The Philosophers' Cocoon

What are your university's tenure standards?

Last month, I began a new series on tenure. Basically, the hope is to give people who have never been through the process a better idea of what it is like, including what tenure standards are like at different types of institutions. I am hopeful that the series will not only benefit grad students and job-marketeers, but also the profession more broadly--so that we can all reflect on different types of practices, institutional processes, standards, and so on. In my first post in the series, I asked readers to share how clearly their university's tenure standards were conveyed at the time they were offered their jobs. Although there were not a ton of comments, some readers indicated that tenure standards were made clear by the time of offer, whereas others reported only being given a vague picture. However, the general consensus seemed to be that to the extent that tenure standards are conveyed by the time of offer, they tend to only be shared verbally rather than in writing. This all coheres with my own experience.

In today's post, I'd like to solicit reader comments to a broader question: what in fact are the tenure standards at your institution? Given that this question asks not only what people were conveyed at the time of their job offer, but rather what their institution's tenure standards in fact are (or, at any rate, appear to be), my hope is that we will get a lot more data on this one. Here, more specifically, are the questions I'd like to put to readers:

1. What type of institution are you at? An 'elite R1' (Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, etc.)? A 'non-elite R1' (see here)? A 'Leiter-ranked R1'? An 'R2' (see here)? An 'elite SLAC' (selective liberal arts college)? A 'non-elite SLAC' (small liberal arts college)? Community college? Some category of university outside of the North American system? In which country?
2. What matters most in tenure decisions at your institution?:Research? Teaching? Service? Can you assign a rough percentage to each area in terms of how much they seem to matter?
3. What do the tenure standards at your institution appear to be in each area?: What counts as necessary (and sufficient?) in research for tenure? What about teaching? Service? Etc.

I really look forward to hearing people's answers, and hope a lot of people choose to chime in! I'll chime in down in the comments section as well. 

What should the APA do for non-TT faculty?

A couple of months ago, I began a new series on the rights of non-tenure-track faculty. In the first post in the series, I asked the blog's non-TT readers to chime in on what they take to be important professional issues they face. Then, using the feedback on that post, I ran a poll asking non-TT readers to report how important each issue is to them, as well on which of the issues they think the American Philosophical Association (APA) should do more to address. Then, in my last post in the series, I reported the results of the poll. One interesting result was that respondents thought the APA should be doing more on all of the issues, the results being as follows

The American Philosophical Association (APA) should do more to address this issue (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree):

1. 1. Lack of job security: 4.54
   2. Relative deprivation (less pay & benefits than similarly qualified people): 4.29
   3. Lack of respect in the discipline of academic philosophy: 4.20
   4. Absolute deprivation: 4.15
   5. Unjust inequity (unequal pay for equal work): 3.98 
   6. Lack of opportunities for promotion: 3.95
   7. Lack of union representation: 3.88
   8. Lack of academic freedom: 3.73
   9. Being treated as a second-class citizen at work (with their university/department): 3.68
   10. Never feeling like I belong (a visitor in my own department): 3.56

The question I'd now like to pose to readers is this: what can and should the APA realistically do to better address these issues? I'd like to ask interested readers to simply brainstorm and discuss ideas in the comments section below. My hope is that by thinking together, we may be able to come up with some promising possibilities! One obvious possibility is that the APA could issue statements on these issues--but they have already made one back in 1994, and my sense is that statements, while nice, probably don't accomplish that much practically speaking (as evidenced, in this case, by the ever-increasing reliance on adjuncts in the academy since 1994). So, what else could and should the APA do?

What do you all think? It would be great to hear from both TT and non-TT faculty on this (as well as, potentially, APA officers), as I think people in different types of professional positions may be sensitive to different relevant practical issues. 

Elements of a good professional website?

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

I wanted to ask for any advice on how to design a personal academic website. I will soon have my first publication out and thought it would be a good idea to have a web page for people to find out who I am. However, I am not sure what makes for a 'good' academic webpage. For example, should one have one's photograph featured prominently on the front page, as some philosophers do? Is the 'Papers' page simply a list of all publications, or is it helpful to e.g. include abstracts and context, to group papers together in subjects, etc.? Is it good to include personal details about e.g. hobbies, or does this detract from the main goal? I am not aware of any discussions on this topic, and would appreciate any advice people have, or indeed examples of 'good' academic webpages.

Really good questions! What does everyone think? I think it would good to hear what people think in response to the reader's various questions, as well as for readers to link in the comment section below to webpages they think think are particularly good! Here are a few brief thoughts of my own.

Recycling dissertation text in articles

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

What are the ethical norms surrounding recycling text from PhD theses into journal articles? I've heard many say that it is a good idea to write your thesis in such a way that you can convert it to publications, but at the same time, isn't self-plagiarism an offense? Or is the deciding factor whether or not you're at the sort of an institution that publishes dissertations (e.g., in an online repository)? Even if recycling text from a PhD thesis is considered acceptable, can journals reject a paper on grounds that it's not novel because it's too similar to the PhD thesis?

Full disclosure, in my case I'm working on a dissertation by publication. However there's material in my introduction that I would be eager to reuse. I'm at an institution that publishes all dissertations online.

Interesting questions I haven't thought about before. In brief, my sense is that there is nothing wrong or unusual about recycling text from dissertation chapters in published articles. First, I don't think it counts as self-plagiarism. Self-plagiarism involves recycling previously published work without citing it. Generally speaking, though, when people publish (usually revised) dissertation chapters as articles, they usually indicate this somewhere--typically in the acknowledgments section (viz. "This article is a revised version of the first chapter of my PhD dissertation. I thank..."). Further, dissertations are only nominally published. Yes, they are technically "published" by your university, but they are also academic work completed in fulfillment of a degree--and generally speaking, the only way to disseminate your dissertation research more broadly is through publishing it in some further venues (e.g. as journal articles or a book). Second, I don't think journals have any problem publishing stuff from dissertations, as it's pretty much expected that people publish stuff from their dissertation. The only thing I think is probably worth being aware here is that dissertation chapters probably usually need a substantial amount of revision before being publishable--due primarily to differences in stylistic expectations (dissertations usually contain a great deal more background exposition that journal articles, where the focus is usually--almost entirely--on the author's positive argument).

But perhaps I am missing something. Any readers disagree or have any other insight?

Re-reviewing unrevised papers?

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

I was asked by a tippy-top journal about a year ago to review a paper on a topic that is squarely in my wheelhouse. I'm one of a pretty small number of people extremely well suited (research-area wise, at least) to review the paper. Because it's a tippy-top journal with an extremely low accept rate, I spent a LOT of time on the review. I try to be very conscientious about reviews generally, but this was especially careful. My review was about 10pp. Note: I'm tenured at a research institution. I returned the review promptly.

There were some very big mistakes--it was a good idea, but had some very serious problems. I offered a lot of comments about how to avoid the problems, some key pieces to cite, and suggested that with those improvements it was a publishable piece (if not at that tippiest toppiest journal). THe journal shared the EIC decision and the other reviewer's comments. The other reviewer's concerns overlapped with mine.

Now I have received a request to review the paper again from another (excellent, if not quite as rarefied) journal. The paper was attached in the request, and it has not changed. Like, none of the very important problems I pointed out have been addressed at all. None of the other reviewer's excellent comments were addressed. My guess is that the paper went straight back out to at least one (possibly two) other excellent journals without addressing the comments (on which I, and at least one other scholar--maybe one of you!--spent a great deal of time), was rejected again, and is now coming back to me.

So, I'm a bit irked by that. This person is clogging up the review process. I know that lots of advice around here is to turn around articles quickly, not spend too much time meeting reviewers' idiosynchratic criticisms, etc. But this strikes me as a case of serious free-loading, and it makes me reluctant to review papers (or to review them conscientiously).

I guess this post is mostly a rant--sorry about that. But I do need advice. How do I respond?

a. I could simply decline to review with no reason given. No doubt I'm biased in that I thought my own comments were good.

b. I could decline but warn the EIC that this appears to be a person just shotgunning their paper out there, and asking others to review is a burden that won't result in a modified paper.

c. I could neither accept nor decline and share my prior review with the EIC.

d. else?

There were already a few replies to this comment in the read, but I'd like to hear what more people think, as I suspect this happens a lot. Ref replied:

Just tell the Editor that will not review the paper because you reviewed the paper for another journal, and it has not changed, despite the many comments you provided.

anon then added:

I understand your frustration. But I've been on the other side of a similar situation, so here's my own take on what went down in my case:

(1) I got rejected from Journal X, with a lot of comments and the assertion that even if I revised the paper, it would be publishable but not in as elite a place as Journal X.

(2) I read the comments and made the judgment call that they weren't necessary revisions.

(3) I submitted the paper to equally prestigious Journal Y.

(4) I received an R&R from Journal Y, with very, very different comments. (i.e., attending to the previous comments would have done nothing to help me with the objections I received from Journal Y.)

(5) I made those revisions and published the paper.

Obviously, what matters is how truly necessary the comments are - maybe you're right, and the author really should have revised their paper. But this is something that epistemic peers disagree about quite a lot.

As for what you should do in your case: if you're now willing to give this author an R&R, maybe you can work things out with them in the back and forth where you get to see the revision letter, i.e., the author's reasoning concerning your comments.

Finally, Amanda wrote:

If I have a situation like that I do not accept or decline, but I write the editor and say, "I have already reviewed this paper for another journal." And then I add one comment about what I thought about the paper. If I thought it was a bad paper and it hadn't changed, I would say, "My review was not favorable."

I kind of think it's fair to give the paper to a new reviewer, given all the disagreements in philosophy among equally smart and equally qualified persons. I also wouldn't hold it too much against the author for not changing anything. Maybe they were told by others they trust that the paper is fine as it is, maybe they are coming up for tenure and didn't have time to make the changes and decided to hedge their bets. I just don't think it's the referees job to judge the decision not to make changes. It is the referees job to judge the paper.

I'm on the same page with these readers. Here's one thing that I have heard of happening before (indeed, I suspect it has happened to me before). You draft up a paper, let's say it's 8,000 words - the maximum word count for one tippy-top journal, Mind (see here). The paper got a good response at conferences, but the first journal you send it to, reviewers find 'problems' and so you revise the paper to 10K words to address those concerns. That lands you at the word-count limit for a bunch of other journals. So, you send it to some of those journals, and the reviewers find more problems. So, you revise and now the paper is 12K words. You see where this is going, right? The more reviewers who read a given paper, the more problems they are likely to find--and you'll keep revising the paper upward, have fewer journals you can send the paper to...and the new reviewers at new journals may be likely to find new problems they think you need to address!

I recently heard someone (I think it was Mike Huemer) suggest this is less a problem with authors than it is with how some (many?) reviewers regard their task as reviewers. Many reviewers seem to think that if a paper has 'problems', then they should ask for revisions or reject the paper outright. But, Huemer suggested (and I agree), this isn't how reviewers should regard their job. Every paper, even many of the most influential ones in the discipline, have problems. The question shouldn't be whether a paper has problems, but whether it is worth thinking about and exposing a journal's readers to. Now, of course, if as a reviewer you find a paper totally uninteresting or its argument clearly bad, then sure, recommend rejection. But I don't think we should be rejecting every paper that has problems, or require every problem to be addressed in revisions. Problems are not in and of themselves reasons to reject papers. They may very well be interesting problems for the subsequent literature to find and address (e.g. in response papers, etc.). 

More generally, I am inclined to think that we, as reviewers, should err on the side of epistemic humility. There are just too many documented cases of reviewers being "sure" a given paper has serious problems...and those very papers either literally going on to win the Nobel Prize (!) or otherwise going on to become classics in their field. If you think a paper is bad, feel free to say so in a review. But, if you get asked to review the paper again, do everyone a favor and just decline: give another reviewer an opportunity to review the paper. If the paper is as bad as you think it is, then another reviewer will almost certainly find the same issues you found and reject the paper again. I understand cases like this may seem like they 'clog the system', but honestly I think this is just the price we pay for a bad publishing system.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Application tips for non-faculty jobs

In our newest “how can we help you?” thread, Peter Perkins writes:

As it appears that my job search this year will be pretty bleak, I wanted to ask about those who have applied for non-faculty jobs on campus with a PhD. I am interested in working in the university setting even if I am not in front of a philosophy classroom. Does anyone have experience, for example, working in a writing or tutoring center? How about work in instructional design or pedagogy for faculty? Early jobs in administration?

Anyone have any helpful tips?

Recommendation letter conundrum

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

I have a question about the ethics of recommendation letter writing. Some time ago a former student approached me and asked whether I would consider writing a letter of recommendation for his masters application. At the time I told him that I was willing to write a letter, but that I would expect for the student to work with me through the application process. By this I mean, I wanted to see drafts of the student's writing sample and statement of interest. This was in part to improve the student's application by providing feedback, and in part to give myself more exposure to the student's writing which would, in turn, improve my letter.

Since then, the student's revisions have been consistently very poor and hastily thrown together, and I am starting to wonder whether I can, in good conscience, write a strong recommendation. It's too late in the process for me to expect the student to seek out an alternative letter writer. My question, then, is whether anybody has advice on how I should conduct myself: should I be as honest as possible, to the point of (presumably) damaging the student's prospects, or should I perhaps restrict the focus of my letter to the student's course work that they wrote for me over a year ago (which is somewhat better than what they've since shown me)?

I should add that this would be my first time writing a letter of recommendation for a student.

I'm very curious to hear what everyone else thinks, but here are my two cents. It seems to me the thing to do here is to probably sit the student down and be kind but forthright with them, letting them know of your reservations and the reasons for them. See what they say. Maybe they just weren't very aware of how hastily thrown together their work seems--and maybe they'll take it as a big wake-up call to do better. Who knows, maybe they'll go back and put together some very good revisions. That, I think, would tell you something about them (e.g. about their resilience and willingness to work hard). On the other hand, if they respond poorly, then that tells you something about them too. Either way, you have more to go on in making a further decision about whether to still write a letter, and if so what kind of letter to write.

But these are just my two cents. What are yours?

Philosophy in Iceland

This is the thirteenth installment of The Cocoon Goes Global, a series that gives a sense of what the philosophy profession looks like outside of the Anglophone West. This is a guest contribution by Finnur Dellsén, Associate Professor at the University of Iceland.

The first thing to say about Iceland concerns its size. With a population of around 380,000, around 250,000 of which live in or near the capital, Reykjavik, the opportunities for philosophers who want to work in Iceland are inevitably rather limited. My guess is that the total number of philosophers employed at Icelandic universities is around 20 to 30, although there of course many more philosophers working elsewhere in Icelandic society – including in high school, publishing, and the media. Most academic philosophers work at the University of Iceland, located in Reykjavik, which is by far the largest university and the only one that offers a full-time studies in philosophy.

The structure of Icelandic academia has been influenced by the Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden) in several respects. A student‘s first university degree is normally a three-year Bachelor degree, followed by a two-year Masters degree, and a doctoral degree which is official three years (but usually takes longer to complete in practice). Most Icelandic universities, including the University of Iceland, are run by the state, and they are almost exclusively financed by taxation rather than by student tuition. Thus, one‘s entire university education is more-or-less free and accessible regardless of one‘s financial situation.

For those who are interested in doing philosophy for a living, the difficult part is getting an academic job once you have finished studying for your PhD. Even those who have studied abroad at prestigious universities and published in top journals usually cannot expect to secure a permanent position in Iceland until 10 to 15 years after graduating. Unfortunately, it is also quite difficult to secure postdoctoral positions and other temporary research positions in Iceland, so many philosophers are forced into hourly teaching contracts and various other precarious, temporary, and poorly-paid jobs. It goes without saying that many talented philosophers have given up on securing an academic job for this reason.

However, those who are fortunate enough to get one of the few jobs on offer are quite fortunate indeed. Advertised jobs are usually for a "lektor", which is roughly equivalent to a "Lecturer" in the UK and an "assistant professor" in the US. Unlike the US assistant professorships, these are not "tenure-track" position, but rather permanent positions (subject only to a minor review in one‘s fifth year, which is more a formality than anything like an American "tenure review"). So one is effectively tenured once one gets one‘s first permanent job. Unlike the UK, however, it is not particularly difficult to advance up the ranks to become a "dósent" ("Reader"/"associate professor"), and then "prófessor" (full professor). Indeed, it is not uncommon for Icelandic academics to be promoted immediately when they are hired into their first permanent position.

Norms for conference submissions?

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

Some questions about views on the norms/ethics of applying to conferences:

1. Is it objectionable to apply to conferences which overlap, such that if I'm accepted by both conferences, I'll have to turn one of them down?

2. If it's not objectionable to apply to overlapping conferences, would it be objectionable not to immediately withdraw an application from one of the conferences if I get into the other conference, even if I would prefer to go to the conference I haven't heard from yet and thus prefer to wait until I hear back? I assume that this depends in part on how long it'll be until I hear from the second conference.

Good questions. Anyone have any good answers?

How can we help you? (January 2020)

Now that it's a new year, I thought it might be a good time for another "how can we help you?" thread.

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.

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

• The job-market (applying for jobs, etc.)
• Graduate school
• Publishing
• Teaching
• Issues in the profession
• Work-life balance
• Personal struggles
• Etc.

Fire away - we're here to help! 

Mehta's teaching (and research) resources

Neil Mehta (Yale-NUS) writes in:

I've recently put together a revised set of handouts for teaching philosophy, including handouts on understanding evidence, using various argument forms, developing objections, and being precise. I wonder if you'd be willing to post a link to this on Phil. Cocoon:

http://www.profneilmehta.com/resources.html

Mehta also has a helpful writing guide for professional philosophers on the page, as well. Many thanks to Neil for drawing my attention to them. I hope some readers find them helpful!

Web of Knowledge method for where to submit

Charles Lassiter (Gonzaga University) writes in:

When I was in grad school, I didn't have much guidance in publishing, including where to submit manuscripts. One trick I recently stumbled on is using Web of Knowledge to figure out which journals publish the greatest volume of material on a particular topic T in the last X years. I describe the process of searching for journals that publish on topic T and visualizing the results. My hunch is that there are at least a few grad students with absentee mentors who could use a method for figuring out where their papers are least likely to get a desk rejection because it doesn't fit with the current trajectory of the journal. The post is here. 

A really interesting and helpful method!

Nature column on submission tips

A reader wrote in suggesting I link to this Nature column on some small things authors should be aware of that can make a difference in peer review. I especially agree with the point about avoiding acronyms. Although many published papers use them, I usually find them unnecessary and tend to think they make papers harder to follow.

Survey results: non-TT faculty issues

A couple of months ago, I began a new series on the rights of non-tenure-track faculty. In the first post in the series, I asked the blog's non-TT readers to chime in on what they take to be important professional issues they face. The issues identified were:

• Absolute deprivation (e.g. poor pay and/or benefits)
• Relative deprivation (less pay, benefits, and/or job security than similarly qualified individuals)
• Lack of job-security (e.g. year-to-year or semester-by-semester contracts)
• Lack of opportunities for promotion
• Lack of union representation
• Never feeling like you belong (always feeling like a 'visitor' in your own department/institution)
• Being treated as a second-class citizen at work
• Lack of respect in the discipline of academic philosophy (e.g. only people with tenure-track jobs matter)
• Unjust inequity (unequal pay for equal work)
• Lack of academic freedom

Then, in the next post in the series, I ran an informal survey asking the following questions about the issues identified:

• Q1 - This is a serious problem I face as a non-tenure-track member of academic philosophy.
• Q2 - The American Philosophical Association (APA) should do more to address this issue.
• Q3 - Please rank the following in terms of importance to you as a non-tenure-track member of the profession.
• Q4 - My answers to the above questions are based on my experiences working as:

Although this was only an informal survey (with all of the attendant methodological issues thereunto), here are the results (N = 44 respondents):

Q1 - This is a serious problem I face as a non-tenure-track member of academic philosophy.

Here is the breakdown by mean (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree):

1. Lack of job security: 4.65
2. Lack of opportunities for promotion: 4.23
3. Relative deprivation (less pay, etc., than similarly qualified individuals): 3.95
4. Unjust inequity (unequal pay for equal work): 3.86
5. Lack of respect in the discipline of academic philosophy: 3.79
6. Never feeling like I belong (a visitor in my own department): 3.62
7. Being treated like a second-class citizen at work: 3.42
8. Lack of union representation: 2.98
9. Lack of academic freedom: 2.93
10. Absolute deprivation: 2.88

Some interesting results here are that respondents agreed most strongly with lack of job security, opportunities, and relative deprivation as serious issues, whereas the mean responses to (8)-(10) (union representation, academic freedom, and absolute deprivation) align with "neither agree nor disagree."

However, when eyeballing the data, the latter results appear to be confounded by the respondent's type of job. Respondents who self-reported as adjunct instructors appear more likely to agree that union representation, academic freedom, and absolute deprivation are important issues they face (though there was some considerable variance on all three issues even among the adjunct respondents).