The Philosophers' Cocoon

Bias against innovation in peer review?

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

I don't know if this is the place to ask, but I wonder if there is some bias against innovative research in our profession, including publication. Do you have the impression that oftentimes the more interesting research has a harder time of being published than a very polished but a little boring paper? I have gone through a few rounds of grad student admissions, and I found that many colleagues are more sympathetic towards all-round okay candidates than those who appear to be very innovative but not so okay in some respects. I judge the latter to have a higher intellectual ability but the former seems to be standardly preferred. Sorry about the ranting---I am not sure if it makes sense to anybody besides me.

This is an interesting question, and I'm curious what readers think. Thankfully, there's actually quite a bit of research on this question on peer review in general, which Liam Kofi Bright, Remco Heesen, and I briefly touch upon on pp. 21-22 in our forthcoming BSPS paper, "Jury Theorems for Peer Review." In brief, to the extent that this has been studied, peer review does appear to have a conservative/status quo bias (see also here). But, in a way, this seems entirely natural to me. As the saying goes, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Insofar as innovative work takes chances and pushes the envelope (so to speak), it's quite natural for readers to be skeptical about it (this also just seems plausibly on Bayesian grounds). Fortunately, if the history of philosophy and science have shown anything, it's that innovative work can pass peer review regardless--and, of course, most of us serve as reviewers. So, if the OP is frustrated by what they take to be a bias against innovation, there are at least two things they can try to do to change things: try to publish innovative work and be open to it as a reviewer!

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

NPM paperback edition & review

This is just a quick note that my 2020 book, Neurofunctional Prudence & Morality: A Philosophical Theory, is now out in paperback ($22.95). The book also just received this nice review in Journal of Moral Philosophy, where Gregory Robson (Iowa State University) calls it "a stimulating and important book on the natures and complex interrelations of prudence, morality, and neuroscience." You can get another 20% off by entering the discount code below!:

Tips and resources for philosophers with ADHD?

We recently had a request from a philosopher who has ADHD for any tips, resources, etc. How can you flourish as a grad student, undergrad, or faculty member with ADHD in philosophy?

If you can talk about personal experience and what helps you, or otherwise know of resources, this would be much appreciated! You can put this in the replies to this post.

Universities treating students as customers

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

At my university (in Australasia) administrators have claimed that students are customers or clients, using terms like "stakeholders" to describe not only current enrollees but also school leavers we are "targeting" for "marketing purposes." A few years ago I read a comprehensive article that argued why we shouldn't believe that students are customers. I'd like to hear from readers of the Cocoon whether they agree or disagree with my administration's sentiment, i.e., that students are customers and that we faculty are contractually obligated to provide them with a product (a degree?) or service (learning?). Second, if readers have recommendations for where I can find arguments like this (either for or against the aforementioned thesis), I'd appreciate them sharing the URL or source. Thank you!

I'd love to hear what readers think about this too. I've always naturally rebelled against this way of conceiving students, considering a university education a privilege rather than a purchased product. I suspect that many (most?) readers will object to this way of conceiving of students too, but that most of us also probably recognize that, regardless, universities have become big businesses. Not sure what can be done about it, but I'd be very curious to hear what other readers think about all of this! 

Measuring publishing success?

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

I know the mere thought of measuring success in philosophy might be unacceptable to some, but here’s where the question came from, at least to me. I just started my first job, a non-TT job. I have under 50 citations from 5 publications in leiterian journals. My brother-in-law, who has a non-TT job in one of the STEM fields, on the other hand, has over 30 publications and 200 citations. This is not coming from him, he’s totally a nice guy, but from the elders at the family table, belittling me because of my publication volume and citation count.

So generally, what would be a decent publication volume and citation count for philosophers? I know the answer will vary according to sub-disciplines and the “quality” of the publications. Or rather, how can one explain on the dining table that one’s doing ok-ish in research?

I'm really sorry to hear that this reader was belittled by family members. One reader submitted the following reply, which I entirely agree with:

I think you should avoid such dinner table conversations. If people do not understand that there are disciplinary differences, then you are going to find yourself engaging in some very unproductive conversations. My own career, especially the early stages, made no sense to my father who own and ran a business.

However, if the OP does want to respond to their belittling family members, the first thing they should know, I think, is that publication rates are vastly different across fields:

Still on grad school wait lists?

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

I am an international student who applied to PhD programs in the US this past application round. I was rejected by all schools except for one, which put me on a waitlist of six in mid-April with me being “high on the list.” Yet to this day there is no final word on my application, neither via email nor through the application portal. I emailed the DGS two months ago for an update but didn’t hear back. My question is: is it all too common to have an application pending at this time of the year? Thanks!

Good question. One reader submitted the following reply:

I would email the DGS again and ask; it is highly unusual that they still haven’t notified you about the outcome. Best of luck!

But another reader added:

I recall a friend being admitted to a law school program on Sept 1 - after being short listed - and the school term began in 6 or 7 days. That is an extreme case, but it happens. He ended up finishing about 12th in his class (which is quite high). And I do recall a few late entries where I did my grad school in philosophy.

It does seem to me to be extremely late to still be on a wait list, but you never know. Do any other readers (either grad students or grad admissions committee members) have any helpful insights to share?

A guide for academic self-promotion on Twitter and other fora

This is an expanded version of a thread I did recently on self-promotion. Many academics find the concept of self-promotion on social media somewhat icky, but it is often necessary, especially for junior academics. I find self-promotion by others very useful because it gives me the opportunity to learn new things from them, especially outside of the fields I am working on. 

 

While it's possible to be obnoxious in self-promotion (a topic for another time, perhaps) I think many people err on the side of under-promoting their own work. Here is a list of what I deem best practices, by which I mean, practices that are most helpful for the recipient. Since attention is a limited resource, these practices help the recipient to more efficiently decide: is this something I could be interested in? Writing from the perspective of the recipient, I do not intend to speak for everyone but it's a datapoint you can consider. 

1. Where to promote? I am a fan of Twitter. Facebook etc. is also fine though they are mostly to people who already know you. Twitter helps you to also reach new audiences and expand your network. Put in your bio your scholarly interests, maybe your bylines (recent book published, journals published in). I tend to follow back people who put something professional in their bio (e.g., "Early modern philosophy", "Chinese philosophy", "PhD student at XX"), but it's up to you. 
2. Do not hesitate to use the "pin" feature on Twitter. You can pin one link and you can change it to whatever you want your audience to find. I've found so many wonderful papers and books because people pin them! Especially something that will appeal to potentially a wider audience, you should pin. My personal sense is that a piece of public philosophy in a good venue (such as Aeon or Boston Review) is more useful to pin than a specialist academic article, because you reach journalists and people from other fields this way. Monographs are always good to pin.
3. When you link to the paper/book you wish to promote, put a brief description. I'm likely not going to click on a bald link or "My paper in [journal] just appeared," unless it's centrally in areas that interest me. Better is 1-2 sentences on what your main finding/idea is.
4. Paywalls are horrible. Many people you are in conversation with are not academics and still want to read what you have to say (e.g., alt-ac people, journalists). It's good practice to put a link to a freely available version, such as a latest draft on PhilPapers or your own website. In a second, linked tweet, you can put a link to the published version. This might matter for Altmetric and also for those people who want to see the final published version.
5. If you want to go above and beyond, you might consider a little thread (of linked tweets) summarizing the main points of your paper. I know it's effort but it is effort that pays off.  That helps viewers decide if they want to put in the effort of reading the entire paper, especially if it is not central to what they're working on.
6. If the research is in collaboration with junior colleagues, and you are senior, here's also an opportunity to lift them up. This is especially important for grad students/postdocs e.g., "lead author is [twitterhandle]--see their website for the cool stuff they're up to!"  Similarly, you can tag members of your team.
7. Attention is a zero-sum game, but it always pays to give credit generously. If you work with communities e.g., Indigenous communities, refugees etc, also important to make link to any web presence they have and amplify their voices. 
8. Worries about how often to promote yourself? While it may start to look self-aggrandizing at some point, the fact of the matter is there is so much out there, so much competition for attention, that I think it is OK to repeat-tweet something that had little uptake (don't retweet, just make a new tweet). The pin feature also gets rid of this worry.
9. I like to tweet works by others I find interesting. While this seems like it competes with self-promotion it makes your profile a more interesting place to spend time with. What I've seen some people do (but I don't have the discipline for that) make a challenge of reading/tweeting a new paper every day for a set period of time. It is also just nice to help to amplify work you find valuable, also work you had no hand in creating.
10. When to tweet your new publication? To me it seems fine to pick the following moments: when the paper is accepted (note, I like to play safe and not when still minor revisions are pending, YMMV) you could write "my paper [title] just got accepted in [journal]. If you like a copy, DM me". Once it appears you tweet a link to the paper and your own archived copy (see above). You could even be cheeky and reamplify once it gets assigned an issue. 

There's a lot competing for our attention--while there's only so much research people read in a day it's important to reach the widest potential audience. We benefit from reading widely, especially outside of our normal areas.

 

Good synergy happens.  So don't feel shy to self-promote. 

Reflecting on the Job Market Journey

Several weeks ago, I learned that my most recent job search yielded what should be a long-term position. In the upcoming fall, I’ll be joining the University of Arizona as a member of both its philosophy department and the W. A. Franke Honors College as an Assistant Professor of Practice. While the position is not tenure eligible, it carries the same promotional ranks as a “standard” Assistant Professor position and operates on long-term contracts. My hope and expectation is that the University of Arizona will be my home for the foreseeable future. (Prepping for this transition is part of why I've been preoccupied the last few weeks and have not posted anything in that time.)

The post-COVID job market was not favorable, even by the appallingly low standards of the typical job search in academic philosophy. While the number of tenure-track job openings returned to near pre-COVID levels, the market seemed even more saturated with candidates than usual because the job offerings the previous year had been so meager. While I had a few interviews heading into April, none of them had yielded any tangible results. If that sounds familiar, that’s because it was eerily similar to what transpired last time. But April yielded a new cluster of interviews – a combination of visiting jobs and long-term positions. I even got invited for a campus visit midway through the month. Ultimately, I missed out on that particular job but was offered a visiting position near the end of April. In early May, just before I had to make a decision about the offer in hand, I got the news from Arizona.

I’m thrilled with how it all ended, but having reached this juncture, I have been thinking about how much it required. Here is a short encapsulation of each time I was on the job market and what the results were:

• 2016–2017: 90 applications; 4 interviews; 1 job offer
• 2017–2018: 19 applications; 1 interview; 0 job offers
• 2018–2019: 118 applications; 13 interviews; 3 job offers
• 2021–2022: 54 applications; 7 interviews; 2 job offers

You may notice that there’s a great deal of variance in the application numbers each year. My second job search was a soft search: my postdoctoral position was guaranteed for a second year, so there was no pressing need to find another job. I applied selectively to tenure-track positions for which I thought I was a good fit. My first and third searches were more strenuous endeavors where I went to far greater lengths trying to secure academic employment. The 2018–2019 search almost destroyed me, however. It was simply too time-consuming and emotionally taxing to apply for that many jobs, so on this most recent job search, I opted to be more selective. My target number of applications was 60, and when I received my first offer, I had exactly 6 jobs left in my spreadsheet that I intended to apply for.

Summer sounds

The in-person conference quandary

This June I went to my first in-person conference in over two years. It was in UMSL, which is in the town I'm currently based in (St Louis), so it was an easy transition. And it was lovely--exhausting but lovely. I also have a couple of more events lined up this fall. After a hiatus of in-person conferencing,  there's a general sense for many academics that "it's endemic now." We can't really expect improvements in vaccine effectiveness or transmission rates, so basically we have to do life under these circumstances. And academic life involves (for many of us) in-person conferences.

But I worry that this creates disparity in opportunities and professional development, exacerbating disparities that already exist in many cases, such as for disabled and chronically ill people. 

I got Covid in late April 2022 after being very cautious for over two years, and was quite sick for several weeks (sicker I thought I would be given that I got the full vaccination and a booster.) For the few weeks after recovery I reckoned I was OK in terms of immunity and went to a few events that I normally still deem to risky, such as a lovely dinner organized by the local Jesuit training center which is associated to SLU. It was a great event and the food was great, but it was also a very poorly ventilated area with so many people.

Explaining job titles in applications?

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

I hope I can pose a neurotic and basically trivial question. I'm a junior academic in the UK whose official job title is 'lecturer' but it is a permanent position. Is it wise or appropriate to explain on my CV or website that the position is equivalent to what is called 'assistant professor', which it is what it is called at some other UK institutions and the closest thing to the position in most of the rest of the anglophone world?

I think that virtually everyone on a hiring committee knows what a Lecturer is in the UK, so although I could be wrong, I don't think that warrants explanation in a job application. However, I am curious about job titles in other countries--for example, I know someone who was a Research Fellow in Australia, but I don't know exactly what that means, and I know that in some European countries, recent PhDs often have to complete Habilitations and hold Privatdozent positions, which sort of sound like postdocs and non-tenure track positions, but again, I'm not exactly sure! What do readers think? When (if ever) should job applicants explain their job titles in their application materials? For what kinds of positions, and why?

Dealing with unresponsive journals (again)?

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

Here's a(nother) question about dealing with unresponsive journals:

I submitted a paper last summer (2021). It is with a good journal in my subfield and is one of my better papers. It initially received a 'revise and resubmit, no commitment to publishing' in November '21, and I resubmitted in December '21. The paper has been untouched since then (i.e., for about seven months). The editors have not responded to two emails asking whether the paper is still actively under review.

When do I pull out? At the nine-month mark? The one-year mark? I would of course like to publish with them, but continuing to wait could lead to problems for my career. Thanks in advance for any advice.

Good questions. We've discussed how to handle slow and unresponsive journals before, but the question seems to come up fairly often, so I think it's important to discuss. Personally, I think I'd send the editors one more email and pull the paper within a week or two if they don't respond. There are always other good journals out there, and if you got a revise-and-resubmit at this journal, chances are you'll get one (or perhaps even an acceptance) at another good journal. But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Thanking previous referees in submissions?

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

I have a paper that was rejected from a journal, but with an unbelievably helpful referee report that is instrumental in rewriting the paper. How do I acknowledge this anonymous reviewer when I resubmit the paper to a new journal? Is it odd to acknowledge a reviewer from a previous journal's review process in a new submission?

Good question. Another reader submitted the following reply:

[U]sually submissions should not include any acknowledgements, so then there's no problem. Once the paper is accepted and you add acknowledgements you can acknowledge a reviewer from a previous journal.

I respectfully disagree. When I submit papers to journals, I often include acknowledgments to anonymous referees--usually in footnotes at places in the paper that have been substantially revised due to referees' suggestions. I don't mention which journal(s) the referees were from, as I think that could introduce biases into the review process. But I tend to thank referees because I think they deserve the acknowledgment, and because I worry that if I incorporated a ton of their feedback into the paper without acknowledging them, it might irritate them (or worse) if they are asked to review the paper again for the new journal. I've also never been asked to remove these kinds of acknowledgments in an initial submission precisely because they are anonymized (though if I ever were asked to remove them, of course I would). My understanding at any rate, has always been that the reason that journals ask you to "remove acknowledgments" is to preserve anonymized review and prevent bias (which might occur, obviously, if you write things like, "I thank Derek Parfit and audiences at NYU and Princeton for their feedback").

Anyway, this is just what I do and my experience with my approach. What do you all think?

Norms for travel reimbursement in the COVID era?

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

What are the current norms about COVID and travel reimbursement? For example, suppose one gets invited for an in-person talk and the host promises to pay. But due to COVID, the trip had to be cancelled, the talk had to be given online, and some travel arrangements are unrefundable. Should the host pay? Or, for example, suppose one is traveling using university money, but again the trip had to be cancelled, is it still okay to submit the unrefundable travel costs for reimbursement?

Good questions. My experience is that many universities have strict policies governing these kinds of things, such that if you don't actually travel it's against their rules to submit travel reimbursements. So, on that, I'd be careful and forthright with your university about your situation. Hopefully, they'll be understanding. In terms of invited talks, if the in-person visit is canceled, it seems to me that the host should clearly cover non-refundable costs. But these are just my thoughts and experiences. What are yours?

Contributing to journal special issues?

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

Are journal special issues worth anything?

I have just seen a call for papers for a special issue of a journal. I have a paper in preparation that would fit exactly into this special issue. However, the journal is somewhat lower ranked than I would optimally hope to publish in (I know journal rankings are probably mostly bullshit, but I need a job).

So, is there any advantage to publishing in a special issue? And is this advantage big enough to accept say a 10 ranking drop in journal ranking?

These are good questions, and I'm curious to hear what readers think. One reader submitted the following reply:

I think where you place your paper really matters. People read and cite my work that is published in Philosophy of Science and Synthese more than they read and cite my work published in more obscure journals. Further, journal ranking matters because it is one "short cut" people use in deciding which of the many new papers in their area they should read.

This seems to me a common view, but I'm not so sure about it. Some of my most-cited pieces are in relatively obscure journals. Also, it may be worth considering what the special issue as a whole looks like. For example, I was recently invited to contribute to a special issue in a journal that I hadn't heard of before, but it was an attractive invitation not only because I had a piece that I really wanted to write on the topic, but also because the special issue editor and other contributors are excellent, well-known philosophers. So, even though it's a journal that I hadn't heard of, I expect it will probably get read by people interested in the topic. But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?