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Does Cambridge University Press really prohibit graduate students from contributing to edited volumes?

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SUNDAY, MARCH 20–IT APPEARS PRACTICES AT CUP MAY HAVE CHANGED OVER TIME.  MORE COMMENTS WELCOME.

That was the message received by a PhD student in philosophy in Canada, who had been invited to contribute to an edited volume by the editor (a faculty member not at his school), but was then informed that the press would not permit it.  The explanation offered for the alleged rule prohibiting graduate students from contributing was:  "There’s a perception that including them in the line-up may cause potential buyers to be put off from purchasing the volume."  That seems odd.  I can see a press not wanting faculty to invite their own PhD students to contribute, but that wasn't the issue here.

Have other encountered this issue with CUP or other academic presses?  To be clear, the issue isn't graduate students co-authoring with faculty (which happens a lot, I've done it with my doctoral students several times), but rather a prohibition on solo contributions from those without the PhD?

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17 responses to “Does Cambridge University Press really prohibit graduate students from contributing to edited volumes?”

  1. Barry Allen

    Interpreting Bergson: critical essays, edited by Alexandre Lefebvre and Nils F. Schott (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020).
    Mark William Westmoreland is a doctoral candidate at Villanova
    University. Sole author of chap. 10: Bergson, Colonialism, and Race.

    Reply
  2. Jonathan

    No, they don't …. I have no evidence for this, other than my rock solid intuition

    Reply
  3. Robert Engelman

    CUP does not do so categorically, at the very least, as I'm currently a doctoral candidate at Vanderbilt and the sole author of chpt. 7 in "Cavell's Must We Mean What We Say? at 50,"which was just published by CUP this month (wonderfully edited by Greg Chase, Juliet Floyd, and Sandra Laugier, none of whom work at Vanderbilt).

    Reply
  4. Chris Surprenant

    No issues with Routledge in having graduate students contribute to edited volumes.

    Reply
  5. Chris Riddle

    I published in a CUP book as a graduate student.

    Reply
  6. Stan

    I, as an editor of a CUP volume in the making, was told by CUP that a first-author graduate student would need to hold a PhD degree by the time of publication.

    Reply
  7. A Grad Student

    So this must be a new rule, then, given the responses above? Why would they suddenly institute such a rule? Has the previous experience been that bad? Isn't that insulting to those grad students who've already been published? I am rather astounded by all this, I have to say.

    Reply
  8. Gregory C. Mayer

    The fact that cases of graduate students being both allowed and disallowed have been brought forth might imply some change in the "rule". But it might mean that it is not a "rule" of Cambridge University Press, but rather a policy/guideline followed by particular editorial disciplinary branches or even acquisition editors at the Press.

    Reply
  9. perplexed

    Chris Riddle
    with all due respect, when I search the CUP website, I do not see a book listed as authored by you.

    Reply
  10. Brian Leiter

    Professor Riddle said he contributed to a book as a graduate student, not that he authored one.

    Reply
  11. Mark William Westmoreland

    With regard to the first comment, I did indeed write that chapter as a doctoral candidate. The edited volume was published in late 2019. I defended my dissertation in 2020. Prior to writing the chapter, I already had published, as an author, on Bergson, edited a special of journal on Bergson broader philosophy, and co-edited a volume on Bergson, race, and colonialism with SUNY (Beyond Bergson). The (anglophone) world of those working on Bergson’s social and political thought is rather small; and those working more specifically on Bergson, race, and colonialism is probably less than a dozen.

    Reply
  12. Fool

    Is there a chance that this applies to certain book series and not to others?
    I can imagine, for example, that for general collections of essays the press might just defer to the judgment of editors about whose contributions to include, but for things like Cambridge Companions where there's an implication that this is the overall perspective of established experts in the field, it might seem like graduate student contributors would be more dubious.
    So I wonder if this might be what's going on in the apparent discrepancy…

    Reply
  13. Stan

    To clarify, it is five or six years ago that I was told this. I should also add that the author eventually published in the volume, having indeed been awarded the PhD degree in the meantime, and without any further complications or even another mention of the issue.

    Reply
  14. anon

    Has anyone thought to drop CUP a line and ask? Not that this isn't a fascinating discussion.

    BL: Be my guest! I have no dealings with editors at CUP anymore, so have no one to ask. And, of course, it's possible an editor there might not want to give a frank answer. But who knows? So please ask the editor you work with.

    Reply
  15. The Student

    It's not a Cambridge Companion or similar but for a 'general collection'.

    Reply
  16. Jeremy Reid

    I was the sole author for a chapter in "Plato's Symposium: A Critical Guide" (CUP 2017), and hadn't completed my PhD when the volume came out. Plato scholarship is hardly a small field, especially on the Symposium. There was one very well established and very vocal critic of my chapter in the volume, but there were plenty of other respected scholars who liked it––here's hoping I'm a counterexample to this 'rule' and not a cause of it.

    Reply
  17. The Student

    Well, I've been re-instated to the collection on the basis of the fact that I'll have my PhD in hand by the time the book is published; I believe this is also the case for the other PhD candidate contributor. While I'm glad to be part of the book after all — that was my wish all along — I am still frustrated by the process, in particular because the response from a senior editor at CUP (who was contacted by the Daily Nous blog) directly contradicts what happened in this case, and in others that came to light in comments here and there. So, this lack of clarity among editors as CUP means that this could easily happen again to other graduate students, who shouldn't have to take their case to the public to have something done about it.

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