An (informal) service for matching early-career folk for feedback?

Following some of our recent discussions on peer-review and feedback, I've had an email exchange with Scott Forschler (Independent Scholar), who asked whether I've ever given any thought to a service matching early-career philosopher to exchange feedback akin to our Job-Market Mentoring Program. In all honesty, no, it never occurred to me--but as someone who works in a tiny department myself and has trouble getting feedback on unpublished material, it strikes me as a great idea!

Would anyone be interested in me putting together such a service--perhaps quite a bit more informally than the Mentoring Program? I could perhaps keep a spreadsheet of people who contact me in need of feedback--arranged, say, by AOS or paper-topic--and then serve as an intermediary matching people working on similar topics. What does everyone think of the idea? Any suggestions? Given time-constraints on my side, it would probably have to be pretty informal so that it would be easy for me to do--but if people think it would be helpful, I'm happy to do it!

Any thoughts? 

Comments

[Louis Chartrand]

This sounds like an awesome idea. I would definitly use this. And would be willing to contribute in setting it up.

[Elisa Freschi]

Thanks for putting some effort into it. However: Why not just using the "Session" feature on Academia.edu?

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi Elisa: is the session thing in academia private? My sense has been that it makes one's paper visible on the site, but maybe I'm wrong. Also, don't you have to invite people to take part in a session? The service I'm proposing would do more than that: it would match people working on similar things to exchange their work. Finally, I know quite a few people who don't like academia.edu or who don't use it because of the site's profit-focused business model (which increasingly charges users for access to site features).

[Elisa Freschi]

Marcus, it is private and you can invite whoever you want. Plus, people who have similar research interests get notified about the session and may ask to join it (you will have to allow it or not). But I see your point about the fact that some people dislike Academia.edu (perhaps we should dedicate a post to it? In my subfield, there has recently been a very interesting discussion of its pros and cons).