The Philosophers' Cocoon

Will journals consider significantly revised versions of rejected papers?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, an early career philosopher asks:

How different does a paper have to be from its earlier incarnation for it to be acceptable to submit it to a journal that rejected the earlier incarnation?

More concretely: I have been re-writing a paper that was rejected from a generalist journal but with encouraging comments from two referees and the area editor. The new version has a very similar fundamental point as the old version. But the main claim is formulated differently, the argument is a bit different, the paper is shorter, with a different structure and the writing itself is all completely new, no copy-pasta. Will the journal(s) that rejected its predecessor consider my new version? Might they even send it to the same referees?
Also, is the answer affected by whether or not I change the title?

These are good questions, and I'm really curious to hear what everyone thinks. A late-career philosopher submitted the following reply:

Just send the paper to another journal. I once was asked to referee a paper that was resubmitted with a different title to the same journal. I was so angry. Having agreed to referee it, and discovering it was a revised paper I had seen before, I then retracted my offer to review it. Just just delayed the whole process for the author and journal. But I was done with that paper, and felt tricked!

My own sense is that it's probably best to move on to other journals. But, for all that, I'm curious to hear from authors and editors. For authors, have you ever tried doing what the OP describes? What was the result? And for editors: what do you think about this kind of case?

CFP: 6th MAP-Penn Conference on Philosophy of Disability & Illness

The University of Pennsylvania chapter of Minorities & Philosophy (MAP-Penn) is organizing a spring conference around the philosophy of disability and illness. Please circulate this call-for-abstracts to your graduate students and other early career scholars.

What: 6th MAP-Penn Conference on Philosophy of Disability & Illness

When: Apr 08, 2022, 11:30 AM EDT – Apr 10, 2022, 3:00 PM EDT*

Where: Virtual!

Keynotes: Havi Carel, Joseph Stramondo, and Jasmine Harris

Anonymized abstracts due: Jan 03, 2022

Website: https://tiinarosenqvist.wixsite.com/map-penn-disability

We are soliciting anonymized abstracts of 500-750 words on any aspect of Philosophy of Disability and/or Philosophy of Illness. This includes, but is not limited to, disability and/or illness-related conceptual and normative issues in philosophy of law, in medical ethics, in bioethics, in general ethics, in the history of philosophy, in social and political philosophy, in social epistemology, in one’s personal experiences as a philosopher, and in philosophy teaching practices.

Please send abstracts to trosenq@sas.upenn.edu with subject line ‘MAP Conference’ by January 3, 2022. The abstracts should be prepared for anonymous review (i.e., please remove identifiers) and submitted in .pdf, .docx, or .doc format. Please specify your name, institutional role (if any), and institution (if any) in the body of the email. 

For more information, please visit our website, our Phil Events page, or get in touch!

Approaching people for recommendation letters

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

I wondered if anyone had any advice or strategies regarding when and how to ask senior members of the profession for letters of recommendation. There are a few such people whom I know well and who I know think very well of me as a philosopher but haven't read much, or any, of my work. I feel bad asking them for recommendations since it seems like I presume that to write a good letter they would have to get to know my written work, and so it seems like a much bigger ask than simply writing a letter (which is already not a significant ask!). I would also hugely appreciate any general strategies for approaching people. In general I am not such a confident person, and in particular I am really concerned that those I ask would think that I had an ulterior motive in building relationships.

This is a good query, and having been in Sam's position, I expect many other readers may be in a similar position too. One reader submitted the following reply:

Sam I think you misunderstand letters. No one should be writing a letter for you if they have not read your work. They cannot say anything worth including in an application, unless they have read your work. So it is hard for me to understand what you mean when you say such people think very well of you as a philosopher.

However, this doesn't seem to be what Sam is saying. Sam seems to recognize that to write a good letter, a letter-writer will presumably need to have read his work. Sam just seems to be (quite reasonably) concerned with asking someone who hasn't read his work to write a letter because that would require the person to actually sit down and read his work--which is a lot to ask! (Also, as an aside, there are plausible grounds for someone to think highly of you without reading your work: you may have had good philosophical conversations with them, they may have attended a talk of yours and complimented you on your presented paper, etc.). Anyway, bearing all of this in mind--namely, that Sam's concern is about coming across poorly in asking someone who hasn't read his work to write a letter--I think Sam's query is a very good one.

Asking for interview feedback?

In our job-market discussion thread, a reader asks:

Do interviewees usually ask for feedback on their performance from search committee members after they've been ultimately rejected? And if so, what is the best way to do this?

These are good questions. Another reader, Andy, responded:

It can be helpful to ask for feedback. What you get can vary a lot. I have had one line of just "it was a strong field" all the way to the chair of the search committee organising a 30 minute zoom meeting with me to give feedback. I know others who have had similar experiences. I think it is usually worth asking (unless you just got a really bad vibe at the interview).

I'm curious to hear from other job-candidates. If you have asked for interview feedback, have you received helpful responses? Also, for search committee members: what do you think of candidates asking for feedback? Is there a best way to do so?

When to fix errors in an accepted manuscript?

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

I recently got a paper accepted for publication, and the editor sent my manuscript to the typesetting office. Since then, I noticed a few typos and minor mistakes that I had somehow missed until now (and so did my reviewers). Since I still have not received the proofs, do you think it is all right to contact the editor and let them know I would like to fix these mistakes? Or is it already too late for that?

A couple of readers submitted responses. An Editor writes:

The time to fix this is in the proofs. When you get your proofs read them with care. There is a chance that some of the mistakes will be caught in the proof stage, by others involved. But if they are not you will get a chance. Further, as an editor of a journal, I read the proofs as well, and catch yet-uncaught errors. But wait for the proofs.

Mike Titelbaum added:

Presumably once the piece is typeset they will send you proofs. Are the typos minor enough that you could fix them in the proof-correction stage?

It seems to me that Mike's question here is potentially important. One should ordinarily not make significant substantive changes to a final manuscript without running them by the Editor, right? But this doesn't sound like what the OP is describing. If it's just a matter of a few typos here and there, that's what proofs are for fixing!

What do search committees think of consulting?

On Twitter, Jeremy Davis (postdoc, University of Florida) asks:

Search committee members: What are your thoughts on a candidate mentioning their outside consulting work during an interview? (Context: it's relevant to their research, could be construed as 'outreach', and informs interdisciplinary teaching approach.)

This is a great question, and I'm curious to hear what readers think. While I suspect consulting might not be particularly appealing to search committees at R1's (who presumably focus primarily on a candidate's research), I wonder whether it would look neat to committees at other kinds of institutions. First, it's a way for a candidate to stand out from the crowd. Second, search committee members might be interested in hearing more about it, and perhaps even want to get involved in some form of consulting themselves! But I'm really just speculating here. What do you all think, particularly those of you who have served on search committees?

How to get asked to referee?

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

How can I get papers to referee? Where to start? I am a junior researcher with a few publications, but not from EU or USA, and without much of a network. Any advices?

Several readers submitted replies. Michelle wrote:

[I]f the journals you are interested in refereeing for use Manuscript central or similar then create a profile and add you keywords. When the editor looks for reviewers you'll show up in the search. You can also email the journal and ask to be added to the reviewer list I imagine.

And Ref wrote:

You are less likely to be asked to referee for journal that you have not published in. So it is crucial that you publish in good places, if you want to referee paper for journals. I have refereed over 170 papers, many for leading journals in my sub-field - I am not junior. But that is largely because I have published in these journals (I also have three books with a leading press). Further, once you start refereeing, it helps if you are effective at getting useful reports in to the editor in a timely fashion. No kidding, most of the time I get my report in within 5 days of agreeing to referee the paper. Further, I write my reports for the editors - I given them a professional assessment of the paper, and provide justifications for my evaluation.

These both seem like good suggestions, though for what it is worth, I was asked to referee for a number of good journals early in my career before publishing all that much. What do you all think?

Fruitfulness versus productivity--thoughts for writing what you want to write

What do we want to achieve when we manage our time better? I do not think that productivity should be the aim per se. Productivity, especially in tenured academics, is overrated, and there is already so much to read. The world isn't worse off if a tenured academic publishes a bit less in a given year. Productivity is also overrated in untenured academics, I think, but here lurks collective action problem. In a job market where people have to come with heavier CVs, you have no choice but to be productive. 

Still, even in that context, I think the focus on productivity is misguided. Productivity plays into ableist narratives, neglecting how much variety there is between people in getting various academic tasks done. It also frames people as being a means to their employer's or (in the case of job market), their future self's end.

It is more helpful to think management in terms of fruitfulness. Getting your projects to fruition, flourishing as a human being who is also an academic, sowing the seeds of later projects. Sometimes you do a lot of work, but it doesn't immediately turn into a payoff. A writing project (paper, book etc) can be done in a matter of weeks, or years. 

This excellent blogpost by University of Edinburgh's chaplain Harriet Harris probes this distinction between fruitfulness and productivity. As Harris writes "imagine if trees had been forced to produce apples non-stop. We can make nature do such things for us – turning dairy cows into continual milk-producing machines, for example. We can treat ourselves this way too, expecting endless productivity."

But that's not a sustainable way to live (in fairness, the years I spent on the job market this was exactly how I lived). You cannot treat yourself this way for years on end without burnout. So first and foremost, it is helpful to step away from a narrow focus on productivity toward feasibility and goals you want to accomplish without being burnt out.

To this end, I propose the following tips (you can read an early version, slightly shorter, of this in a series of tweets here). They are not tips to be more productive, per se, but to

• accomplish more what you want to accomplish, and hence reduce frustration
• give you enough time for projects that otherwise go on the back-burner forever, or projects that simply help you to flourish and thrive as an academic though less urgent than others
• feel less stress or the sense you're forever running behind.

How can we help you? (December 2021)

I'm taking the next few days off for some much-needed rest during the Thanksgiving holiday. In the meantime, 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!

Contacting EICs in peer-review delays?

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

A question about journal etiquette. I have a paper that has been under review at a journal for nine months. For the past two months, I have not been able to get any response from the managing editor about the status of my paper. My question is: is it ok to write to one of the chief editors of the journal about this? Also, the journal is triple-blind, but as far as I understand that applies to the area editor who is handling the submission.

Good question! Another reader submitted the following reply:

I got a paper off the backlog at [redacted], where it had been stuck for nine months with no response from the ME, by emailing someone from the editorial board. I tried the chief editor first, but they had not responsive either. But the editorial board member was very apologetic and got me a decision in a week. Extreme times call for extreme measures, I think. My only caveat: be extra polite if the CE works in your area or it's a journal you need to publish in at some point (I purposely chose a board member as far removed from my area as possible).

I'm curious what other readers think. Do any of you have any helpful tips or experiences to share?

How to know if you're a good referee?

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

I referee more and more for journals, and there is this question at the back of my head everytime I send a report: How do I know if I do a good job as a referee? Or: What are good signs that you do a good/bad job as a referee?

A bit of context: When I send my reviews to editors, I usually also send them a message saying "if you need more information, or if my report is unclear, please let me know". I never hear back from the editors. When authors get an R&R, they are not dismissive of my comments, but this is hardly good evidence (as an author, being nice is part of the game!). We've all had experiences with bad referees. How am I supposed to know I'm not one of them? Maybe getting new invitations to referee from the same editors is a good sign. But perhaps they don't even keep track of this.

Good questions! In my experience, one of the best indications of one's performance as referee are how one's reports compare to other referees' reports. First, some journals have the (very good) practice of sharing all referee reports when an editorial decision is rendered not only with the author, but with other reviewers. As a reviewer, I've often found this to be very eye opening. On some occasions, I've seen that my worries were shared by other referees--which gave me some independent evidence that I had raised the right concerns about the paper. On other occasions, my reports seemed better than the other reports, giving more detailed feedback. However, on still other (thankfully rare) occasions, other reports led me to wonder whether I did a good job with my report (as they either understood something in the paper better than I did, etc.). For these reasons, I think the practice of journals sharing referee reports with all of a paper's referees is a great practice, and I only wish more journals did it (as in my experience, very few do). Finally, of course, sometimes journals share other referees' comments (or the author's reply to them) when authors submit revised papers for revise-and-resubmit verdicts. I find this to be really helpful for the same reasons. Other than this, though, my sense is that all one really has to go by is one's own internal sense of whether one is doing a good job.

What do you all think? What indications do you think a referee can have that they are doing a good job? And, are there things that journals should do in order to give one a clearer picture of how good of a job one is doing?

Informing your department you're on the market?

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

I am in a TT position in a R1 university in a city where I know no one (also bc of CoViD). I am not unhappy, but another R1 university in a city where I have very deep roots has recently advertised an associate prof. position. It is unlikely that they will choose me, since I am not yet tenured, but it would be foolish for me not to apply. Should I mention it to the head of my department and my colleagues here? How?

My sense is that a lot of people in TT jobs apply for jobs elsewhere, and that it is probably a mistake to let your home department know. First, as the OP notes, the chances of getting a job elsewhere are low (particularly if it is a tenured position, as is the case here). Second, letting your department know could bias people at your institution against you, leading them to think, "So-and-so really doesn't want to be here." Although I'd like to think this wouldn't effect how people would treat you (including in tenure and promotion), you never know what the effects will be. Finally, I just don't think an employer has any right to know that you are looking for work elsewhere. It's your career, not theirs--and I think you probably only have an obligation to let them know once you have accepted an offer elsewhere.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? Also, I'm very curious to hear what people think of a TT Assistant Prof applying for a tenured Associate position. Is there any realistic chance of a non-tenured person receiving a tenured appointment? I would have thought not, given how protracted the entire tenure process is (i.e. going through a department committee, college committee, Dean, Provost, and Board of Trustees). I seem to recall hearing that it is possible, but if so, I'm curious how it works and just how good an untenured candidate would need to be for this to happen.

The dissertation prospectus

A reader writes in:

I wanted to see if you have posts on the cocoon about the prospectus. I'm currently writing mine and I wanted to see what people think about it--e.g., it's purpose, the expectations, the features that make it good, etc. 

Interestingly, I don't think we've ever had a discussion of the dissertation prospectus before. My own sense is that the prospectus is primarily intended to evaluate whether one has a viable dissertation topic--one that can fly, as it were, even if you still need to work a lot out. And of course the prospectus defense can help to isolate potential problems and what you'll need to do in the rest of the dissertation. Beyond this, I'm not sure. What do you all think? I actually attempted the prospectus twice, so allow me to share my experience there, as some readers may find it helpful.

How do search committees sift through apps?

In our job market discussion thread, a reader asks:

Does anyone know how search committees typically sift through applications? Does the search committee look at applications before the deadline? Does every member of the search committee look at every application, or do they divide up applications before making a first cut?

These are great questions, and I expect many job candidates would be interested in hearing answers! Any search committee members willing to weigh in? In addition to answering the OP's questions, it might be great to hear a little as well from search committee members on how they actually read and evaluate apps. For example, how long do you spend, on average, on a candidate's file? Which parts of the file do you look at first, and what do you focus on? What matters to you most when deciding who to interview or place in the 'don't interview' pile? Etc.

Inferential model on women in philosophy

Katharina Nieswandt (Associate Professor of Philosophy, Concordia University) alerted me to this new study on the gender ratio in philosophy. To the best of the researchers' knowledge, it provides the first inferential-statistical model of the causes of gender-inequality in the profession. Their primary findings?:

Overall, our findings provide (of course defeasible) evidence for the claim that students choose philosophy because they perceive a good fit between philosophy, qua requiring brilliance, and themselves, qua being brilliant, combative, systematizing, and indifferent towards “worldly rewards,” like family-life and money.

Future research should investigate whether these factors are causes of the gender gap or perhaps partly the result of a self-serving, stereotypical image that philosophy students develop after choosing philosophy as their major (perhaps reinforced by the discipline’s culture).  More research is also needed of the relations between combativeness, systematizing, and the sense of belonging in philosophy:  Is combativeness really the driving factor behind gender differences on these variables, as our research suggests?  In addition, it would be important to test to what extent our results generalize to comparisons between philosophy and other fields than psychology.

Philosophical readers will ultimately be most interested in interventions. Foundational research rarely licenses pragmatic steps directly, of course, but the following two inferences appear justified:  First, there probably is no quick fix for philosophy’s unequal gender ratio, since that might be part and parcel of a general social perception of certain abilities, character traits and life priorities as female or male.  Second, pre-university interventions might be necessary, given the well-replicated finding that gender stereotypes develop early...