The Philosophers' Cocoon

A list of grants?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

Is there a clearinghouse for grants philosophers can apply for? I have a sabbatical coming up, would like to find grant funding, but am not sure if there's some sort of master database of philosophy grants. I'm US-based; I know about NEH grants, and Templeton, but there must be other bigger ones out there I'm not aware of. (And yes in theory my institution has a person who helps with grants... in practice, not so much). Thanks!

This is good question. Do any of you know of a resource like this? If not, it might be good to crowdsource a list of grants that philosophers can apply for in the comments section below!

How to open up "Introduction to Philosophy" classes to Global Philosophy?

My ideal curriculum for an Intro class in Philosophy is the one conceived by Jay Garfield and others and taught by Malcolm Keating and others at Yale-NUS College in Singapore, namely a completely non-Eurocentric introductory class (they have three main foci, namely Sanskrit, Chinese and European philosophy).

 

But, what to do until we get there?

Intro classes are (in the universities I know of) meant both for outsiders who only take one class of philosophy as well as for students who will chose philosophy as their major. Thus, the Intro class has at least also the purpose to put students in the position to follow their next classes.

Thus, in this sense a completely unconventional Intro class might be risky because students and professors might resent the fact that by the time they enrolled for, say, "Medieval philosophy" or "Philosophy of language" they did not know about basic names and theories. 

Now, again, in an ideal world the whole faculty will agree about rethinking its teaching style around the fact that "Plato" and "ethics" should not be more obvious requirements than "Confucius" and "philosophy of ritual", but, again, what to do until we are there? 

• Possibility no. 1: Disrupt the curriculum completely (see above). Cool but unrealistic.
• Possibility no. 2: Leave the Intro class(es) as it is/they are (thematic or historic and Euro-American focused). Students have too much on their plate already. Let's diversify later. Cool but unrealistic: students will have unconsciously swallowed the idea that there is just ONE philosophy that is "normal" and the rest is there to "colour it up".
• Possibility no. 3: Insert snippets of other philosophical worlds. Why, given that this would be done in a non systematic manner and hence not be as powerful insofar as paradigm building? Because it will at least force students to notice that there is not a single way of doing philosophy. Students I have been teaching in North America are more open than I expected to this idea, but they need to be exposed to examples early on to be able to seriously consider it. 

So, 3 seems still much better than 1. But this leads to further problems re. its feasibility. Which texts? Taught by whom? How?…

Stories of 'wins' after adversity?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I work at a decidedly non-fancy-pants institution. I recently had a paper accepted at a rather fancy-pants journal. I have been working on this paper on and off for over half a decade. The manuscript represents an incredible amount of work. The "excerpts" file for the paper alone dates back to 2016 and is well over 100 single-spaced pages. The paper has been rejected countless times, and when I look at previous drafts, the gap between what it was (bad) and what it is now (better) is huge. And while a utilitarian would probably shudder at the blood/sweat/tears to pleasure ratio involved in its construction, it is FINALLY going to be published and I am thrilled.

I would love it if we could have a thread about similar "wins" that people have had recently in the profession. It doesn't necessarily need to involve papers and publications. What are some instances where a LOT of hard work finally paid off despite considerable adversity?

I think this is a great idea, and big congrats to the OP! I think a thread like this could be cool, not just to hear some inspiring stories, but also because it may help those currently undergoing adversity to see that there can be a light at the end of the tunnel (for my part, I really could have used some such inspiration as a struggling grad student, etc.). Anyone have any cool 'win after adversity' stories to tell? 

Grappling with 'mediocrity as a philosopher'?

The other day, we had a thread discussing the situation of reader who is grappling with a loss of intellectual passion. In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Med raises a related query that I expect other philosophers may identify with:

I am curious to see some tips for accepting one's mediocrity as a philosopher but still feeling fulfilled.

I am lucky to have a job at a small public school. I got my degree from a lower ranked program. My papers have been continuously rejected by journals with a couple of exceptions. Some of them just do not have any chance to be published anywhere at this point. Very few people know my name in my field. I teach many "service" courses in gen-ed. My topic courses were under-enrolled and thus canceled a few times. I work in a traditional M&E area, and few students were interested in topics that I am interested in.

I am not an ambitious philosopher, and I feel okay with my current situation, not to mention that I feel lucky to have a job. However, as an early career person, I can feel that there will probably some kind of "existential crisis" for me in the future.

In response, another reader writes:

Once you find yourself getting tired - even before - you should set yourself up to do some serious service work. You may find that you are an effective administrator or dean, even. In that way you can still help the discipline, representing us at the table (the adult table, if I may). You can also earn a lot more money. Just some thoughts.

This seems to be a helpful suggestion, as my immediate reaction was also that the reader might consider going into administration. However, it's not entirely clear whether or to what extent the OP is in a position to go this route. I'm not entirely sure, but I know that some administrative jobs (e.g. Dean or Assistant Dean jobs) require one to have tenure, and it's not clear whether the OP is in a tenure-track position or whether they have tenure. At the same time, I have a feeling that other administrative jobs that might be fulfilling could be available even without tenure--though again, I'm not sure. Do any readers have any helpful tips, experiences, or insights for the OP? It might also be good to hear whether other readers find (of have found) themselves in a similar situation. Have you found yourself grappling with "accepting one's mediocrity as a philosopher"? If so, how have you approached it, and how has it gone? Have you been able to find (sufficient) fulfillment? 

Crowdsourcing job ads thread

A reader writes in:

I wonder how you felt about having a post about job ads. I was thinking even one that might have a pinned link on the side. Many of the jobs are posted on PhilJobs, but there are plenty that are not. UK jobs and postdocs are sometimes only on jobs.ac.uk; European jobs are in other places sometimes as well; society of fellows things, who knows where those are; etc. This seems like a great occasion for crowd sourcing. I’ve been placement director at [redacted] for a while and each year I have to ask the students if they found things in unexpected places. Anyway, I thought it would be a handy resource for people on the market. What do you think? 

I think this is a fantastic idea. It could be cool not to only crowdsource academic job ads in unexpected places, but non-academic ('alt-ac') job ads too. So, that's what I propose we devote this thread to, which I will pin on the right side-bar of the blog in perpetuity (or at least until the comment thread gets so long that it makes sense to start a new one). So, please do feel free to use the comment thread below to draw attention to job ads (academic or non-academic) that philosophers might be competitive for that are not PhilJobs or HigherEd Jobs!

Teaching Smarter Not Harder

By Samuel Duncan

I was originally going to post this as a comment to Trevor’s post on teaching competently, but I decided that it merits its own post. Trevor makes some excellent points about teaching and what it’s reasonable to expect from yourself as a graduate student. The workaholism and perfectionism that academia drills into our heads is not a good way to approach teaching or indeed most tasks. In this post I’d like to discuss another way that the workaholism that inspires so many of our unreasonable expectations also gets in the way of not just competent teaching but good or even exceptional teaching. I am convinced that many philosophers wrongly assume that when it comes to teaching, more work always equals better teaching. This means that we see teaching strategies that would save us work as compromises between excellence and giving ourselves a reasonable workload. And so we often weirdly resist novel teaching strategies because the fact they save us work makes them seem like a cop out. I know I certainly did for a long time and for precisely this reason. However, this is a mistake on so many levels. One thing I’ve found in the last few years is that teaching strategies that save you time and effort can often be much better for students’ learning than more labor intensive options such as traditional lecturing. Let me give a couple of examples.

In my ethics classes I’ve replaced exams with an ethics bowl competition at the end of the semester. (I should admit here that I completely stole this idea from my friend Ryan Windeknecht, who’s one of the best philosophy teachers I’ve ever known).  If you don’t know what the ethics bowl is you can find more information here. Briefly, it’s a formal debate where two groups each consider an ethical dilemma, comment on the other group’s presentation and field questions from the audience (in this case their classmates). Now this saves me a lot of work. It takes up about six class meetings– five for the ethics bowls and one for an in class prep session for the groups– which means I don’t have to prep for those five meetings or put in the emotional labor of being “on” in front of a classroom. Like many of us in philosophy, I’m not naturally an extrovert and teaching is more than a bit of a performance for me. I generally enjoy it quite a bit, but it’s also emotional labor in the truest sense of that often misused term. I also don’t have to grade exams since I score the teams in class as do their classmates and come up with an average between my scores and the scores of their classmates. And we all know what a miserable chore exam grading is. Most grading isn’t fun but exam grading is really just the worst in my experience. In my book, if most grading is a chore like cleaning your bathroom at home, then exam grading is cleaning the bathroom at a truck stop or a stadium.

So the ethics bowl saves me quite a bit of work, but I’ve also found that students tend to like it. Pretty much every semester at least one student and often multiple students will say that it was their favorite thing about the class in the evaluations. It’s also very good for student learning. Applying the moral theories we’ve learned to real life cases and answering questions and challenges to their approach both helps the students to understand the moral theories on a deeper level and to better appreciate both their merits and faults as methods of moral reasoning. I’ve found that the ethics bowl is probably the single most effective strategy I know of for getting students– both those in the groups and the audience– to engage in real ethical discussion and debate.

Or take logic where I’ve almost entirely adopted the “flipped classroom” model. For most class sessions, I put fairly brief recorded lectures online where I go over the reading in more detail and discuss what I think are tricky points (the lectures are usually about 30 minutes). We then devote the entire class period to working through problems that cover the material from the readings and lectures. I put students in informal groups (usually just based on where they happen to be sitting) to work through the problems and periodically break to go over a set as a class. During the time they’re working on them I’ll make the rounds in class and see if they need help or want feedback on their proposed solutions. In the short term this approach did involve a fair amount of preparation for me since I had to record lectures and come up with exercises to supplement those in the book. However, in the long term it saves me quite a bit of work. Relying on recorded lectures is easier than having to prep for class each day and again it’s a class period where I don’t have to be on and in character in the way I would if I were lecturing. 

However, I’ve found that this is a really effective way to teach a subject like logic. Students get nearly instant feedback on their solutions. We can also work through many more problems than we could if I gave them problem sets primarily as homework (I do still give some fairly brief homework assignments reinforcing the material we cover that we go over at the beginning of the next class). This is a huge advantage since I’ve personally found that for logic or any other similarly “mathematical” subject doing problems is the most effective way to learn the material. In fact, to a great extent it just is what learning the material is.

Anyway, those are just two examples, but I think there are a lot more cases where approaches that make our lives as philosophy teachers easier would also be more effective as learning strategies. I’d love to hear your own. If they’re really good I might just engage in the sincerest form of flattery again.

Grappling with loss of intellectual passion?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, X writes:

I am not interested in philosophy/intellectual work anymore, it seems.

I’ve been devoted to (formal) philosophy for about a decade, and was really passionate at the beginning, with ok success (some ideas people liked, books with ok presses, a few decent papers in good generalist venues, some invitations, visiting appointments, great track record of getting good grants for my career stage).

I feel that’s about to change. Some bad experiences with administration, plus two pandemic years, plus a few relocations, make me unmotivated. I do the bare minimum to keep up with my commitments. My new papers keep on being rejected (from very good journals, but still), and I can’t be bothered to work on them. I don’t feel there are extrinsic challenges left (in the profession) that are enough to be attainable and motivate me to do this for another 40 years or so.

All I can think about is *hobby* (which is outdoorsy, time-consuming, very expensive, and intellectually challenging). I already took last summer completely off work, but wasn’t recharged enough coming the new academic year.

Suggestions?

Another reader, Y, submitted the following response:

I can't help but empathize with X, although I may come from a different place. My motivation took a dip 2 years ago when covid started & I graduated and no longer have an adviser who held me accountable and gave feedback (and encouragement) & I was relocated & racism was rampant. For me, I do research because I want to achieve new understanding and to be part of the conversation that I am interested in. That has kept me going. I suspected that getting rejections play an important role in X's case among all the other unfavorable conditions. It has substantially helped my motivation to get positive feedback from referees and get my papers accepted. This is not necessarily advice to X since what do I know, but maybe it would help to put more effort into getting new papers published and see if that gradually improves the motivation---before considering options of quitting.

This is an excellent query, as I sense more than a few academics are feeling this way nowadays. Indeed, I've heard at least anecdotally that an increasing number of academics are leaving the profession post-COVID due to similar experiences, and I've personally known about a handful myself. I'm not sure, but maybe the OP is experiencing burnout? This is actually a genuine syndrome, and although I'm not a psychologist, I guess I'd suggest the OP look into it more if they haven't already. While I appreciate Y's response, and it's entirely possible that publishing more stuff would improve X's outlook and motivation, I'm curious whether other readers have any other suggestions. Indeed, I'm curious whether there are other readers out there who have grappled with similar situations as X (and Y), how you dealt with the situation, and how well your approach worked.

Do any readers have any helpful tips or experiences to share?

Hiring friends with grant money?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Is it permissible to use your grant money to hire friends who are not experts in the funded area (though still can contribute) to support them financially? Thanks in advance!

Another reader immediately submitted the following reply:

That is unethical and in some places it is illegal. Don't do it

I'm not sure there is much more to say here. Although I've heard anecdotally that nepotism may be common in certain places, it's widely considered to be an unethical practice and I definitely wouldn't want to run the risk of getting in serious institutional or legal trouble for misusing grant money. But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

7 Years Later Excerpt #3: Teaching Competently

In the previous post in this series, I discussed how to approach leading discussion sections. This time around, I'm broadening the scope to the fundamentals of teaching competently. I'll have at least one more post on teaching after this. Afterwards, I'll probably turn to some other aspects of graduate school, such as long-term planning or job market preparation. 

---

When you first start teaching, you might think you should aspire to do it well. By teaching well, I mean teaching in ways that captivate students, educate them effectively, assess their mastery fairly and comprehensively, provide ample support to students in need, and respect university guidelines and regulations. In the abstract, this all sounds great, and it’s an admirable ambition to want to teach well. However, for those new to teaching, it’s not realistic. Teaching well requires a level of skill and expertise that early career teachers will almost never be able to achieve. Even the few newcomers to teaching who have the ability to teach well should probably not try to teach well at that stage of their careers. This notion might strike you as counterintuitive, so let me elaborate a bit.

Teaching well is difficult and requires a substantial amount of time if you aren’t an experienced instructor. I recall anecdotes of graduate students telling me about how they devoted 30-40 hours per week to teaching a single course of 25-30 students. Those courses may have been amazing, but this behavior is not admirable or prudent. As a graduate student, you must balance teaching responsibilities with a variety of other goals: making progress toward your degree, submitting papers to conferences and journals, participating in department events, and so on. Devoting 30-40 hours per week to teaching a single course does not leave enough time to adequately prioritize these other commitments – at least not if one wants to maintain good mental health and avoid burnout. Moreover, once you finish graduate school, you will never be able to devote that amount of time to a single course. If you obtain a faculty position, you will probably teach at least 3 courses per term, and they might all be different subjects: you definitely won’t be able to devote 30-40 hours to each one. That means you should aim to develop teaching strategies that can later be extended to contexts where your teaching load is significantly higher.

Here’s the general point: trying to be an exemplary teacher when you’re just getting started with solo teaching is not an appropriate goal. Instead, you should aim to teach competently. As I use this phrase, teaching competently means to teach in a satisfactory or acceptable, but not outstanding, way. Teaching competently involves the same general goals as teaching well but sets the standard for success a bit lower. You don’t need to captivate students to teach competently: it suffices to maintain the motivation of those who are engaged and avoid turning off the remaining students. Teaching competently does not require that you be a master of test design and assessment –  something that requires many courses’ worth of exam creation and refinement – it is enough to design your exams so that course content and exam material align and that students have clear expectations regarding exam content.

Job market 'branding'?

A reader writes in:

[I] have all kinds of questions about the job market. One of them is related to a conversation that was trending online about a week or so ago concerning “brands”; namely, whether job candidates need to have a defined one these days. Is there already a Cocoon thread on this topic?

I don't believe we've ever discussed this issue before, and I'm curious to hear from readers. Should job-marketeers try to "brand" themselves? If so, what does that involve? As someone who has served on a number of hiring committees at a mid-sized liberal arts university that values research, my sense is that at many jobs, hiring committees probably care most about whether you have a clear area of specialization, do interesting work, and can teach in areas the department needs. However, I do wonder whether "branding" might be more important for R1 jobs somehow, where they might be looking to hire a "trailblazer", so to speak. Do any readers have any tips or insights on this?

Public philosophy is an oligopoly--and here why this is a problem

Some recent takes on the Enlightenment resonated strongly with the broad public. This includes Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress  (2018), and David Graeber and David Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021).

I'm not going to write a detailed analysis of these books (I have done so for Graeber and Wengrow, which will appear at some point). Suffice it to say here, while I think there are some merits in both works, they also suffer from deficiencies in the conceptualization of what the Enlightenment is, its influences, and also the broader implications. 

And this is not a surprise, given that any scholarly domain of expertise requires significant research and experience, which neither of these authors can profess on the Enlightenment. Maybe you, like me, would love to see a book on the Enlightenment reach the big public that is written by an actual specialist in 18th-century western philosophy or history. Sadly, no Enlightenment scholar has been able to resonate so well with the public as these two works (if I am mistaken and there is a NYT bestseller book on the Enlightenment, please let me know!) 

This is a symptom of a larger phenomenon, an oligopoly within pop culture. As backed up with detailed data in this post by Adam Mastroianni, a few franchises (reimaginings, live-action remakes, sequels, same universe movies) dominate pop culture and the phenomenon has worsened significantly over the last decades. A few winners take up an increasing portion of the market share, leading to a decrease in diversity of output.

Sometimes philosophers are still asked "Why don't you do public philosophy?" as if this is a supply-side issue. It is not. There has never been more public philosophy available than at present, many of it is publicly available. Magazines such as The Philosophers' Magazine, Aeon, Psyche, and many others feature public philosophy from a wide range of thinkers. Podcasts such as Hi-Phi nation, Philosophy without Any Gaps, and What's Left of Philosophy  offer professionally produced, engaging and intellectually stimulating content. Individual philosopher YouTube channels make philosophy accessible to everyone, including Ellie Anderson's continental philosophy series, Greg Sadler's Speculative fiction series and Bryan Van Norden's Chinese philosophy class lectures. 

So, when the public turns to Jordan Peterson to look for life advice, rather than to philosophers, it is not because of the supply side. There is really no reason to shame, say, an Aristotle scholar into doing public philosophy in the hopes that her work will reach a disaffected teen who is wondering how to live the good life, and faute de mieux, turns to Peterson. There is already a lot out there (of course, we should welcome and support this hypothetical Aristotle scholar if she wants to do public philosophy!)

We should also recognize that there are very, very few academics who can make it as public intellectuals, for reasons that are totally unrelated to the intrinsic merits of their work, or even to their communication skills. 

What's happening is that public intellectuals are working in an ecology where a small number of winners get a disproportionate share in public attention and media capture. This is on the supply side part of a more general winner-takes-all mentality. For publishing with the four major fiction publishers, for instance, it was fine a few years ago to be a decent "midlister" (i.e., someone who sells books that make a profit for the publisher but will never reap high figures). But now, a beginning author must exude that ineffable quality of being a rising star, of a potential NYT bestseller author to even get a deal with an agent (and hence a publisher). As a result, many authors are querying in vain, and some have turned to self-publishing. Few self-published authors can break through into traditional markets, though several have a decent readership and make decent money from their work. 

Fortunately, as academics we can still survive and thrive as small fish. Our scholarly books get contracts based on their perceived academic merit rather than on sales potential (especially in academic presses, which are often heavily subsidized). And many of us do reach/have a significant platform beyond academia. This platform is valuable. We should support colleagues and provide institutional support for people who wish to engage in public scholarship. But it is important to note how skewed the field is, and to adjust expectations accordingly. 

It is worth thinking about why people are happy with this oligopoly--differently put, what explains the increasing homogenization in pop culture. Mastroianni speculates: 

As options multiply, choosing gets harder. You can’t possibly evaluate everything, so you start relying on cues like “this movie has Tom Hanks in it” or “I liked Red Dead Redemption, so I’ll probably like Red Dead Redemption II,” which makes you less and less likely to pick something unfamiliar. 

Philosophy is difficult. While the public struggle with philosophical questions on a daily basis (on e.g., the meaning of events in their lives, the abortion debate etc), trying to actively seek out philosophical resources that are publicly accessible is hard. People also have many other non-material needs, such as entertainment, comfort, a bit of joy, spiritual assurance, and philosophy is not a sure route to any of these things. This is why, although I think many people would benefit from engaging with philosophy, their bandwidth for it is very limited. Moreover, without media attention and platform, it is hard for the public to reach sources they might resonate well with.

I've got no easy solution how to fix this problem, but I think it is worth fixing.

We benefit from intellectual diversity in the public sphere. When diversity is mentioned, it is often in the context of viewpoint diversity (which often means that a few contentious polarized positions get a platform, e.g., on abortion and gender), but I'm interested in the broader phenomenon of a shared intellectual authority, as Helen Longino and other have detailed. 

It is no coincidence that many of the most high profile public intellectuals are at research-intensive universities, often Ivy League, where they largely compete with other similarly advantaged people for the limited attention from the public. Competition is fierce, which also provides bad incentives for giving unnuanced hot takes on recent issues. Public intellectuals at smaller colleges are sidelined, and we are the poorer for it. Public philosophers with a significant platform, who get 5-figure speaking fees (I know that this in fact happens!) should try to lift up more voices, especially when asked to speak about areas far outside of their expertise. But because the goods of being a high-profile intellectual are so significant (connections, money) there is little incentive to do so. 

I'd be interested to discuss what we can do to make more of the excellent public philosophy that is being done to trickle toward the general public. Contrary to perception, it is not a zero-sum game. If more people get interested in public philosophy, they might be tempted to engage with more public philosophical works. This would be to great mutual benefit, I think. 

Tips for navigating high-profile, public-facing opportunities as an introvert?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I am writing for a friend. Really, though! I have a friend who is a wonderful philosopher at a private R2. When they received tenure (recently), they were recognized by several of their external letter writers as doing “cutting-edge” work in their subdiscipline. They are starting to get requests from high-profile, mainstream venues to talk about their work and even collaborate (think: interviews at fancy interdisciplinary journals, books distributed by Harper Collins, requests to work with what I think are called “internet personalities” (lol), and an offer of funding to start a research center in their subdiscipline). Insofar as my friend wants their work to be widely read and impactful, this is all great! Except, my friend is strongly introverted. As such, navigating the high-profile and high-stakes social dynamics in these contexts is both overwhelming and intimidating. Which has me wondering if there is someone who can help with this part of the job.

Do some academics have agents? Or maybe professional assistants? Someone who can help navigate public-facing work and engagement?

As a shy introvert myself, I think this is a great query! My sense is that some philosophers who do high profile, public-facing work do have agents, I don't know much beyond that. So, I think it would be great to hear answers to the OP's questions. Do any readers have any helpful tips or experiences to share?

Free online translations of non-Western philosophy?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Newish CC Prof writes:

Since I've seen several discussions here of resources for teaching non-western philosophy.

One hurdle I've found as I tried to figure out how to do that more is availability of texts. I'm committed to not making my students buy textbooks, and have no discretion on what textbook I'd make them buy if I did.

Serviceable public domain translations of all the "canonical" western figures are easy to find online. Every recommendation I've seen for translations of Chinese, Indian, African, etc. figures has been a book I'd have to ILL and then get sketchy with the departmental scanner.

Are there freely available English translations to be had online outside "the Western canon?"

This is a great question, and two readers submitted helpful replies. Chris Stephens writes:

Robert Eno has translations of many classical Chinese philosophy texts available on line for free student and instructor use. https://chinatxt.sitehost.iu.edu/Resources.html

And Andrew writes:

I'd recommend that recent Hackett editions. They are affordably priced and well-structured, e.g., Confucius by Edward Slingerland, Mengzi by Bryan van Norden. Back in the day, I think they'd even send an evaluation copy if you asked. What I've used but found a bit harder to work is Ames & Hall translations. Alternately, there are free translations on ctext.org but those are usually the 100+ year old ones.

These comments are helpful, but only point to online resources for translation of Chinese texts. Anyone know of any good online resources for free, public-domain translation of 'non-Western' texts more generally?

How can we help you? (May 2022)

Now that it's been a couple of months since our last "how can we help you?" thread, it's time for a new one.

For those of you unfamiliar with this series, this is a chance for you to post openly or anonymously in the comments section below on anything you could use help with related to the profession. After you post your query in the comments section, I will then post new threads for readers to discuss your query.

As usual, feel free to ask questions on anything (within the Cocoon's mission) that you could use help with, including but not limited to:

• Life and work in the COVID-19 era
• The job-market (applying for jobs, etc.)
• Issues in the profession (including issues of social justice)
• Graduate school
• Publishing
• Teaching
• Work-life balance
• Personal struggles
• Etc.

Fire away - we're here to help! 

Important reminder: if you submit a comment in this thread responding to someone's query, I won't post it, as this makes it difficult for me to keep track of everything in the comments section, particularly which queries I've started new threads on and which ones I have not. However, if you do post a follow-up comment, chances are good that I will post it in the new thread I start on the relevant query. So, do feel free to submit responses. Just know that they won't appear in this particular thread and might instead appear later in a new post!

Grappling with long review times

In our March "how can we help you?" thread, a grad student writes:

I have had multiple incidents of getting “too late” reviews. I foresee that this will keep occurring because the wait times at top journals can be extremely long and the reject rates are extremely high. I was wondering how does one deal with such cases and if there are any strategies with avoiding such scenarios. Sending to lower ranked journals with fast times isn’t an option for me because I’m at a top-5 programme and I face a two-body problem (and so need excellent publications to stand a good chance at solving my two-body problem).

1. The typical ‘you got scooped’.
I send out my paper from 1 journal, to the next. Some journals took incredibly long, like 7 mths, and even 1 yr to review (these were the first-round review times). Now, after 2.5 yrs later (the 5th journal I’m trying), I get a reject. The reviewer says that a similar idea has already published more than a year ago, and so my paper won’t contribute to the literature. Should I give up on this paper?

2. The author changed their views.
Philosopher X argues for theory T1 and argues on various desiderata that T1 is superior to T2. Various philosophers respond by trying to show how T2 can also accommodate the desiderata. My paper goes further to show that T1 cannot accommodate the desiderata for the very reasons that X thinks that T2 cannot accommodate the desiderata. I send out my paper from 1 journal, to the next. 2 years later (at the 4th journal I’m trying), I get a reject. The reviewers say that if my paper were sent earlier it would be accepted without revisions. However, philosopher X has changed their views about a year ago. So, my criticisms of T1 are no longer relevant. The debate is no longer between T1 and T2.

I really empathize with this student's predicament. I got scooped in a similar way in grad school, so this is something that I worried about lot early in my career after grad school as well. The peer review process can be so long, and so unpredictable, and when so many people in the profession are working on similar problems, it's hard not to worry about other people publishing arguments like yours before you do. As for authors changing their views, this isn't a problem that I've encountered, but I definitely see the issue. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that I have any great tips. My strategy was to shoot for lower-ranked journals where I could get my stuff out more quickly, but as the OP states this doesn't seem like a viable path forward for them. The only other tips that I can think of, unfortunately, are for the author to check to see whether the reviewer for paper 1 is right that the paper is too similar to one that already came out, and if not, to keep sending it out. Otherwise, I was always told that the only other path forward is to keep writing new papers. But of course this strategy just runs into the same problem: your new papers might get scooped as well. This is, as I see it, mostly just a really unfortunate feature of peer-review today that we all deal with. It makes peer-review itself quite a bit of a lottery--which is unfortunate in that it makes our careers even more highly dependent on luck than they already are.

What do you all think? Do any of you have any better, more helpful tips for dealing with these issues?