to a sine qua non for any chance at a decent UK job". And that's pretty much what I said.

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  34. Charles Pigden

    Charles Pigden
    Responding to Dan Kaufman (and after this I really should shut up!)

    Although Otago is an R1 university and the department is Leiter-rated in some sub-disciplines, you have got to remember that it is situated at the ends of the earth. There's only one university closer to the South Pole, and that's the National University of Patagonia San Juan Bosco which operates a small campus in Tierra del Fuego. Many European and North American philosophers are not prepared travel to the far end of New Zealand for the sake of a job. This probably explains why it was that during our last search we had a lot less applicants than the 150 that Dan records for his 'undistinguished school' in the USA. The field of candidates was amazingly strong, but since there were only about fifty of them, we could just about manage to sift through all their applications rather than adopting a quick and dirty strategy such as dumping everyone with less than three publications into the wastepaper basket. Departments elsewhere with longer lists of applicants simply don't have that luxury. If they didn't adopt quick and dirty strategies the task of selection would become quite unmanageable. That's why publications are important. Remember that search committees are LOOKING for reasons to eliminate you, not because they are mean or nasty (though of course, sometimes they *are* mean and nasty) but because they often have to use quick and dirty strategies to narrow down a field of a hundred-plus candidates to the three or four that they can afford to interview. NOT having publications when other people do provides the committee with just such a reason, a reason that you do not want them to have. That's why the aspiring philosopher needs publications, and that, I think, is the the take-home message from this thread.

    However, Dan raises another issue. Why did we bother to read through the 'forthcomings' and 'under submission' when there were candidates with more publications and more experience applying for the job? Weren't they better qualified and therefore better candidates? Well the reason is that we are an ambitious department: we did not just want somebody good – we wanted somebody brilliant. And a person new to the profession with fewer publication might have more potential for philosophical excellence than an old stager with more publications. Thus the number of publications had to weighted for quality and weighed against the candidate's professional age. (That's *professional* rather than biological age. Somebody young in the profession might be relatively old in terms of years. Two of our current staff entered philosophy as mature students.) So far as we were concerned, what a candidate had done definitely counted, but it had to be weighed against the time they had had to do it. Dan's suggested strategy would have favored competent old-stagers over brilliant newcomers which is not what we wanted.

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  35. Neil Levy

    I suspect Anon ABD is ABD at an R1, where s/he has absorbed some of the silly messages that some people at these institutions promulgate (and, I suspect, only half believe, and I suspect they sometimes ignore in their own hiring decisions). There are almost no bad journals. There are some that are scams; outside of that, there is certainly a hierarchy, and a bottom of that hierarchy which is far removed from the top of the hierarchy, but there are (almost) no journals regarding which a CV which listed a publication in that journalis worse for that very fact. Here is what is true: your best publication is taken as evidence of the best you can currently do. So if you have published only in C rank journals, you will be seen as not able, currently, to do better than C rank. Still, other things equal, that will be better than not publishing at all. And if you have published in a couple of A rank places (a couple so that the search committee does not suspect a fluke), then having papers in Cs as well is better than the A rank places alone. Further, a search committee, at a place that values research, may look at research trajectory as well as outlets alone. If your CV gives evidence of rising quality of publications, then they will look favorably at that. Publishing involves skills other than the skill of philosophical argument alone. If I see a CV with 5 C grade publications and 2, more recent, B grade, I may regard that as evidence of someone who is learning those skills, and of whom it is reasonable to expect A grade publications in future. Further, area matters. Some lower ranked journals are the appropriate outlets for some areas of research. Yes, a J Phil or a Nous publication is worth a whole heap of Journal of Redacted papers, but the latter are worth something.

    BL COMMENT: I'm just going to register a small dissenting note on this. I think there are some peer-reviewed journals in which publication can be a negative, not a plus. There aren't a lot, but there are some.

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  36. ben w

    It seems to me that another reason to look at "forthcomings" and even "under submissions" is that publication (and this is an effect that will be heightened when the absolute numbers are low) involves no small measure of luck and happenstance. Two people who have had the same not-too-great amount of time to publish might have very different publication counts simply because one had papers land with reviewers who took a very long time with them, or poorly managed journals, or reviewers were just plain not receptive/sympathetic/charitable. All of that can happen, and while we might well believe that over time it mostly comes out in the wash, it will affect people just starting out quite unequally. A candidate for a junior position can at least indicate that s/he's getting stuff out there, though, by listing submitted papers.

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  37. Daniel Kaufman

    I admire your hiring philosophy, Charles. I wish the whole academic world ran like that.

    To hammer some points home, from the position of someone who has both chaired and served on search committees:

    1. In this market, you will be lucky to get a job at all (which is why I no longer recommend that students pursue graduate studies in philosophy). Unless you have an uber-famous dissertation adviser who is going to get you a job, via inside-baseball (and that is harder to do today, given the current HR environment), you need to be prepared to work virtually anywhere in the country, at any kind of institution. This means, more likely than not, an unrated school, with only an undergraduate program in philosophy (if they even have a major at all).

    2. The market being such as it is, you will be competing for junior level positions, in these sorts of places, with people who have years of experience teaching as Instructors or Per Course Faculty and who have substantial publication records. (We just hired someone several years ago, for an entry-level position, with a PhD from Stanford, over a decade of teaching experience, and a good number of publications in "quality" journals. He was thankful to get the job.)

    3. This means that you will need pubs. But even more importantly, you'd better have teaching experience and be well-rated as a teacher. The handful of big-shot philosophers who publish scores and scores of articles in the "quality" journals may think that's really important, but no one else does. At the kind of university you are likely to find a job, what administrators care about is bodies in seats. What is your credit hour production? How are you rated on student evaluations? Because that equals money. As for our research: they could care less about it. It's abstract, esoteric, largely ignored by everyone else, and produces little to no money.

    We always selected people with the broadest teaching experience, with the best ratings from students. Everyone had pubs. Much fewer had a lot of teaching experience and more importantly, were well-regarded as teachers. So, teaching not only was what our higher ups cared most about, it was a factor that actually served to distinguish candidates from one another.

    –Dan Kaufman

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  38. Anon ABD

    I would also like to register a dissenting note on comment #35. I think this deserves to be emphasized because far too many grad students ignore or never hear this advice:

    There are quite a few peer-reviewed journals in which a publication will be viewed as a minus rather than a plus by many search committees. I think the following principle is pretty uncontroversial: *if* you publish before you go on the market, then you’d better do so in the top 20 or so journals; otherwise you’re ruling yourself out of a lot of jobs. (Note, Dan Kaufman, that I am not passing judgment on the worth of the jobs that you’re not ruling yourself out of by going outside of the top 20.) Everyone I know who supervises grad students – and this includes senior faculty at [Redacted 1], [Redacted 2], [Redacted 3], and [Redacted 4]* – privately tells them that publications in journals that are not top-20-ish will hurt them. Yet many grad students follow the advice that Marcus Arvan appeared to give above (although BL thinks he didn’t mean it – let’s suppose that’s so): maximize the number of peer-reviewed pubs, don't look at the venue. Even at the risk of sounding like a jerk, I am going to name some of the journals in which I’ve seen grad students publish in which are more likely to hurt rather help them:

    * Metaphysica
    * Organon F
    * Logique et Analyse (this journal has some name recognition, but a publication in it got one person eliminated from a job search at [Redacted 2])

    Note that I’m not passing judgment on the worth of these journals (in particular, I am not saying that they are among the “crap” journals I mentioned above; they may be excellent journals for all I know). I am only saying that I know these to be examples of journals in which it is unwise to publish as a grad student, because of the effect it will have on your job prospects. (It's fine to publish in them once you have tenure!) Some search committees will pass your CV over if you have publications at these and comparable journals, and none in the top 20 or so. Not all search committees, but definitely some – I suspect many. That’s something one should be aware of when one is a graduate student trying to decide where to submit papers.

    NOTE
    * Redacted 1-4 are top departments in North America and the UK, which I have made known to Brian Leiter.

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  39. SM

    What are the professionals thoughts on publishing book reviews? Can they hurt? Are they really of no interest to search committees?

    BL COMMENT: They don't hurt, but they are worth very little in almost all cases. That, in any case, is my impression.

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  40. Matt Drabek

    I should preface this by noting that I'm a recent Ph.D. who is currently on the job market. Thus, I'm not currently in a TT position and haven't been on any search committees.

    That said, one guiding principle I've used and which I think might be helpful is that it's important to think of the CV at the "job-getting" stage as a rhetorical document. It's a document that you're using to build a case that you're a person a department should hire. Where and how (and whether) you publish are (or should be) partially guided by how you're trying to make that case.

    If you are presenting yourself as a person who works on central/core issues in analytic philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, phil language/mind), then you'd probably better publish in only "top 20 journals." But if you're doing something else, something like interdisciplinary work, work in a specific subfield of philosophy (feminist philosophy, applied ethics, certain kinds of philosophy of the sciences or political philosophy, certain topics in the philosophy of mind – esp. cognitive science and/or phenomenology, aesthetics, etc.), then you're probably best off publishing in a good specialty journal. That's where you work will be engaged and read. It will be a better move toward advancing your career and putting you into contact with the right people. Plus, you'll be able (or should be able) to defend that choice to a hiring committee.

    So my brief advice (taken with whatever grain of salt the opening of my response requires) to the original poster would be this: publish an article or two where you think people are most likely to read it and cite it. That's probably one of the "top 20" journals, but it might be a good specialty journal. Make sure the research statement in your dossier explains where and why you publish, and how those journals fit into your research plans. Don't worry too much about how hiring committees will look upon your choices. Every hiring committee is different. If you make a consistent and reasonably convincing case with your documents, you'll have done enough.

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  41. Anon ABD

    I should say that I agree with everything Matt Drabek just said. Publications in good specialist journals are a good thing. 20 is not a magic number (which is why I said "top 20 or so"). Maybe there are 30 journals that are good to publish in, maybe more — and that would surely include specialist ones. What's most important for grad students trying to get published is to know what to avoid. Any journal that you don't read and cite papers in (you will probably read and cite specialist journals in your field) is likely to be one in which a publication isn't going to help you and in some cases might actually hurt you.

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  42. Duncan Richter

    Anon ABD says: "There are quite a few peer-reviewed journals in which a publication will be viewed as a minus rather than a plus by many search committees. I think the following principle is pretty uncontroversial: *if* you publish before you go on the market, then you’d better do so in the top 20 or so journals; otherwise you’re ruling yourself out of a lot of jobs. […] Some search committees will pass your CV over if you have publications at these and comparable journals, and none in the top 20 or so. Not all search committees, but definitely some – I suspect many."

    S/he also said in an earlier comment: "I have been in SC meetings where people explicitly cite the fact that a candidate published only in journals of questionable quality as a reason for excluding them, and succeed in getting them excluded on that basis."

    It seems worth pointing out that there is a difference between publishing in non-top 20 journals and publishing ONLY in non-top 20 journals. Given how competitive the job market is I doubt people who publish but only in non-top 20 journals have much chance of getting jobs at "top departments in North America and the UK." For those jobs it's likely better to publish extremely well or not at all.

    But most jobs aren't like that, as has been pointed out. For what it's worth (which is not much, but I was on a search committee this past year), my view is that Dan Kaufman and Neil Levy are giving good advice.

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  43. Anonymous

    This brings to mind a specific concern of mine. Are people who do history of philosophy at all beholden to the "top 20" rule of thumb? I see many CVs of people who do work in my AOS, who are themselves teaching at top schools, who do not have a single publication in the top 20, but rather publish entirely in specialty journals. On the other hand, I see some CVs that avoid specialty journals nearly entirely.

    For history positions, do search committees look at CVs completely differently, or is there still some focus on top 20/10?

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  44. Benjamin Hale

    I fail to see when it would make sense to count a publication in a "bad" journal against a candidate. I can imagine some extraordinary circumstances, of course. A candidate publishing in the Journal of Nazi Thought, for instance, might be someone to disqualify. But what is the rationale for counting a publication in a lesser journal against a candidate? What if the candidate, as a grad student, publishes in a grad student journal? By most accounts, these easily fall in the category of "bad," or at least "not really excellent," journals. Still, there may be good reason for a candidate to have published in them. Maybe it helps her understand how the publication process works. Maybe it gives her confidence. Maybe she participated in a grad conference, or took particular interest in an earlier issue of the journal, or argued heroically against a topic that was uniquely strange and asinine. Without the author’s actual article, it's nearly impossible to tell how strong or weak the candidate is based on the mere fact that she has published her piece in a bad journal. I fail to see how these kinds of publications could hurt a candidate. Can someone, perhaps not a grad student who has heard this from his/her professors, explain this to me?

    If such publications do in fact hurt a candidate in the real, non-hypothetical search committee world, I'd encourage those on search committees who think that such publications _ought to hurt_ a candidate not to view such publications in this way. Just because someone has published in a bad place in the past doesn't mean that that person is therefore a bad job candidate. That's the silliest conclusion I've ever heard. It is also silly to conclude that a publication in a bad journal is an indication that that candidate cannot publish in a good journal. There is no evidence to support this conclusion. All it means is that they have not yet published in a good journal; or if they have published in a good journal, it means that they are capable of publishing in both kinds of journals.

    I'm inclined to side with Neil Levy and others on this topic. Publishing in most circumstances is a very good thing for a candidate, even in journals of less renown. It familiarizes students with the publication process, which is a pretty perplexing, scary, and arguably “soul-crushing” undertaking for many grad students. Sure, there are some journals that may not be particularly helpful for landing that particular grad student an interview for that particular job, but those publications in those journals simply ought not to be counted as a strength. They certainly should not count as a weakness. This goes for book reviews too. I’m fairly certain that book reviews don’t improve a candidate's research profile at all; but they do help grad students familiarize themselves with the publication process, and they also help to put that candidate on the radar of others in the field (most notably, the author of the book they are reviewing).

    One final thing for the grad students: I suppose I’m willing to be corrected on this, but my view is that there is nothing in the rulebook of CV authorship that requires that you list every single publication that you’ve ever written on your CV. If for some reason you have published in such a bad journal that you fear that your publication not only will it not help you, but that it will harm you, then you can always leave it off. Just don’t mention it, and the search committee will never know the difference. I think this rule even applies to specific jobs. If you are applying to NYU or Rutgers for a position and you have three articles in Analysis but one very bad article in the Transylvanian Journal of Vampire Philosophy, by all means leave that article off of your CV. That journal is so bad that nobody will ever read your article, unless you call attention to it. But if you are applying to Transylvania Technical University, this very bad article in a very bad journal may be precisely the kind of thing you want to leave on your CV.

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  45. Matthew Kramer

    Because the May 20th 6:29pm comment from Anon ABD may yet again mislead American readers about the REF and about hiring practices in the UK, I feel a need to respond. Anon ABD asserts that "numbers matter in the REF." The phrase "numbers matter" is in need of disambiguation. If Anon ABD's assertion is to be construed as the claim that an early-career researcher can't be included in the REF unless he or she has published at least one article or book, then the assertion is true but misleadingly formulated. Most readers will probably instead understand Anon ABD's assertion — in keeping with its wording — as the claim that more submitted articles are generally better than fewer in the REF for each early-career researcher. So construed, the assertion is false. Although there are some circumstances in which a person hired after July 2011 would be well advised to submit more than the one publication which he or she is required to submit, there are many more circumstances in which he or she would be best advised to submit only the one publication that is likely to be ranked most highly. Even in its early incarnations, the RAE was focused more on quality than on quantity; that emphasis has intensified over the years as the RAE has evolved into the REF.

    As I said in my earlier comment on this thread, high-quality publications are obviously advantageous for anyone who is seeking an academic position in the UK. Considerable though their importance is, however, it should not be exaggerated through misstatements (or misleading statements) about the REF.

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  46. Anon ABD

    Benjamin Hale: "Can someone, perhaps not a grad student who has heard this from his/her professors, explain this to me?"

    Sure. I am not a grad student who has (merely) heard this from his/her professors. As I said, I've been a graduate student representative on what you call "real, non-hypothetical" search committees. I've witnessed applications getting tossed out explicitly on the grounds that the publications were in journals that the search committee members thought were not good enough.

    Why is this done? The reason seemes to me pretty straightforward. If you have more than 400 job applications (which seems pretty common), you're going to have to reject most of them without reading the writing sample. How can you tell if the research is any good without reading it? Well, one reasonably good proxy for research quality is the candidate's publication record. It might even be the best proxy: letter writers almost always say nice things about the candidate, so letters have little evidential value. The only other proxy I can think of is pedigree, which also seems to me to be of little evidential value. It seems to me that judging applications based on where the publications on the CV have appeared is a pretty good way of rejecting applications without reading the writing samples. (Are there better ways? I don't know, but I can't think of one that I think is better off the top of my head.)

    But of course Benjamin Hale is right that you don't have to mention all of your publications on your CV. So the advice should be more fine-grained than: "don't publish unless in a top n journal". Perhaps it should be: "for most job applications, keep any non top n journal publications off your CV". (However, even things not on your CV can hurt you. E.g., if the content is online, and an SC member googles you and finds a paper… In such a case, I'm sure everyone will agree that they *shouldn't* hold it against you, but, consciously or not, it may well affect their assessment of your file.)

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  47. ben w

    I'd like to concur with Benjamin Hale and also note the following.

    One of the things that's come up in the thread is that candidates need *good advice* in order to avoid inadvertently harming themselves through their publications. They need to know that Journal X is poorly regarded, and to be told not to publish there just to have a publication. And they need to know that this paper that they're considering sending to Journal X (for whatever foolish reason) is actually good enough to be sent to the more reputable Journal Y.

    If a candidate needs to have had these things explained, then you can't infer, from looking at the candidate's publication record, that their paper in Philosophical Trivialities is there because that's the only place that would accept it—that the location of the publication is a reliable guide to its quality. The candidate may simply not have had anyone tell him/her that it would be better to start somewhere else, or that PT is no good. The candidate may have received outright *bad* advice—"this paper is worthy of a top journal, but they're risky propositions and time is of the essence—better to send it somewhere where it'll be accepted fast." Being in such a state is undoubtedly too bad for the candidate, but it's not indicative of his or her lack of *philosophical* acumen.

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  48. Neil

    I don't doubt that there are circumstances in which applicants get tossed out because they have published only in the journals you mention. But that's not at issue. You committed to the counterfactual: that these candidates would have fared better had they not published at all. What you say here is , at best, irrelevant to that counterfactual. As you say, SCs will look at candidates publication records as guides to quality. And we agree that where candidates publish matters. Ignoring pedigree and letters, as you explicitly do, we have only publications to go on, and good publications are going to be better than bad. But the claim that X is better than Y offers no support to the original claim, that Y is worse than nothing. So you have answered Benjamin Hale's question.

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  49. dankaufman!

    Once again, i am receiving email from strangers, commenting on DANIEL KAUFMAN's comments here. i am dankaufman!, and i work on 17th-century philosophy at CU-boulder. the dude posting here is not me.
    i *always* sign my comments as: dankaufman!

    thanks.

    BL ADDENDUM: Daniel Kaufman, who has posted a few comments on this thread, is a philosopher at Missouri State.

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  50. Neil

    On reflection, I think I slightly misstate the claim at issue. It should be: a candidate with publications x and y (where x is high quality and y low) can be expected to fare worse than a candidate with x alone. We agree that someone's best publication will be seen as an index of their current ability to publish.

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