Publishing after leaving academia?

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

I am no longer in academic philosophy and recently transitioned into a new career doing something unrelated. While making that transition I had papers under review. The rejections are starting to come back and I am wondering what to do with them. I’m hesitant to shop them out again as I no longer ‘need’ more publications and feel that I would be getting in the way of those who need CV lines desperately. However, at least one of the papers is very publishable so I don’t want to abandon it entirely. Edited volumes seem out of the question given my new outsider status. Any suggestions other than continued residence on my computer’s hard drive?

Interesting question. I'm not entirely sure what the options here are aside from journals and edited volumes. Personally, I'm not sure that the OP's hesitancy about publishing in a journal is warranted--as it's not clear at all to me that if they did, they would be standing in anyone's way. Journals tend to publish what referees recommend accepting--so, even for journals that have a low acceptance rate, it seems to me exceedingly unlikely that if the OP were to publish their paper in a journal, it would prevent someone else from doing so. I'm also not sure that edited volumes are out of the question, as I've seen more than a few edited volumes containing work by people who have seemingly left academia.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Comments

[Don't think twice]

Perhaps there are other suitable venues, though I agree that OP's hesitancy about submitting to journals is unwarranted. The purpose of philosophy journals is to publish work the makes a novel contribution or advances an existing debate, not to help people advance in their careers by adding lines to their CVs. If OP's manuscripts satisfy these criteria, then they should send them off to journals without hesitation, regardless of their current job title.

I'm in a similar position myself. I'm not entirely outside of academia, but I've moved into an administrative role within a university, so I don't "need" publications like I did when I was still a post-doc looking for a TT job. But I continue to publish semi-regularly in journals and currently have a book under contract with a top press. Funny enough, continuing to publish after moving away from a research position has led to invitations to contribute to special issues and edited volumes, which I NEVER received when I was still pursuing a research role and "needed" the publications!

If OP still loves philosophy and has something valuable to contribute to the academic discussion, then there is every reason for them to continue sending their papers to journals. People who are lucky enough to have secured TT jobs in this depressing market do not have an exclusive claim to publish in philosophy journals.

[MD]

I would upload it to philpapers.org (and/or philsciarchive or semanticsarchive) and perhaps try to promote it a bit on Twitter or Facebook or wherever.

I also wouldn't feel bad about continuing to submit it to journals, whether or not it takes a spot that would otherwise go to someone who needs it. There are only so many decent academic positions and this isn't affected at all by how many publications there are by job searchers.

Perhaps because of X's missing publication, candidate Y now gets a job rather than X (or gets the better job), which is bad for X. But it would have been bad for Y if things were the other way. And I don't see reason to think X's interests here are more important or that X was more deserving of the job than Y. Not to mention that we might discount all of this as not worth considering, since it's likely only a very indirect kind of effect of your publishing, not much different from the sorts of unpredictable butterfly effects that come from all our actions and that we ignore in decisionmaking.

The best reason to skip the journals, I think, is that most of them are a pain to work with and the process makes papers worse as often as it makes them better. That might or might not be outweighed by the official stamp of approval that comes with a publication and with the extra influence it might allow your paper to have.

[fwiw]

For what it's worth, I'm editing a volume right now, and one of the best and most exciting chapters is from someone who has left academia. The press and other contributors all seem to be excited about the chapter as well.

[anon]

@don't think twice.

Sorry to derail things here but I found the following a bit incredulous:

"The purpose of philosophy journals is to publish work the makes a novel contribution or advances an existing debate, not to help people advance in their careers by adding lines to their CVs."

Do you actually believe that?