The Philosophers' Cocoon

Becoming a book reviewer (and should grad students do it?)

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

How does one get to or is asked to do book reviews for top or decent journals? Related question, how do you know when your paper is good enough to be sent to a journal? I'm currently a PhD student.

We've already covered the related question here recently. Particularly if you are a grad student, the safest way to determine whether a paper is publishable is to send it to some faculty mentors and see if they think so! As you progress through your career, you may come to trust your own judgment--but in general, it's still good to send your work to other people (including conferences) to see how others receive it.

In any case, I'd like to consider the question about becoming a book reviewer. Here, another reader gave the following advice, which seems right to me:

I recommend that you contact the journal editor or the journal book review editor. They may ask for a c.v. and information that might indicate that you would be qualified to write a book review for a scholarly journal.

However, I'm curious: do readers think graduate students should even try to review books? Here's why I ask: when I was in graduate school, I knew some students who seemed to think that book reviews were a good use of their time. But, at the time and especially in retrospect, it doesn't seem that way to me. Some of the students I knew who did this only published book reviews, and never got around to actually publishing any articles--and they seemed to think that book reviews would look good on their CV. But this is not the case, right? The chance that a book review is going to help you get a job post-PhD, it seems to me, approximately zero. This isn't to say that book reviews are worth doing. I think they are, and have reviewed a number of books myself. I'm just not sure that it's a good idea for grad students to do them.

What do you all think?

Book review tips?

In our September "how can we help you?" thread, anon writes:

I'm a recent PhD and have agreed to review a book that is directly in my AOS. I've never done one of these before, so I'd appreciate any how-to advice the Cocoon community can offer. The recent(ish) posts this year about writing referee reports were super helpful, both for understanding what a good report should look like, as well as explaining how to actually write one, so something along those lines would be ideal.) Thanks!

Benedict Eastaugh replied:

Thom Brooks, in "Publishing Advice for Graduate Students", discusses how to write a book review in section I, "Publishing 101: Book reviews as an introduction to publishing".

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1085245

I agree that Brooks' guide is a great resource, but I'm also inclined to think that the Cocoon community might be able to give anon some more fine-grained advice. What do you all think? Do you have any tips for writing a good review? Any "do's" and "don'ts"? 

Book review of Karen Kelsky's "The Professor is in"

Kelsky, Karen (2015). The Professor is in. The essential guide to turning your PhD into a job. Three Rivers Press. 

This book is aimed at job candidates in academia, graduate students but also more seasoned people looking for their first tenure-track job. The author has a consulting firm, with the same name as the book, which helps people with their dossier materials, negotiating job offers, prepping for interviews and editing grant proposals. Before starting her firm, she was a tenured professor, a position she left to pursue other things. 

Some questions about the book review process

I personally know a few authors who have received negative book reviews that, in their opinion, were not just negative but in some way(s) below an "appropriate scholarly standard." Now, presumably, no one likes to receive a negative review--and in some cases one may simply be upset at receiving one. Some book reviews, however, arguably are below an appropriate scholarly standard--for instance, by simply stating the reviewer's opinions/biases without much, or any, argumentation in support of their negative assertions. I have read reviews like this recently, where a reviewer boldly states, "This book is bad in respect X", but without any further justification for why anyone should actually believe the book is bad at X.

Now, of course, one way to respond to this issue is to simply trust readers--trust them, that is, to tell the difference between conscientious, well-reasoned reviews and less conscientious, poorly reasoned ones. And indeed, I've seen cases of this online--cases where someone shares a poorly reasoned book review on social media, and everyone basically agrees it is a terrible review.

Still, given the stakes involved--given that poor reviews could potentially undermine a person's case for tenure or promotion, not to mention their perception in the discipline--several questions come to my mind: