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Reworking some articles for a book: a bad idea for junior faculty?

Brian Leiter

A young philosopher writes:

I’m an assistant professor at a small private university in the south. I recently told the chair of my department, along with another associate professor, of my forthcoming book. As you might imagine, I was proud about it and thought it would be a great bit of information to share. When they learned that four of the ten chapters had previously been published as articles, they expressed serious concern over having these articles republished in a book. In fact, they even went so far as to say that my tenure may be in jeopardy because of it. They said that it was a terrible idea to “recycle” my work like this and that this is not the way scholarship is done nowadays. I thought this was odd and sought advice from my old dissertation advisor as well as a couple other professors I had worked with at other institutions. They said that the chair and the other member held a professionally confused view. My advisor said that he had just finished reviewing a manuscript for Oxford University Press in which all of the chapters were slightly modified versions of articles that had been previously published. He said,
 
If a publisher’s reviewers think a previously published article is worth publishing in a book, this is a strong endorsement of the quality of the previously published article. It shows that a reviewer in the profession thinks the article is worth a wider audience.

I’m worried that writing this book may really be detrimental to my getting tenure. I wonder what your readers think about this. Is what the Chair and this other member have said is true? Receiving tenure is obviously more important than anything else at this stage in my career. Any advice is most welcomed.

I confess the reaction of this assistant professor's senior colleagues strikes me as bizarre.  Republishing or reworking material for a book is done all the time, and typically gets one's work greater attention.  I suppose if one simply republished verbatim 10 articles as a book, the tenure "credit" for that would not be as great as for writing a monograph from scratch.  But that isn't even the case here.  What do readers make of this?  Signed comments preferred.

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26 responses to “Reworking some articles for a book: a bad idea for junior faculty?”

  1. Matthew Kramer

    I agree with Brian. The reaction of the chair and the associate professor is ludicrously confused and uninformed. If the concern expressed in the first sentence of the young philosopher's final paragraph is well-founded, its well-foundedness is due solely to the bizarre misconceptions of the young philosopher's colleagues who will be participating in the tenure decision.

    Reply
  2. Brad

    On the one hand, "Young philosopher" should take the advice of the Chair and her/his colleague very seriously. At many (perhaps most) universities, it is one's Department that tenures one. That is, support from the department is essential for tenure(regardless of how bad their judgment might be).
    On the other hand, it is common to publish a book that builds on, draws on, even integrates previously published articles. So in general it should not be detrimental to one's tenure application. But it may depend greatly on the quality of the press publishing the book. If it is not an especially impressive press, then the book will not count for much anyway.

    Reply
  3. Peter Gratton

    This indeed is bizarre "advice," given one would be hard pressed to think of many academic books that did not, rightly, begin in the form of articles. While this may not be the case here, one underplayed problem in the profession is that many junior faculty are at institutions where senior faculty were hired at a very different time, when little scholarship was needed for a TT post, and have produced little since. Thus junior faculty get judged by and receive advice from people who have published little and perhaps know the field even less. Thus I was on a tenure committee where one unpublished faculty member went on quite a while about the lack of publications of a junior colleague, who in fact for his field had a growing set of accomplishments, thought this was waved off by something about elevating standards or some such. Let's hope, in any case, that his/her chair keeps up with the field enough to read this blog and see the problem with his/her advice.

    Reply
  4. David Brink

    It is quite normal and appropriate for scholars, perhaps especially young scholars, to publish books that incorporate, integrate, and extend some previously published articles or book chapters. In this way, they can try out ideas that get refined and revised before being woven into the fabric of the book. One conservative principle for assessing these things, which I understand, aims to avoid “double-counting” and so counts only “value added.” How one applied this principle to assessing the book would depend on whether (a) the book revised the previous publications significantly or whether (b) it incorporated previous publications with fairly minor changes. If (b), one might credit 60% of the book in addition to the previous publications. If (a), I would think that a higher percentage of the book should be credited in addition to the previous publications. It would be the job of the author to explain to his or her department what the relation was between the book and the previous publications, roughly making clear whether (a) or (b) is true.

    While I understand this conservative principle, it might be a little too conservative, since even if (b) is true, the previously/independently-credited article could add value to the whole (book). That is, I suspect that the conservative principle might offend against the principle of organic wholes. Or if the conservative principle is formulated in terms of value added, this could perhaps be defended as the proper application of the principle. Also, if the press is a good one, the publication of the book reflects further professional confirmation of the value of the articles already published.

    In short, even the conservative principle of assessment, which strikes me as perhaps too conservative, would allow one to reckon the publication of the book a very significant publication for which the author should get considerable new credit. Exactly how much credit might depend on whether (a) or (b) is true. My $.02.

    Reply
  5. Mark van Roojen

    An additional point to add to David's comment which I endorse. Sometimes putting a bunch of stuff together makes for more of an interesting view even when each of the parts put together doesn't change much to create the whole. While it may look obvious to me how many of my papers fit together to support a more complex overall view, it may not be that obvious to others.

    Going the other way, I've often thought that good books without accompanying papers to make people want to read the book under-perform in terms of their influence.

    Reply
  6. Michael Lynch

    I agree with Brian (and particularly with Mark and David's analysis). It strikes me that, at least given the information we have, the "senior colleagues" are imposing a very high bar, or may not be well clued-in to (longstanding) norms of academic scholarship, or both. But Brad is also right that pragmatically speaking, caution is in order. The department's opinion counts.

    Reply
  7. Michael Wedin

    The critical point, I believe, is whether the book will be regarded as a compilation of previous work. If so,then enhanced nuance, presentation, etc. aside, it may not be considered new research. And with justification. If you can make the case that the book goes substantially beyond the results in the articels, then it makes fresh progress. But this may be missed by less subtle readers; so beware.

    Reply
  8. Doug Portmore

    I agree with Brian: "reworking material for a book is done all the time, and typically gets one's work greater attention." Two examples that come to mind are Josh Gert's _Brute Rationality_ and my _Commonsense Consequentialism_. Both contain several chapters that involve reworking previously published journal articles. And I think that, in both cases, it has been useful to have the entire view put together in one coherent package. And, by the way, reworking several journal articles both so as to fit in with new material and so as to create a coherent view with a sustained argument is no trivial task. I often spent just as much time reworking the chapters based on previously published work as I did on the chapters that had no published precursors. And writing the book was extremely valuable in helping me to put everything together and fill in the holes. Moreover, it has helped in garnering more attention for my work. But, of course, you want your department to write you a favorably letter for your tenure case so you do need to be concerned about their perceptions.

    Reply
  9. Charles Pigden

    Dear Young Philosopher,
    You have had seven well-known, well-cited and well-published philosophers (including Brian) saying that in their view the the opinions of your senior colleagues are pretty silly. The thing to do now is to draw this blog tactfully to their attention in the hopes that this will change their minds. Failing that my I suggest that you assemble a list of famous philosophy books – books which brought their authors a lot of kudos – that are partly based on previously published articles? Perhaps a helpful thing for the rest of us (and a fun parlour game) would be to help you put together such a list. Here's one off the top of my head: Stevenson's Ethics and Language.
    Regards
    Charles Pigden

    Reply
  10. Dale Miller

    What's so puzzling is that it sounds like the chair and colleague were saying not only that the book wouldn't help the junior faculty member's tenure case but that it would hinder it. This suggests that they were not merely thinking that it wouldn't count as new research but that it would in some way detract from the other publications. Perhaps they meant only that spending time on the book would be better spent writing more papers, but it almost sounds like they thought that incorporating the papers into the book would be an ethical violation, and that is indeed strange.

    Reply
  11. Young Philosopher

    Dear Dr. Pigden,

    Thanks for the wonderful suggestion. I think that putting together such a list is a great idea. However, I think it is important to keep in mind that my colleagues stressed that what I have done is not how scholarship is done “nowadays.” A book containing chapters that were previously published as articles may have been true of scholarship in the 80s and 90s, they said, but not today. I suspect that a list with post 1990’s examples (2000 and beyond) would serve me best. Thanks again for suggesting this.

    Sincerely,

    Young Philosopher

    Reply
  12. Mathieu

    I do not see how a publication of a collection of essays could be detrimental to a young philosopher's career. As Prof. Pigden reminds us, its quite a commonplace practice in the academia. However, it happens sometimes that it's less the book that gives a wider audience to previously published material than the other way around. Famous example : most owners of Quine's From a Logical Point of View do not bother to read anything else in the book than the 'Two Dogmas'. Or, in another subfield : who can claim to have read Grice's Studies in the Ways of Words from cover to cover ? Most people (myself included) only read articles such as 'Logic and Conversation' and 'Meaning', which were famous prior to republication.

    Reply
  13. Matthew Kramer

    Examples of philosophical books that incorporate material from earlier articles (to varying extents), from 2000 and beyond, are multitudinous. Here are a few that have sprung to mind:
    Ronald Dworkin, "Sovereign Virtue" (2000)
    Ronald Dworkin, "Justice in Robes" (2006)
    Frances Kamm, "Intricate Ethics" (2007)
    Michael Otsuka, "Libertarianism without Inequality" (2003)
    Jonathan Quong, "Liberalism without Perfection" (2011)
    John Gardner, "Offences and Defences" (2007)
    John Gardner, "Law as a Leap of Faith" (2012)
    Matthew Kramer, "The Quality of Freedom" (2003)
    Matthew Kramer, "Where Law and Morality Meet" (2004)
    Eric Posner & Adrian Vermeule, "Terror in the Balance" (2007)
    Jeremy Waldron, "Torture, Terror, and Trade-Offs" (2010)
    Brian Leiter, "Naturalizing Jurisprudence" (2007)
    James Fleming & Linda McClain, "Ordered Liberty" (2013)
    Samuel Freeman, "Justice and the Social Contract" (2007)
    Antony Duff, "Punishment, Communication, and Community" (2001)
    Mark Murphy, "Natural Law and Practical Rationality" (2001)
    Joseph Raz, "Between Authority and Interpretation" (2009)

    I'm still baffled that the young philosopher's colleagues are so unattuned to the actualities of contemporary scholarship.

    Reply
  14. Charles Pigden

    Well Matthieu, don't forget 'On What There is', 'Reference and Modality' (not Quine's finest hour but important nonetheless) 'New Foundations' and ‘Logic and the Reification of Universals' I would say that these are all important articles which I probably would not have read had Quine not collected them. I would say the same of several pieces in THE WAYS OF PARADOX and THEORIES AND THINGS. But the importance and utility of Collected and Selected papers is perhaps beside the point. Our focus should be on monographs that are PARTLY based on previous publications. These are the books that Young Philosopher’s eccentric & uninformed colleagues appear to regard with disdain. Here’s a short list of recent books (from the nineties and noughties) that are partly based on prior publications:

    1) Michael Smith: The Moral Problem (1995)
    2) Rosalind Hursthouse: On Virtue Ethics (1999)
    3) Richard Joyce; The Myth of Morality (2001)
    4) Frank Jackson : From Metaphysics to Ethics (1998)
    5) Graham Priest: Beyond the Limits of Thought (2nd edn 2002)
    6) Graham Priest: In Contradiction (2nd edn 2006)
    7) Brian Leiter: Nietzsche On Morality (2002)
    8) Graham Priest: Doubt Truth to be a Liar (2006)
    9) Shaun Nichols: Sentimental Rules (2004)
    10) David Coady: What to Believe Now (2012)

    In each case I would say these are significant books, amongst the titles that the authors would like to see engraved on their tombstones. Somebody more up with the play and less given to grubbing around in the past than I am could probably come up with many more. May I invite readers to come up with a few more titles *from the last five years* ?

    Reply
  15. Charles Pigden

    An up and coming young philosopher (she’s got an interview with 3am and a book with Oxford) who is WORKING on a book to be partly based on prior publications is Gillian Russell. Her current book project is on Barriers to Implication which will be incorporating material (and certainly ideas ) from her solo article ‘In Defence of Hume’s Law’ and her joint article with Greg Restall ‘Barriers to Implication’ (from Pigden ed HUME ON IS AND OUGHT). I would be vastly surprised if Washington St Louis holds it against her when she next comes up for a well-deserved promotion.

    Reply
  16. Charles Pigden

    It may be that David Brink's well-known book *Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics* (1989) has receded too far into into the mists of antiquity to be relevant to current concerns. But in his own post he was too modest to say that THIS famous book, which rightly won him a fair bit of kudos, was partly based on previous publications.

    Reply
  17. AA Rini

    I worried about the same issue as Peter Gratton.
    Some advice to the young philosopher:
    There are universities where research is downright scary to fellow academics. If you are publishing at all, you might be terrifying to these colleagues. If so, then the advice that you are getting from them might not be in your best interest but might be given with an eye to lessening a threat, to keeping ‘the team’ safe.
    If you think you might be in such a situation you want to look for ways to change it. Some possibilities:

    1. Can you find some kind of funding (it doesn’t matter how much or how little, just something) from within your university to support the work on the book? It might be better to seek funding from within, NOT from outside the university. Use this as a platform to celebrate your department and your colleagues. (You take the funding, but always take the opportunity to give them some of the credit.)

    2. Draft an ‘acknowledgements’ sort of preamble to the book and use it to explain (however you can!) how the moral support and intellectual climate in the dept have made it possible for you to do the research and write the book. (Perhaps specifically mention the chair and any others who gave you the odd advice. Is there anything specific that they have ever done for you that you can thank them for?) Bring this draft to them and ask for their feedback about it – i.e., initiate a discussion with them about how grateful you are to them for the climate that supports your research and writing.

    I don’t mean any of this sarcastically. If they cannot or do not publish and are threatened by you, then you’ll have a culture battle on your hands that really might hurt with tenure decisions and the like. I suggest you start a long-term charm campaign. You’re in the South – they’ll ‘get’ that. You want to make it as clear as possible to your colleagues that you are grateful for all that they do for you and that you will publicly acknowledge their collegiality and the support they provide to you. You’ll need of course to define success on your terms, not theirs, but you want to make them able to share in it somehow. That will help to guide tenure questions in future years, but you don’t just want tenure – you want a career that doesn’t have you beating your head against a brick wall. A brick will is what you might face if they are (and remain) intimidated by your research. If that is the problem try to build something healthier.

    Good luck!

    Reply
  18. Paul Schofield

    Other examples that jumped to my mind:

    Nomy Arpaly, Unprincipled Virtue (2003)
    Michael Otsuka, Libertarianism without Inequality (2003)
    Kieran Setiya, Reasons without Rationalism (2007)
    Christine Korsgaard, Self-Constitution (2009)
    Arthur Ripstein, Force and Freedom (2009)

    Reply
  19. Justin Caouette

    Further examples that come to mind:

    Living Without Free Will, Derk Pereboom (2001)
    Motivation and Agency, Al Mele (2003)
    Backsliding, Al Mele (2012)
    Norms and Practices, James D. Wallace (2012)
    Knowing Right From Wrong, Kieran Setiya (2012)
    Building Better Beings, Manual Vargas (2013)

    Reply
  20. Young Philosopher

    Dear AA Rini,

    Thank you for the thoughtful advice. You and Peter Gratton are not the first to suggest to me that this might be a case in which senior faculty are feeling threatened. While I think this is a logical hypothesis, and one I’ve seriously considered, I don’t think I can be certain that this is what’s going on here. My disagreement with them about current publishing norms aside, I see them both as people who work tirelessly for the betterment of our department. Furthermore, they each have their own list of respectable publications, which leads me to believe they truly hold this odd view.

    Still it might be wise to cover all bases in case you are, indeed, right. I certainly have a lot I could specifically (and sincerely) thank them for. Unfortunately, I believe we’re too far in the process (proofs stage) to change the acknowledgements considerably. Or, for that matter, to seek internal funding. So I guess I will have to find another way to publicly acknowledge their previous support.

    This, as you might imagine, has been quite stressful. I very much appreciate everyone’s advice and encouragement, as well as the examples of titles that support my argument.

    Reply
  21. harry b

    Young Philosopher — try to insert a line or two in the acknowledgements. If it doesn't affect others (ie, you can get it into the last page of the acknowledgments) the press might be amenable.

    Reply
  22. Ruggiero

    I agree that the chair's advice was odd. However, there is a genuine worry with secondary publications which I will illustrate with an anecdote.
    In the country where I live and work there are national regulations specifying the minimal achievements required for each academic rank. To become a full professor in any field of humanities, for instance, one needs to publish at least 20 articles in peer-reviewed journals, and 2 books. One person became a full professor of philosophy based on the committee's report that he has published over 20 articles in peer reviewed journals and 2 books. That is a fact, the person has published 21 articles in peer-reviewer journals and there are two books bearing his name as the sole author. However, the report fails to mention that the first book is a collection of 7 of those articles previously published in peer-reviewed journals in their original form, and the second book is a collection of another 5 of those articles previously published in peer-reviewed journals with no or very minor changes, plus some additional material consisting of op-eds and newspaper interviews. This is honestly reported in the prefaces of the books, so I take it that this is not a case of autoplagiarism; publishing a collection of one's previously published papers (with or without revisions, with or without supplementary material) is fine, as long as the source publications are duly listed. Yet it seems wrong to treat these two books as separate achievements, something in addition to the 21 articles, and still more wrong to hide the double-counting of the same material – as articles in peer-reviewed journals and as book chapters – by failing to mention that the books are collections of previously published articles.
    Though this might take us slightly off-topic, I would be interested to learn whether Brian and other participants in this discussion would say the committee in this case committed fraud, and what would be an appropriate course of action for a member of the candidate's department aware of the situation with his publications.

    Reply
  23. Michael Kremer

    Ruggiero: By the standards you mention many of the most important English speaking philosophers of the 20th century could not have become full professors during their lifetimes. (at least: Wittgenstein, Austin, Grice, Davidson …) One has to wonder whether subverting such rigid standards might not be a good thing.

    Reply
  24. Charles Pigden

    All I can say Ruggiero is that if a decent press published a collection of my previous articles, I would certainly boast about in my evidence portfolio for the PBRF (the New Zealand equivalent of the British REF), I would make a big deal of it when the time came for promotions and progressions, and I would feel decidedly ill-used if it did not do me at least a bit of good. There are quite a few philosophers who are best known for volumes of past papers, of whom Quine and Putman are the chiefs. (I am thinking specifically of From a Logical Point of View, Ways of Paradox and Putmam’s first two volumes of Collected Papers, all of which are in my opinion far more worth reading than their respective monographs such as Word and Object and Reason, Truth and History. Even that indefatigable publisher, Bertrand Russell, rested a substantial part of his fame on collections of past papers, specifically Philosophical Essays, Mysticism and Logic and Logic and Knowledge. (Of course he also published many collections of his less technical writings.) I’ll bet too that a lot more people have read Popper’s Conjectures and Refutations than have read The Logic of Scientific Discovery. It just seems to me obvious that if a decent press thinks you previous stuff is worth publishing that is and ought to be a feather in your cap. So I would say that your colleagues definitely deserves his full professorship.

    Reply
  25. Charles Pigden

    Gosh I'm such a rotten typist! Let's try again!
    All I can say, Ruggiero, is that if a decent press published a collection of my previous articles, I would certainly boast about it in my evidence portfolio for the PBRF (the New Zealand equivalent of the British REF), I would make a big deal of it when the time came for promotions and progressions, and I would feel decidedly ill-used if it did not do me at least a bit of good. There are quite a few philosophers who are best known for volumes of past papers, of whom Quine and Putman are the chiefs. (I am thinking specifically of From a Logical Point of View, Ways of Paradox and Putmam’s first two volumes of Collected Papers, all of which are in my opinion far more worth reading than their respective monographs such as Word and Object and Reason,Truth & History.) Even that indefatigable publisher, Bertrand Russell, rested a substantial part of his fame on collections of past papers, specifically Philosophical Essays, Mysticism and Logic and Logic and Knowledge. (Of course he also published many collections of his less technical writings.) I’ll bet too that a lot more people have read Popper’s Conjectures and Refutations than have read The Logic of Scientific Discovery. It just seems to me obvious that if a decent press thinks your previous stuff is worth publishing, that is and ought to be a feather in your cap. So I would say that your colleague definitely deserves his full professorship.

    Reply
  26. Ruggiero

    Charles, so you think that a person deserves from the anecdote deserves full professorship – if the two books, collections of his previously published papers, are produced by a decent press. Although I'm not sure it is always clear what a decent press is, what if the books are published by some local press of chequered quality and in a series that the author himself edits? And don't you think that a report should at least mention if the candidate's books are collections of previously published work, especially if these are the candidate's only books?

    Reply

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