The Philosophers' Cocoon

What kind of colleague do you want? (Or, why we don't want passionate teachers and kind people as academic colleagues)

Imagine you're a tenured faculty member at an average sort of department, not super-prestigious but still with some aspirations for research excellence. You're hiring a new tenure track faculty member. Although people do sometimes move from tenure track positions, it is still a safe bet that a new hire will stay and will be your colleague for many years to come.

What kind of colleague would you rather have? Would you like someone who is ambitious, puts their research first in everything they do, certainly does not have a passion for teaching? Or would you like someone who is an excellent scholar but who also is kind, considerate, collegial, cares about their students?

Supposing you're hiring someone for a senior position, such as an endowed chair, or a Reader or Professor or Department Head (in the UK the latter is not uncommon). Would you like someone single-minded focused on their next excellent book with a prestigious press--OUP or Cambridge, perhaps a few select other publishers for subfields? Or would you like someone who is an excellent research but who is also caring, compassionate, who thinks about the wellbeing and prospects of the graduate students and about the department's wellbeing, who serves the department and puts other people's needs (regularly) above their own? 

Going by advice for cover letter writing and for writing letters of recommendation, it would seem we want a colleague like the former. We want the ambitious, single-minded person for whom teaching is a necessary evil. Take the following handy advice sheet for how to write letters that don't show gender bias, from the University of Arizona (pictured below).

Sustaining Activism

This is a guest post by Mark Lance, Professor at the Philosophy Department and Justice and Peace Studies Program at Georgetown University:

Early in my activist career, I had a mentor, Molly Rush. Molly has done an enormous amount in her life, but was most famous as a member of the first “Plowshares” action. She, Dan and Phil Berrigan, and others broke into a missile plant in Pennsylvania and poured their own blood on documents and damaged Mark 12a first-strike nuclear nose-cones. She was sentenced to five years in federal prison. I worked with Molly a couple years after her release and one day was saying how much I admired her courage. She insisted that this was not the right thing to admire. She felt called to perform this action, but insisted that sustained lifetime involvement was much more important and harder than bold, dramatic, performances.

She told me about, and later introduced me to, a woman in her early 60s. Mabel had decided in her 20s that she could devote one evening a week to social justice work. Sometimes she attended a protest; sometimes stuffed envelopes or worked a phone bank; sometimes she organized teach-ins. But she had not missed a week. In 40 years. (20 years later, when I was organizing one of the large mobilizations around the IMF/WB meetings, she emailed me with a long apology, because her doctor had forbidden her from coming to DC on her broken hip for the protests. In introduced her to a bunch of young activists over the phone.)

I’ve had a second career in activism for roughly 35 years. I have seen hundreds of passionate committed young people jump into the work, doing everything, 80 hour work-weeks, nights in jail, enduring verbal and physical abuse, inspiring the hell out of me and others. And then disappearing after a total burnout, never to be heard from again. I’ve also come to know a smaller number of folks who have made movement work an enduring part of their lives.

Publishing as a non-native speaker

A reader writes in:

[My query] concerns publications in the English speaking press. An early career researcher needs to publish in English journals, which are almost the only journals internationally recognised. Nonetheless, a non-native speaker may encounter some linguistic barriers: first, the impossibility of paying someone to edit her writing; second, explicit comments from the reviewers about the paper's style; and third, and maybe more important, implicit biases from the reviewers who may doubt of the quality of the paper because of its grammar or style. I do not know if there are empirical data in some journal about rejections made to native English speakers and non-native English speakers, but I intuitively suspect that non-native speakers may receive more rejections than native ones. 

This is a great query. I don't know of any empirical data about this. However, I do think it's important to ensure that non-native speakers are not unfairly discriminated against in the reviewing process. What can be done to better ensure this?

Reader query on handling idea-theft

A reader writes in: "what should a student or early career researcher do when someone with a permanent position and recognition steals some of her unpublished ideas (for example, ideas from her thesis) without literally plagiarizing them?"

Great question. I've heard multiple stories of this happening to early-career people. In fact, I saw someone report such a story on social media just the other day. In that case, it was a senior member of the profession reporting what happened to them earlier in their career, noting that they felt powerless to do anything about it and how it negatively affected their career prospects (evidently, the person and the person who stole their ideas both published on the topic, but the person who stole the idea has reaped nearly all of the credit for it). 

Given that I have heard more than a few stories about this sort of thing, it seems like an important issue to address. What can an early-career person do in cases like this? And what, if anything, should they do? Also, what if it happens to a non-early career person? Is how they should handle it relevantly different?

Improving our current peer-review process

As I'm sure most of the blog's readers know, I've advocated for dramatic changes to our peer-review system--ones I've argued would be likely to benefits authors, reviewers, editors, and the profession. While some surprising changes in policies by European funding agencies might push things in the direction I've advocated (though that remains to be seen), a fair number of readers have asked whether it might make more sense--at least in the short-term--to examine less radical ways we might improve our current system of peer-review.

A few comments the last several days got me thinking more about this. First, Angry Anon wrote:

I send only to generalist journals that I know are quick (1-2 months), and after that only to specialist journals that I know are quick (and are usually quicker).

Here's the real question though - and maybe we could start a separate post for answering this question - why are you, as a referee, taking longer than 3 weeks to review a paper? It is unreasonable and immoral to take longer than that. (Yes, you are a bad person if you take longer than 3-4 weeks to review a paper.) I have never taken longer than a week to review a paper. That it takes anyone longer is ridiculous (save for extremely long papers that might take 3 weeks or so). What ever happened to treating others how we would like to be treated? Does anyone like having their paper getting hung up for 3 months minimum? If you aren't going to review it in 3 weeks, don't accept the invitation to review.

And what about those grossly immoral referees who take longer than 3 months? I've had a paper take over a year only to get an R and R. (And no, I didn't revise and resubmit it. I'm not going to send it back to some jerk who is going to take that long to review it.) What was this jerk doing that whole time? Did it take less time to review after waiting 12 months?

Publishing ordeals: you are not alone

Rolf-Peter Horstmann (Humbolt University) shared this interesting story of a four-year publishing ordeal. A brief excerpt from the introduction:

This is the story of the obstacles that a scholarly manuscript has to overcome before it eventually gets printed. It can confirm the impression, shared by many, that much in the publication process of such a text depends on pure chance, good (or bad) luck, and contingent circumstances. Perhaps it can be of comfort to younger scholars who are undergoing this process...

I'm not sure the story will be of much comfort to younger scholars--but I guess it does make me feel a bit less alone when I get frustrated with things, so I figured I'd share it (shared from Leiter Reports).

Steps for changing peer-review?

I've been arguing for changes to our system of peer-review for about six years now--specifically, in favor of the more "open" peer-review utilized in math and physics, where papers are posted to a public repository, discussed openly, and routinely cited even before being sent to journals. I've tried to catalog the benefits I think such a system would have in philosophy--for authors, reviewers, editors, and the profession. Further, some researchers have defended a similar proposal in more detail, in part by using empirical research on peer-review. To clarify, my argument is not that our current system is terrible in absolute terms or "broken" (though at least one editor has raised serious concerns about the viability of the status quo). Rather, it is merely my belief that we can probably do better--and that the math and physics is probably the way to do that.

I recognize the case that I and others have made for changing peer-review is still controversial. However, while not everyone agrees, one question that arises for those who it should is: what steps might individuals and the profession more broadly take to realize change? Peter asked this question (and more) in a recent comment, where he wrote:

[L]et's suppose that you are correct. How do you think we might begin transitioning as a discipline to something like what you suggest? Do you think it might start best with some subdisciplines beginning something like this (I know philosophy of science already has something a bit like this)? Do you think this would work better than trying to get something together discipline-wide (perhaps through PhilArchive, for example)? It is an interesting problem since it involves both a change in behaviors and norms on the one hand and the creation of an infrastructure that is designed for this purpose.

I've been thinking about these issues a bit, as change can only occur to the extent that people begin to take action. What types of actions might we take? What types, if any, should we take? Allow me to explore a few possibilities and then open things up for discussion (i.e. both further brainstorming as well as critical discussion).

What's wrong with letters of recommendation

All of this.

Model Journals

Today I am going to set aside the question of whether we should radically alter our system of peer-review, whether by having a more open system that fed into peer-reviewed journals, or by getting rid of peer-review entirely.  Instead, I want to ask you all about journals that have great policies in place already, journals you think of as models of how our current system should work.

I am especially interested in the policies that particular journals have in place, rather than whether or not the experience of authors lives up to the promise of the policies.  For this reason, I am not interested (in this post) in talking about my own experiences with various journals.  Instead, I want to hear from others about journals that you think have excellent policies in place.  Doing this, I think, serves two functions.  First, it can help us think more carefully about what our policies should be by looking at examples of what others find exceptional.  Second, it can highlight some journals that deserve to be highlighted.

Virtues and Vices of our Peer-Review System

There has been quite a bit of discussion about problems with philosophy publishing. Marcus has had a number of very interesting posts on various problems or issues with the system (see, for example, here, here, here, and here), and he has been advocating for changes based upon practices in other fields (see, for example, here and here). 

In this post, I was hoping to hear more from the Cocoon’s readers about their views of article publishing (let’s leave monographs and edited collection to the side this time) from the perspective of a writer (not a referee or editor this time). What do you think works? What do you think is broken? Are your views based upon your own experiences, those of friends, research (like this paper that Marcus recently discussed), blog posts on the Cocoon and elsewhere, something else entirely? 

Reader query on posting drafts online

In the comments section of our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Jake Wright writes:

I'm curious about something in light of the recent posts regarding the peer review process and making it more like arXiv. Given the current peer review system we have in philosophy, warts and all, how would/do reviewers, editors, etc. respond to identifiable drafts posted to an archive like PhilPapers? I generally like the idea of moving towards a more identifiable preprint system for many of the reasons Marcus identifies, but I worry that posting my own work will negatively affect me by somehow impacting drafts once they are submitted. Am I right to worry about this? Wrong? How can one manage this, if it's a concern?

This is a great query, one I have wondered a good deal about myself. Indeed, it's the main reason I don't currently post unpublished drafts online, let along offer up drafts for feedback here at the Cocoon (which I think would be a great place for early-career philosophers to share and discuss drafts publicly). I worry that reviewers and editors may take openly posting unpublished drafts as subverting anonymous review, which might in turn influence review of the paper in a negative way.

You should never, ever, edit a volume and other blanket early career advice

Regularly, I see well-meaning and evidence-based advice for early-career people along the following lines

• Don't ever edit a volume. It's a lot more trouble than it's worth. It hardly counts for tenure/finding a job.
• Don't ever write a book review. Okay, perhaps if you really wanted to read this book in depth anyway, but even then, it's a waste of time. It doesn't help you network, it doesn't help you for finding a tenure track job, it does not count for tenure or promotion. Worse, if you're early career and you have mainly book reviews it might signal you are not able to write "real" papers. 
• Instead, you should focus on getting either (1) a single-authored paper in a top-5 (okay, maybe top-10) general philosophy journal or (2) a book contract for your single-authored monograph with OUP or a publisher with prestige. Those are things that will make you stand out. 

Etc. 

The question is: to what extent is such blanket career advice warranted? Obviously, if your CV is filled with book reviews and not a single paper, then it's going to raise questions and weaken your file. But the blanket advice seems to not take into account the broader experiences gained from editing volumes or writing book reviews.

Protecting authors in peer-review

Readers may recall that I have dedicated quite a bit of time to arguing for systemic changes to our peer-review process--specifically, for moving away from "anonymized review" in favor of the kind of "open online" peer-review model utilized in math and physics. Why I have I dedicated so much attention to this topic?

One set of reasons (the ones emphasized in the posts linked to above) is that I think such changes are likely to have substantial benefits for everyone--for authors, reviewers, editors, and the profession at large (by, among other things, improving the dissemination of new research). I have tried to draw attention to these benefits in large part because, or so I have argued, the oft-ascribed benefits of "anonymized" review are dubious and probably illusory ("anonymized" review really isn't in the digital age). Interestingly, Remco Heesen (Cambridge) shared a draft of a paper co-authored with Liam Bright (LSE) defending similar conclusions using empirical research:

We think there are a number of clear benefits to abolishing pre-publication peer review. In contrast, while various benefits of the existing system (downsides of abolishing peer review) have been suggested, we do not think there exist any that have clear empirical support. Insofar as empirical research exists, it is ambiguous in some cases, and speaks relatively clearly against the claimed benefit of the existing system in others...[Consequently], we claim that the present state of the evidence suggests that abolishing pre-publication peer review would lead to a Pareto-improvement: each factor considered is either neutral or favors our proposal. (p. 3, my emphasis)

However, the likely benefits alluded to above--to authors, editors, reviewers, and the profession--are not the only reasons that I think we should favor change. More deeply, I have long worried that "anonymized" review--far from ensuring fairness (as often claimed)--plausibly places authors at serious and undue career risks, particularly early-career and less-established authors. Allow me to explain.

Reflections on my upcoming 40th birthday, hitting targets, and our relevance in the profession

In less than a month, I will be 40 years old. 

In my early 30s, I took away my date of birth from social media and from my CV.

The reason behind this was that I worried about being regarded as "past my prime", especially for hiring committees. It took me a while to get funding for my PhD and then it took me a while to get a second PhD, as well as several postdoc positions. I also had two children. My partner was the primary caregiver for both through their early years, so I only took a few months off for each birth. Still, this all takes time--and time goes on inexorably. 

In the past I could not help thinking, "By age 40, I should..."

• Have a permanent job, check. Still, what is permanent these days? 
• Bought house, nope. Too expensive. 
• Published a paper in one of the top-3 philosophy journals, nope. (I should start writing in a different way and actually submit to these things, so it doesn't seem to be that big a priority). Etc. 

We use age as a measuring-rod, a series of checkpoints that we should have reached. Seeing younger people getting all sorts of accolades and accomplishments fills us with gladness for them, but also amps up our insecurity, as if we're missing the targets we need to hit. A bit like looking at the ultrasound of a gestating fetus, there are these set checkpoints that we evaluate ourselves by. By age x I surely should have accomplished y. Otherwise, there's a problem.

Should journals discourage repeat reviews?

I recently reviewed a paper for a journal, and was struck by a check-box in the online reviewer form that I recall encountering before. The check box asked something like, "Would you be willing to have your review forwarded to another journal if the manuscript is submitted elsewhere?" This in turn got me thinking about a broader phenomenon: reviewers reviewing the same manuscript at different journals. I've encountered this phenomenon on social media before, the typical case being a reviewer saying something like, "I rejected this paper at one journal. Then I got asked to review it again at a new journal, and because the author didn't seem to revise it in light of my feedback at the first journal, I just attached my first review advocating rejection at the second journal."

Another kind of attrition rate

In my recent post addressing a reader's query on how to choose between PhD programs, I suggested the reader should focus less on the reputation of a program or particular advisor and instead focus more on programs' attrition rate (i.e. how many people don't finish the program) and job-placement rate. The other day, however, an anonymous comment inadvertently drew my attention to another salient issue that in my experience is rarely discussed: what I will (for lack of better words) call post-PhD attrition rates. Allow me to explain what I mean, and why I think it may be good as a new disciplinary norm to expect programs to track and make them clear on their placement webpages.

JHP opportunities for early-career scholars

I've been asked to post the following set of announcements by The Journal of the History of Philosophy, which includes a number of opportunities (travel grants, fellowships, and one award) for early-career philosophers:

JHP ANNOUNCEMENTS

–––––––––––––––

Master Classes in the History of Philosophy

Sponsored by The Journal of the History of Philosophy

Mindful of the challenges facing young scholars working in the history of philosophy, the Board of Directors of the Journal of the History of Philosophy has established a program of Master Classes in the History of Philosophy. The central idea of the program is that a senior scholar who works primarily in some area of the history of philosophy would undertake to direct an intensive week of master classes for the benefit of a small group of recent Ph.D.’s whose main research and teaching are in the relevant area. Normally, the classes will focus on one or more texts that are typically not part of material that the participants would have studied as graduate students. The goal of the program is the enhancement of the expertise and understanding of the young scholars in their area of specialization.

Mid-career reflections - part 8: on fear in the discipline

When I started the Cocoon a little over six years, I didn't have many hopes for it. I was just a struggling early-career scholar with few friends or professional contacts in the discipline (due, admittedly, to some bad choices I made early on). I started the Cocoon not because I expected anyone to read it, but simply because I was sick of feeling isolated and alone in a discipline that seemed to me to incentivize those things. My only hope in starting the blog was that I might find a few similarly-minded others: people like me who were sick of feeling alone, and who wanted to help each other make their path through the discipline just a little bit better.

In some ways (many ways), the Cocoon succeeded beyond my wildest hopes. It seems to be widely read, at times has had a good stable of contributors, has been a wonderful way to get to know other people (and helped me feel far less isolated), and I've often heard people say complimentary things about it (though maybe they're just being nice). However, there's one major thing about the Cocoon that has been a persistent disappointment, at least for me--and that is how few early-career people have joined as contributors. I will be frank: since day 1, I've always hoped the Cocoon would really bloom--that early-career people would come out of the woodwork left and right to congregate here to post regularly and speak their minds: sharing their work, discussing their career struggles, and so on. Yet, while there are many commenters--as well as people who have (mostly anonymously) shared professional questions and career struggles in our "how can we help you?" series--the blog has consistently had few official contributors...and these days it is basically just me and sometimes Helen.

I've often wondered why so few early-career people blog. It could of course be anything: maybe people think they have better things to do (like, you know, research and teaching). However, I've asked people about this on occasion, and every time I've done so the dominant answer seems to be very different: fear. Fear of what search committees might think. Fear of what other philosophers might think. And so on (see the comments section above). If this is the truth--and it appears to be--I think it is just terrible. It is the reason why I began the Cocoon in the first place: because I was sick of living alone and in fear. I wanted a better profession than that. And yet--or so it seems--the fear is still there. Why? And how should we grapple with it?

Reader query on reading vs. writing

In the comments section of our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, Amanda writes:

I guess this might help me in terms of understanding my own attitude toward the profession. I am curious whether most philosophers like writing or reading philosophy more? Also, I am curious whether most philosophers read things they like, or mainly read for the purposes of their own research. Either way, what percentage of the philosophy that you read do find intellectually fulfilling? 

I too am curious to hear people's answers. Here are mine...

A plea for more types of publications

Avram Hiller has a good piece over at Daily Nous (one I mostly agree with!) suggesting that philosophy journals should be more like science journals, which publish very short (1,500 word) "letters" along with full-length articles. Hiller's basic ideas are that many philosophy articles don't need to be as long as they do, and that more space for shorter pieces might increase philosophical discussion and inclusivity, make things easier on authors, editors, and readers, and increase acceptance rates.

I'm not sure about a few of these things--as I expect journals might start to be flooded with short pieces--but still, I'm generally sympathetic with Hiller's proposal. As I've mentioned before, I think the fairly standard policy of journals not considering "replies" to articles in other journals is a pretty big barrier to philosophical discussion. If more journals had a "letters" section, involving both short original pieces as well as replies, I suspect it would benefit the profession in some of the ways Hiller suggests.

However, I'd also like to make a converse plea I've made before: a plea for journals to consider longer pieces as well. In brief, I think good philosophy comes in all shapes and sizes. Some arguments can be made in 1,500 words. Some arguments can be made in 6,000 words. Others can be made in 10,000 words. Others still can only be made in 15,000 words. Still others require 20,000 words. And some--book length arguments--require 100K+ words.

Changing peer-review: as good a time as any?

I wrote last week about how I've found it better to let bitterness and resentment about the profession go. While I didn't claim that my experiences generalize or suggest that there aren't things about the profession that might rightly make people bitter, I hope at least some of you found the post helpful. All that being said, there are still some things about the profession that frustrate many of us--and as I mentioned in that post, I think we should discuss and try to improve things in the profession. So, in today's post, I'm going to discuss some concerns I've mentioned before about our current processes of peer-review, and how our system might be improved.

I'd like to begin by considering how people feel about our system of peer-review. Here is my general sense:

Editors don't seem to like it: As J. David Velleman (editor of Philosophers' Imprint) wrote at Daily Nous a while back, journals are overwhelmed with papers. The number of papers journals receive is making it progressively more difficult to find enough willing referees, give papers the attention they are due, and so on. Velleman has not been shy about his concerns, as I recall him sharing similar concerns on a number of occasions. And, in my experience, other editors seem to feel similarly. For example, when I recently inquired with an editor about a paper I submitted that had been under review a fairly long while, the editor mentioned that the peer-review system is "broken." I very much appreciated the editor's candor--not to mention the editor's timely and conscientious resolution to my inquiry--but I think it just goes to show: editors seem to like our current system about as much as the rest of us. Which brings me to...

Referees don't seem to like it: I can't even begin to count the number of times I've heard referees complain about our current peer-review system. It isn't that referees despise reviewing per se. On the contrary, I've heard some people say they think it is a valuable and important service to the profession. No, the concerns I've heard referees voice--many times in the comments section of this very blog--are typically about the kinds of papers they receive: papers that in their judgment are nowhere near publishable, and should have been desk-rejected. Among other things, I've heard referees often complain about egregious failures to engage in relevant literature--something I continually encounter as a referee: papers saying or implying things like "No one has argued X" when a simple philpapers search on that topic reveals multiple listings of people arguing X on the very first page.

Authors really don't like it: This much should go without saying. I want to be clear, though. Like many people, I think, I have had some very good experiences in the peer-review process: timely decisions, with really helpful referee reports, and so on. The problem, from an author's perspective, is not that the process never goes well. The problem is that there are many things that often don't go well. Waiting many months to get a verdict on a paper can be excruciating--especially if one is on the job-market or coming up for tenure. Having to bug editors about papers that are well-past their reviewer deadlines is nerve-wracking, as one may worry that bugging the editor (and, by extension, reviewer) might elicit a negative result. Then there are worries about being "scooped", as in cases when one worked for months or years on a paper, finished it years ago and yet, while it is still under review, one sees other people publish similar arguments (a dispiriting and anxiety-producing experience, to be sure). Then there is the phenomenon of "Google reviewing", which occurs when one submits a paper for anonymized review only to suspiciously find one's website googled with the paper title a few days later (I've heard many people report this). Finally, while there are some very good reviewers, there are also reviewers who don't do a good job--reviewers who take months on a paper only to give you five dismissive (and in some cases, needlessly inflammatory) sentences, as well as reviewers who seem to have read totally different papers--not to mention the fact that some of the most influential papers in the field appear to have been systematically rejected. 

A philpapers reply journal?

I've mentioned a few times about how journal restrictions on replies seem to me an unfortunate barrier to philosophical discussion, and how it might be cool for there to be a replies-only journal. Anyway, a few days ago David Bourget asked on philpeople whether the PhilPapers Foundation should create a journal of just that sort. Would you like to see such a journal? If so, I'd suggest liking Bourget's post and letting him know!

Science magazine on choosing the kind of academic you want to be

A reader drew my attention today to this article at Science Magazine on the freedom to choose to be the kind of academic you want to be. Here's an excerpt:

A postdoc friend recently called me to discuss his career options. He didn’t want to run his own lab, he said. Instead, he wanted to become a research scientist, mainly working at the bench— like me. I sensed that his mind was already made up, but he needed validation about pursuing a path that is not generally thought of as a professional success. Our conversation got me thinking about my own decision to become a research scientist—and about other career choices I made that went against the norm.

Reader query on the worst aspect(s) of the job

In the comments section of our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, Anon writes (my emphasis):

Following up on the thread about impostor syndrome and the one on Daily Nous about the graduate student mental health crisis (which is probably a faculty crisis too) I think this might be a good time to focus some light on the following issue: What is the worst aspect of your job as a professional philosopher? Or if you are a graduate student or job seeker, what is the aspect of the job you look forward to least, and wish most to avoid. Basically what is the one thing in the profession that most drags you down, saps your will to work (or to live even), such that fixing this problem would result in the single largest improvement in your professional, and hence personal, well-being?

For me, I think it is the relentless speed-up of the job driven by the relentless demands for ever-increasing "production". It is bad enough when it comes from the mindless MBA-bots which run universities now, but the worst thing is that so many academics have now internalized this imperative and it guides their professional actions and expectations (even while they complain about it). I find this incredibly alienating, in the Marxian sense. The constant pressure, combined with the fact that I have to publish on what's fashionable, rather than what I think is worth working on (let alone interesting), has utterly drained my work of any value to me. This, in turn, is compounded by the need to publish quickly, so the work is necessarily half-assed, which in turn saps my self-respect since I am not even producing the best crap that I can (and I have to spend time engaging with work that is, it seems to me, similarly rushed and drained of value...). I feel that I am not a researcher but simply an academic "content-creator", whose job is just to generate a fancy version of click-bait. I often find myself day-dreaming that being an adjunct would be preferable; yes, I would have less time to write, but outside of class my time would be entirely my own.

I know not everyone feels the same way about the need to produce, and I am interested to see what other people consider the worst thing about their job, or the profession more generally.

I think this is a good query. If there are particular things that people find frustrating about working in the profession, it can be good to know what those things are--not only for commiseration, but for (hopefully) working to make things better. I may weigh in myself down in the comments section. For now, though, I think it might be good to just open the topic for discussion: What is the worst aspect of your job as a professional philosopher, and why? Let me also ask one further question: What do you think could/should be done to make that part of your job better?  

A 'replies-only' journal?

A while ago, I suggested that there may be an underappreciated barrier to philosophical engagement. The barrier is this: with a few exceptions (see e.g. JESP), most philosophy journals do not accept "replies" to articles in other journals. In practice, this means that, by and large, reply pieces can only be sent to one journal. My sense is that this is a real deterrent to philosophical discussion. Although I published two reply articles early in my career, I've largely given up on writing them. Why spend time writing a piece you can only send to one journal?

This potential barrier to philosophical dialogue concerns me given how rare engagement with published articles seems to be. According to this study:

• More than 90% of published humanities papers have received no citations two years after publication.
• About 82% have never been cited five years after publication.

Kieran Healy's research on citation rates indicates philosophy is similar ("on the average hardly anyone is getting cited"). I think this is unfortunate. While I've heard some people say most published philosophy isn't worth engaging with, I think this is terribly cynical, overly dismissive of the hard work of our colleagues, and mostly serves to uphold hierarchies (viz. engagement with Big Names, ignoring No-Names). Further, the more I read, the more I think there are a lot of people doing interesting work--work that, unfortunately, given the incentives in place, just isn't being engaged with.

I've long wondered what the profession might do to incentivize greater engagement with people's work. One obvious possibility would be for existing journals to be more open to replies to articles in other journals. However, I do not see that happening any time soon. Which got me thinking about one other possibility: a replies-only philosophy journal that might serve as a central forum for engagement with other articles in the literature. While such a journal would, obviously, only increase the number of places one could submit replies to by one, I cannot help but wonder whether--with the right kinds of editorial standards and review process--such a journal might substantially incentivize greater philosophical engagement.

What do you all think: would such a journal be a good idea? If so, that brings me to my next question: what exactly are the steps one must take to create such a journal? I'm sure it would be a fairly massive undertaking (logistically speaking)--and I'm far from sure whether it's something I would ever sensibly pursue myself--but still, I'd like to learn about what it might involve. What does it take to get a new journal started? Anyone have any experience or tips they're willing to share?

Should journals use 'outside reviewers'?

Daily Nous recently ran a post on whether journals favor affiliated authors. In the comments section, Neil Levy wrote:

Note that there is a minimally pernicious explanation that may account for some bias: the bias may be toward topics or approaches (which it is an editor’s prerogative to favor) rather than people or institutions.

This got me thinking about something else I've worried about for a while: self-selection effects in the peer-review system. Here's my worry. From my experience as a reviewer, the selection of peer-reviewers tends to work something like this:

1. A paper is submitted on topic X.
2. The editors of the journal then seek out reviewers who specialize on topic X.
3. The editors thus rely on judgments of people steeped in topic X to judge new papers on X.

So, for example, in my case, I receive a good number of requests to review papers in the following areas: nonideal justice, transformative experience, experimental philosophy, and free will--all areas I've published in. I am almost never asked to review a paper outside of these areas. Why? Because I don't specialize in the areas in question. But is this a good rationale? It might seem like it. Specialists are, it seems, the most qualified people to evaluate papers in their area. Alas, I think there's an underappreciated danger here: the danger of self-selection bias. Allow me to explain.

Guest-post on perceptions about different types of jobs

The following is an invited guest-post composed by Sam Duncan (Tidewater Community College):

Whether we admit it or not, we philosophers think a lot about how other philosophers view us and our academic positions. In fact, many of us often weigh this more than we should other considerations like the day to day reality of jobs and their larger impact on the world.  I worked as an adjunct and as a lecturer on a year to year appointment for many years and one of the thoughts that dogged me was that my professors and colleagues from grad school thought of me a failure. When I finally landed a full-time gig at a community college I couldn’t shake that thought that even though I liked my job, other members of the profession would view me as a failure. The reactions of some of my former professors only reinforced this. I remember writing one to tell her about the job and her reaction was basically “Well you deserve a better job but it’s a step up.”

The thing is, it’s actually a really good job by almost any objective measure. The pay is good, and my workload and stress levels are much lower than my friends working in research focused jobs. I also have a lot of autonomy in the way I do my job. In fact, not only does administration not meddle in how I do my job but they’ve been extremely supportive of my own ideas and responsive to the few concerns I’ve had as a faculty member. For instance, I wanted to offer a bioethics course here and a number of deans and other administrators did a lot of work to help me through the process and to drum up interest in the course once it was offered. This is a huge contrast to the relationship between the administration and faculty at the research focused school where I worked as a lecturer, which could only be described as acrimonious if not poisonous. And while I don’t have to do much research to keep my job, the college is extremely supportive of research. I get a pretty good travel budget and my dean is overjoyed when I present papers at conferences. So I can do research if and when I feel like it, but there’s none of the publish only to publish pressure that many faculty members feel at research focused institutions. To me at least that seems ideal. Why then would my former professors and others respond in a tone of commiseration? And why would I care?

Poll: would you still choose to pursue a philosophy PhD?

In light of the discussion in the comments section of our recent query by an undergraduate considering grad programs in philosophy, I thought it might be interesting to run an informal poll. Specifically, I'm curious how many of our readers who entered PhD programs in philosophy would make the same choice if they could go back in time and make the decision again.

Obviously, this is an unscientific poll and there might be significant self-selection effects, so I encourage readers (particularly those considering grad school in philosophy) to take poll results with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, I thought it might be interesting to gauge our readers' thoughts. I respectfully ask readers to answer the poll honestly, and to fill it out only once. The poll is open to those and only those who entered a PhD program in philosophy, regardless of whether they finished their program. Finally, if you would like to briefly share why you answered the poll the way you did in the comments section (in a manner consistent with the blog's Mission), please do! 

If you pursued a PhD in philosophy, would you do it again?

Definitely

 

Probably

 

Unsure

 

Probably Not

 

Definitely Not

 

 

pollcode.com free polls

Undergraduate query on grad school

In the comments of our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Jonathan Lauret writes:

...I'm an undergraduate student majoring in philosophy, and I'm entering into the process of looking for what graduate schools to apply to.

I just today have been scanning through the internet for information on graduate school situations involving philosophy, and the tone is almost always very disheartening and depressing due to a number of given reasons. Most posts or blogs wrote about really rough conditions involving the application/hiring process, the amount of experience required for a very punishing and unrewarding job (typically), and the sheer rarity of any resulting enjoyable professorial position. 
I don't know what exactly I'm looking for in regards to the particular positions out there for graduates in philosophy. I do know that I love the discipline, that I hold it in value not due to some sort of desire to be famous or great or sage-like, but to get a better grasp or understanding of the world I live in. I feel as though teaching and talking to students/other people who have their own ideas and feelings on these things will bring me what I'm looking for in a profession.

I guess the question that comes from all this may be, where do these sorts of feelings fit into the grand scheme of going into graduate school and later entering the academic job market?

I think this is a great query, in part because we might be able to help Jonathan, but also because this is a kind of inquiry I expect a lot of get fairly often from undergraduates (I know I do). Indeed, I'm hoping a lot of you chime in, as perhaps this thread can function as an online compendium of different people's responses to these kinds of questions--one we might direct our undergraduates to in the future to hear different perspectives on the issue!

How another discipline mentors its grad students

Earlier this evening, I accompanied my spouse, a PhD candidate in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, to the reception at her discipline's major regional conference (akin to our Eastern APA). As I was chatting with her advisor, he mentioned the previous day at the conference. I was a bit surprised, as my spouse told me the conference began today. So, I asked him, "Wait, how many days is this conference?" He told me the conference was three days long, beginning today--but that there were also two pre-conference days. I'd assumed that the pre-conference days were probably special workshops (i.e. invited mini-conferences on hot topics), of the sort common in philosophy these days. Still, I was curious, so I asked him what was the deal with the two pre-conference days. He said, "Oh, those are the pre-doc and post-doc consortium days?" Because I had no idea what that meant, I told him, "I have no idea what that means." That's when he told me.

Apparently, the first day of the annual pre-conference (the pre-doc consortium) is an entire day of workshops for undergraduates and Masters students considering applying to PhD programs. The discipline's organization (i.e. their "APA") arranges for professors from all different kinds of programs around the country to hold seminars on applying to programs, what to expect if you get in a PhD program, how to succeed in PhD programs, what the facts are about academic and non-academic job markets (so that people know their job-prospects before applying to PhD programs), and so on. 

That's the first day. The second pre-conference day (the post-doc consortium) is an entire day of workshops for current PhD students and job-candidates, where professors from programs from around the country hold sessions on finding academic jobs, finding non-academic jobs (including networking), succeeding in research, developing teaching skills, and many other things too apparently.

Peer-review and sub-disciplinary silos

I'd like to share a vague worry I have about the effects that "sub-disciplinary silos" may have on the peer-review process and philosophy more generally. What is a sub-disciplinary silo? Very roughly: a group of specialists in a specific sub-area of philosophy who primarily read and review work in that area. Here's a personal illustration. I'm increasingly asked to review papers for journals. Because I've published in nonideal theory in political philosophy, as well as on transformative experience, I often get asked to review papers in precisely those areas. I don't often (and in some cases, ever) get asked to review papers outside of my sub-disciplinary specialties--say, in metaphysics, epistemology, or philosophy of language. Generally speaking, I suspect I am not unique in this respect. The peer-review process generally seems to something like this: a person sends a paper to a journal, the editors look for specialists in the area to review it, and decide whether to publish the piece on the basis of the specialists' recommendations.

On the surface, this looks all fine and good. Who is in a better position to evaluate a paper than a specialist in the area in which the paper is written? Alas, I have a concern. In the sciences, papers are tested against the world--against a mind-independent reality. Scientific papers make hypothesis, and then test whether those hypotheses are confirmed or disconfirmed by data. In philosophy, on the other hand, we test papers against each other, making a case to our readers that our premises are true or plausible. In which case it matters who one's readers are. If one's readers are a biased sample--a group of self-selected individuals united, say, by similar philosophical commitments--then even if people in that sample find one's premises true or plausible, that may not actually be good evidence that one's premises are true or plausible. And herein lies my worry: when papers are read and evaluated primarily by specialists in a given sub-discipline, it is possible that the very group in specialists in question may comprise this kind of biased sample.

I came to have this worry in part by some of my experiences at conferences, as well as in part by some experiences as a journal reviewer.

Reader query on presenting to a department on mental illness

A reader writes in:

I finished my Phd in 2015 and decided not to go into academia. While I don't at all currently regret that decision, now that I have recently been able to finally be completely free of depression for the first time since maybe I was a little kid, I am able to recognize that my decision not to go into academia was at least partly influenced by depression. In short: I had been taking zoloft since my 2nd year in grad school; my marriage fell apart during my 8th year, and I coped by smoking way too much weed; my doctor decided to take me off zoloft because she was worried about its interactions with weed; during my 9th year I completely lost interest in philosophy (similar to my experience prior to taking zoloft during my 2nd year) and was able to eke out the rest of the dissertation but called it quits with philosophy.

Anyways: I was recently chatting with a few of my old advisors back at [redacted]... We talked about how we think it's really a shame that depression just isn't discussed openly within the department, even though so many people have it. I thought that it might be a good idea for me to come back and give talk, sharing my own experiences with depression in grad school, talking about resources at [redacted], etc. He agreed, so I'll be giving the talk in November :) In the meantime, as I'm thinking about the content and structure of my talk, I was wondering if you have any thoughts for such a talk: What sorts of things might be good to include in a talk to a philosophy department whose students suffer from depression and at least some of the faculty are interested in helping and improving the environment of the department?

I think this is a great query, and would like to commend the reader, advisor, and department that took the initiative to organize this individual's upcoming presentation. I'm curious to hear what readers think. I myself feel fairly comfortable offering suggestions, as I have a good deal of experience with mental illness: I worked as an intern in an outpatient ward for a year, was co-director of a group home for the mentally ill for another year, and mental illness runs in my family, being more or less a constant in my life-experience since early childhood. Allow me to share some of my thoughts, then, before I open things up for comments...

Should journals rethink word-limits?

I had a spirited (and surprisingly contentious!) discussion on social media the other week on journal word-limits. The conversation began with a friend of mine--a well-published and respected philosopher in his AOS--noting that he had to cut down a 16K word article to meet a 7K word-limit. As someone who tends to write long pieces myself, I noted that what typically happens in cases like this is one cuts one's paper down to meet a limit only to find out 5 or 6+ months later--after the paper goes through peer-review--that reviewers advocate either rejection or revise-and-resubmit because the paper fails to deal with problems the longer version of it did deal with. In revise-and-resubmit cases, this often requires the author to put back in material that was in the longer version to begin with, requiring authors, reviewers, and editors to do more work that they might have had to do if the author had just been able to submit the better, longer version to begin with!

In other words, in my experience, journal word-limits often end up wasting everyone's time. They make authors waste a ton of time cutting down articles, and they waste reviewers' and editors' time by having them review--and, in revise-and-resubmits, review multiple times--inferior, shorter versions of what were previously better, longer papers. Because I think good philosophy papers come in many different shapes and sizes, and the most relevant thing is whether a paper is any good, I'm inclined to think it would be better all-around--wasting fewer people's time--for journals not to have hard word-limits but instead be willing to accept papers of any length short of a book (i.e. 20K words or so). Preemptively precluding authors from submitting longer papers--as many journals currently do--seems to me to only stand in the way of philosophical inquiry, making things more difficult on everyone, particularly authors who write longer, more ambitious papers (as it gives them fewer venues to publish in).

Reader submission: the perspective of a long-term non-TT faculty member

A few weeks ago, following Amanda's very nice suggestion here, I invited long-term non-TT faculty to share their perspectives on their jobs and the academy on the Cocoon. Here is the first submission I have received (if you would like to share your story, please just email me at marvan@ut.edu):

By Anonymous

I thought about writing a submission for the “Long Journeys” series on the Cocoon and then again when the “Real Philosophy Jobs” series came out but ultimately decided against it. When the invitation for a non-TT perspective appeared, I decided I would finally share my story and my observations. It includes a long journey and a real non-TT philosophy job at the end.  I am about to start my third year of a full-time, permanent teaching position in a philosophy department at a public university.  Prior to this, I accumulated many years of experience in the profession doing temporary jobs that are now becoming more of a norm rather than an exception.

Helping graduate students succeed: are better mentoring and admissions strategies needed?

I had dinner with an early-career philosopher friend the other evening, and at one point the conversation turned to a topic I have cared a great deal about ever since I was in graduate school: helping graduate students succeed. As readers may (or may not) know, I attended two different philosophy PhD programs: Syracuse in the late '90s, and then Arizona (where I transferred because four of our star faculty at Syracuse were simultaneously hired away by other programs). I have very fond memories of joining both programs. It was truly exciting--and more than a bit humbling--as a young person who loved philosophy to join programs with so many talented and brilliant people. I particularly remember the grad students in both programs. Basically everyone who entered the programs was smart as a whip, with a history of academic success. As a naive newcomer, I confess that I expected that most of the grad students I knew would succeed, get tenure-track jobs, and go on to have long careers in the academy.

Of course, and unfortunately, I was wrong. While I don't have the statistics in front of me, I seem to recall coming across a statistic several years ago that something like only 50% of philosophy PhD students ever finish the degree, let alone finish and get a tenure-track job. At any rate, even if this statistic is wrong, every graduate program I've ever visited or heard about has plenty of students who fit that description--students who hang around the program for 7-8 or even 10 years, only to fade from view, never finishing the degree. Moreover, at least in my own experience, it tended to be very surprising which students those would be. A few cases aside, I don't think anyone--neither I, nor the faculty or other students in the programs I joined--could forecast very well which new students would succeed and which wouldn't. For my part, some of the students I felt sure would succeed didn't, and some who I expected wouldn't succeed did. Indeed, from my perspective at least, some of the most brilliant grad students I knew didn't make it, whereas some of the "less talented" ones did. Why?

Katzav & Vaesen on peer-review in philosophy

Joel Katsaz and Krist Vaesen have an interesting new paper forthcoming in Philosophers' Imprint entitled, “Pluralism and Peer Review in Philosophy” (via Daily Nous). In brief, Katzaz and Vaesen argue on epistemic and moral grounds that, "journals should relax their standards of acceptance, as well as be less restrictive about whom is to decide what is admitted into the debate." As long-time readers of the Cocoon may recall, I'm very sympathetic with their overall position!

PhD graduates by AOS

In the comments section of my post on last year's job numbers by AOS, an enterprising commenter, 'Curious', writes:

I was curious so I spent a couple hours going through the AOSs of recent graduates (2012-17) from NYU, Princeton, Rutgers and Michigan. Here are the results:

Total: 194
Ethics - 39 (20%)
Epistemology - 28 (14%)
Metaphysics - 27 (14%)
Mind (inc. Action) - 25 (13%)
Language - 15 (8%)
Science - 13 (7%)
Political/Law - 13 (7%)
Ancient - 11 (6%) (NB. These are ALL from Princeton, so this is misleading)
Math/Logic - 9 (5%)
History (excl. Ancient) - 8 (4%)
Aesthetics - 5 (2%)

I interpret this as pretty bad news for budding epistemologists and metaphysicians, given the job numbers. Obviously more departments would have to be gone through to really get useful numbers. Princeton has a unusually large number of dissertations in Ancient (same for Rutgers in epistemology and Michigan in Law).

Another reader, 'Also Curious', then added:

I suspect - suspect - that the "relatively booming specialties" that you identify are areas of growth in "lesser" departments, that is, departments outside the top 20 (perhaps top 40) on Leiter's rankings.

Two decades ago, there was very little interest and training in applied ethics at elite (and even below that) schools. Bowling Green, for example, was noted as one of the best in the USA. That again is an area where there are great teaching "needs" at non-elite schools.

Because I too was curious, I quickly looked up Carolyn Dicey Jennings' 2016 update on her earlier job-market report, and found the following chart:

As you can see from the purple parts of the pie-charts (indicating graduates whose dissertations were in "core" areas), many departments appear to be graduating somewhere between 20-40% of their PhDs in core areas...when only something like 8% of available jobs appear to be in those areas.

One can also pretty plainly see some anecdotal support for Also Curious' hypothesis that lower-ranked departments may be graduating more people in "booming" areas of the job-market (i.e. value theory). Just looking at the chart, one can see that departments like Depaul, Vanderbilt, Georgia, Marquette, McMaster, Rochester, Sussex, Hawaii, and Macquerie are graduating comparatively larger proportions of PhDs in value theory than some more highly-ranked programs.

Although I don't have the time to look more closely, I'm sure an enterprising reader or two could use Jennings' data to better evaluate Curious' and Also Curious' hypotheses!

Where the jobs were(n't) in 2016: by AOS

Updated - June 14th: Figures now include August 2016 (percentages by AOS changed very little).

I haven't done this in several years, but I was curious how academic jobs were distributed by AOS this year and quickly went through the philjobs advertisements from August 1, 2016 - May 31st, 2017. Because I figured readers might be interested as well, I posted the numbers below along with a bit of commentary.

A few quick notes. First, when I encountered jobs with multiple AOS (e.g. metaphysics, moral philosophy), I counted each job as '.5' jobs in that area (or in the case of 3 AOS, '.33' jobs, etc.). Although I recognize this is a bit odd, it seems to me to make sense, as a job like that could go to someone in any of the listed AOSs, not just one particular AOS. Because I did this with all jobs, the numbers seem to me to accurately weight whether a job is in a particular AOS simpliciter, or whether it was also available to candidates in other AOS. Second, I only counted "entry-level" jobs, i.e. postdocs and Assistant Professor positions, not Associate or Professor level jobs. Third, while I tried to get the numbers right, this is just a "quick and dirty" tally. While I don't think there are any major errors, I wouldn't be surprised if made a minor mistake or two.

In any case, here are a few highlights, followed by some commentary and then details (viz. breakdowns within each AOS):

TOTAL jobs = 482

• Value theory = 176 jobs (36.5%)
• Open AOS: 117 jobs (24.2%)
• Science (including cog. sci) = 44 jobs (now 9.1%)
• History = 43 jobs (now 8.9%)
• Core (mind, language, metaphysics, epistemology, logic) = 39 jobs (now 8%)

TT jobs = 231

• Value Theory = 78 jobs (34%)
• Open: 39 jobs (17%)
• History: 30 jobs (13%)
• Core (mind, language, metaphysics, epistemology, logic) = 23 jobs (10%)
• Science (including cog. sci) = 18 jobs (7.8%)

Non-TT jobs = 251

• Value theory = 98 jobs (39%)
• Open = 78 jobs (31%)
• Science  (including cog. sci) = 23 jobs (10%)
• Core (mind, language, metaphysics, epistemology, logic) =16 jobs (6.4%)
• History = 15 jobs (6%)

New data on representation of women in philosophy journals

Isaac Wilhelm (Rutgers) has drawn my attention to a new paper  he has forthcoming in Philosophical Studies with Sherry Lynn Conklin (UC Santa Barbara) and Nicole Hassoun (SUNY Binghamton) on the representation of women authors in philosophy journals. The abstract:

This paper presents new data on the representation of women who publish in 25 top philosophy journals as ranked by the Philosophical Gourmet Report for the years 2004, 2014, and 2015. It also provides a new analysis of Schwitzgebel’s 1955–2015 journal data. The paper makes four points while providing an overview of the current state of women authors in philosophy. In all years and for all journals, the percentage of female authors was extremely low, in the range of 14–16%. The percentage of women authors is less than the percentage of women faculty in different ranks and at different kinds of institutions. In addition, there is great variation across individual journals, and the discrepancy between women authors and women faculty appears to be different in different subfields. Interestingly, journals which do not practice anonymous review seem to have a higher percentage of women authors than journals which practice double anonymous or triple anonymous review. This paper also argues that we need more data on academic publishing to better understand whether this can explain why there are so few full-time female faculty in philosophy, since full-time hiring and tenuring practices presumably depend on a candidate’s academic publishing.

Reader query on how reviewers review papers

In the comments section of our newest "how can we help you?" post, a reader 'NK' writes:

I think it would be helpful to hear from those who've done some refereeing about how they approach the task. For early-career people like me, that would help both with refereeing, which we're just starting to do, and with publication, since it would give some insight into what referees are thinking.

But I'm thinking it would be especially helpful if the focus were on the kinds of things you ask yourself about papers you review, the kinds of things you remind yourself to do when reviewing, and so on. (For example, how do you figure out whether the fact that *you* disagree with something an author says constitutes a [perhaps defeasible] reason to reject?)

This is a really great query. When I was first struggling to learn how to publish, I felt like I had no clue what reviewers were looking for--and I suspect a lot of early-career people are in a similar boat. So, then, when you're reviewing for journals:

1. How do you approach your task?
2. What do you look for in a paper (viz. making a recommendation, such as "accept" or "reject")?
3. How do you figure out whether something you "disagree" with is a reason to reject?

Reader query on preventing 'google reviewing'

In the comments section of our newest "How can we help you?" post, a reader writes:

I'm wondering if anyone can give advice on how to hide your paper from Googling by referees. I have recently noticed that my website gets a huge spike in traffic right after I submit a paper--even to a triple-blind journal. (Of course, at any journal, the googler may just be the editor, which is not as bad as it being the referees.) Plus, there's all this independent testimony that it's a common practice.

Anyway, I think the problem is very acute for those of us on the market (as I will be in the fall). Think of all the places a job candidate will have a paper's info:(1) under a research tab on the website, (2) in an "Under Review" section on one's CV, which is on one's website, (3) in a research statement or dissertation abstract, which is on one's website (even if the titles aren't there, often a candidate will describe his/her papers there--and that will show up when someone Googles phrases from the paper).

I'm finding it hard to scrub not only titles but even paper descriptions from all those places. Any advice?

This is a really excellent query. I too have repeatedly had the experience the reader mentions here -- of people searching for my paper's title and visiting my website or academia.edu page immediately after submitting it to journals. And I've heard many other people I know report similar experiences. What can be done to prevent it?

Some fun historical trivia on peer-review

I trust many of this blog's readers have something of a "love-hate" relationship with peer-review. On the one hand, peer-review aims to counteract bias in evaluating work for publication--and when one receives thoughtful, detailed comments by peer-reviewers, it can really improve one's work (I, for one, owe an immense debt of gratitude to some reviewers, as well editors). On the other hand, peer-review is often an incredibly frustrating process--with annoyances ranging from absurdly long wait times, to absurdly high rejection-rates, to unhelpful, unqualified, and/or meanspirited reviewers, to unethical Google reviewing, to referee comments that require one to turn an otherwise beautiful paper into a monstrosity (see below).   

Anyway, while I have suggested a number of reforms before that I think might improve the process, peer-review will likely always remain a very imperfect system. What, then, can we do (besides complain or push for reforms)?

Philosophical/scientific virtues and the history of inquiry

Last Friday, Justin Weinberg ran a post at Daily Nous speculating on what the virtues of a philosopher are, and proposing the following as an initial list:

• Humility – knowledge of the limits of one’s knowledge, including one’s knowledge of those limits
• Curiosity – the propensity to be dissatisfied with one’s lack of understanding, but not discouraged by it
• Charity – the disposition to first seek the wisdom in what others say
• Courage – the strength to not mistake uncertainty for danger
• Grace – gratitude to those who help save us from ourselves

Readers then chimed in with their own thoughts.  However, while such speculation may be fun, I cannot help but be skeptical of its epistemic value. Reality, after all, is no more obligated to conform to our untutored intuitions about philosophical virtue than it is obligated to conform to our intuitions about space and time, etc. The issue of which traits are in fact philosophical virtues is a partly conceptual question, and partly empirical. First, we need to settle what the proper aim(s) of philosophy are. Then we need to examine which traits or learned disposition are most conducive to achieving the aim(s) in question, using actual data rather than intuitions. So, let's think about these issues a bit more.

First, what are the proper aims of philosophy? One obvious problem is that different people have different conceptions. For some, I suppose the aim(s) of philosophy is truth (viz. true answers to philosophical questions). Others, however, might gloss the proper aim(s) of philosophy as 'understanding' (viz. Sellars' claim that, "The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term"). And so on. I'm not sure there is enough agreement on the aim(s) of philosophy to settle what philosophical virtues are. However, offhand, I think it's plausible that the aims of philosophy are not that different than the aims of science--as the sciences aim for truth, understanding, and so on.

So, let's take science as a rough model. How might we collect data on scientific virtues? Well, we would need to determine which dispositions in individual inquirers tend to lead to the discovery of scientific truth and generation of scientific understanding. I do not have such data, and am not sure that anyone does (does anyone know of any good studies here?). What I do have, though, is a fairly good grasp of scientific history. As I've mentioned before, one of my favorite pastimes is reading intellectual biographies on famous philosophers and scientists from history. What, if anything, do those sources suggest? What types of traits and dispositions did scientists who contributed immensely to discovery of scientific truth and understanding tend to have? Did they tend to have the kinds of traits Weinberg proposes?

I cannot purport to provide anything like firm answers to these questions. However, as luck would have it, I purchased, "The Great Physicists: The Life and Times of Leading Physicists from Galileo to Hawking", this past Saturday and decided it would be fun to put together a compendium of reports on the traits and dispositions of different theorists. I've also used a couple of other sources, and here is what I found:

Journal prestige and philosophical impact

A few years ago, I floated the idea that perhaps we should judge philosophical research (and researchers) less on the basis of venue (i.e. journal prestige) and more on the basis of philosophical impact (i.e. citation-rates and discussion). These thoughts were inspired by my sense at the time that a significant number of published articles in highly ranked journals were not being cited very much, let alone actively discussed in the literature in an impactful way.

These thoughts were rekindled the past couple of days by two social-media posts by philosophers I know. First, one philosopher posted the following chart that Kieran Healy put together based on citation-rates of articles in four of our highest-ranked journals from 1993-2015:

 

Among Healy's more striking findings are that over this 22-year period:

1. The mode number of times that published articles in those four journals were cited was zero. 
2. Most articles appearing in those journals were cited no more than a handful of times.

In other words, as highly ranked and prestigious as these journals may be, it appears that a majority of their published articles make a small philosophical impact (viz. citation and further discussion in the literature).

Notice--just to be clear--that this isn't to say that the journals in question shouldn't be so highly ranked. After all, the data is entirely consistent with the hypotheses that these journals tend to publish better and more "game-changing" work than other journals. What it does suggest, however, is that one "shouldn't judge a book by its cover"--that perhaps we should evaluate work less on where it appears, and more on whether it makes any discernible impact in the discipline. Alternatively, since there are plausible sociological worries regarding why a given author or work makes an impact (e.g. author prestige, etc.), perhaps it suggests that we should all read and cite more work--as there are serious epistemic issues with prevailing norms.

In any case, just today Brian Weatherson posted another intriguing set of findings, this time on citation trends of articles published in five highly-ranked journals (Mind, Nous, JPhil, Phil Review, and Phil Studies) from the 1976 to the present. Here are the trends:

Fig 1. Citation rates in 31 journals

Fig 2. Citation rates across all journals in the Web of Science Arts & Humanities Index

As Weatherson notes, the most striking thing in both data sets is how citation-rates of articles appearing in the four most prestigious journals (JPhil, Mind, Phil Review, and Nous) have dropped precipitously over time, while citation-rates of Phil Studies articles have climbed. Further, as Weatherson also notes, this cannot be attributed primarily to Phil Studies publishing substantially more articles than the other journals, as this feature of Phil Studies relative to the other journals has been constant over time. Rather, what appears to have happened is that the average Phil Studies article has increased its impact on philosophical discussion, while the opposite has occurred for the other four journals. As Weatherson writes, "A big part of the story is that Philosophical Studies went from having its not-so-huge articles get 5 citations a piece, to getting 10 citations a piece, and that adds up." 

What should we make of these findings? I don't know -- which is why I thought I might simply open things up for discussion!

A true story, but also a parable?

The following is a true story:

Several years ago, my mother took our family dog (R.I.P.) out in the backyard to do his 'nightly business.' An unexpected rustle in the dark led the dog to growl and confront the intruder. It turns out the intruder was a mother raccoon with several of her babies. To protect them, the raccoon attacked the dog. To protect the dog, my mother the screamed and attacked the raccoon--and the raccoon attacked her. My father, who was in the shower, heard her screams and rushed outside naked with a baseball bat to protect my mother, who he feared was being assaulted by burglars. At that point, a next-door neighbor heard the commotion, and called to police to protect my mom "from a naked man wielding a baseball bat." Several minutes later, a number of police stormed the house like a SWAT-team with guns drawn, ordering my dad to drop then weapon. Finally, animal control showed up to capture and put the raccoon to sleep--and my mom and dog got driven to the hospital and emergency vet.

What a disaster, right? Yet here's the thing: so much of human life seems sadly analogous to it. Time and again, we see violent escalations arise from each side of a disagreement insisting that their standpoint is right--that they and they alone have discovered the God's Honest Truth. We see this throughout human history up to the present. In the Crusades, Catholics and Muslims both claimed to be 'in the right'--and so they fought. In the European religious wars, Catholics, Protestants, etc., claimed to be in the right--and so they too fought. More recently, both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict argue that their side is in the right--and so they fight. Democrats and Republican think they are in the right--and so we fight. And, of course, on blogs, social media, etc., we see broadly the same thing. Wherever we look--on the news, in politics, in academia, etc.--everyone argues they are in the right...and so we constantly fight.

When will we ever learn? Better yet, what do we need to learn if we want these kinds of horrible cycles to cease? Allow me to offer up an answer to the latter question, and then return to the former question.

Grappling with failure(s): how did you do it, and what did you learn?

In my post the other day on Eric McCormack's, "Some Lesser Known Lessons from Academia", I mentioned how in my experience his lesson #3 ("You don’t need to feel like you’re succeeding") is really apt. One of the biggest challenges of academia is that you "fail" far more often than you succeed. Consequently, learning how to grapple effectively with failures--both large and small--is absolutely vital for burgeoning academics. Whether one wilts in the face of failure, or whether one finds away to recover and adapt, can make not only an enormous difference in whether one succeeds professionally, but also with one's mental well-being. I know this from experience. I went through some terrible times early in my career--both in graduate school and during my many years on the job-market--and, in all honesty, barely made it though.

Anyway, over at his blog Digressions&Impressions, took up McCormack's topic as well, discussing one of his own tough times in grad school:

A recent dinner with friends from graduate school and Daniel McCormack's useful post (see also this moving piece by the late Josh Parsons) brought to mind a painful memory: my equivalent of what McCormack calls the "candidacy defense."...For me this exam came in my fourth year.

I knew my draft-chapter was not very strong...[And] My Preliminary Essay evaluation process had not been a happy experience because the committee was very divided about the quality of my work (about that some other time)...

I don't recall much about the actual candidacy defense, except that it was in my supervisor's office, and that after, I felt like a total intellectual idiot/nitwit. (The more recent jargon would be imposter.) It was clear that my project relied on half-baked assumptions and badly understood distinctions. Even though none of them had any special expertise on my topic, they had seen right through the project and honed in on its weaknesses. They were not mean, and I sensed no ill-will toward me (and this made it worse); it was strictly business, and I was left holding unsaleable shmattes. While they were conferring on my fate, I recall sitting in the hall-way too numb too feel, but contemplating if I should apply to law-school at once or move with my Bullmastiff to Red Lodge, WY, and spend the rest of my life in exile from the world.  (No way I was going home having proved myself such a failure.) Before going to graduate school, I spent a year working in corporate America researching by phone what kind of Linotype printers European print-shops owned, and I was not eager to go back to such mindless drudgery.

Schleisser's story got me thinking that it might be helpful if we all shared some of our own biggest failures as early-career folk, and how we grappled with them. I think this might be helpful for two reasons.

'Lesser known lessons from academia'

My attention was drawn today (via Daily Nous) to this piece by Daniel McCormack on "some lesser known lessons of academia." In brief, McCormack's lessons are that academia is likely to be a good fit for you only if:

1. You like working on long-term projects.
2. You are good at managing your time over very long time periods.
3. You don’t need to feel like you’re succeeding.
4. You don’t care where you live.
5. You don’t mind moving frequently, or being very mobile in general.

Aside from the obvious problem of knowing in advance (prior to spending 7-10 years in a PhD program) whether you'll be cool with any of these things, my experience is that they are all pretty spot-on, but especially #3. 

Reader queries on disability and UK jobs

In the comments section of our newest "How can we help you?" post, a couple of readers asked questions about the 'Two Ticks" policy in the UK, which evidently requires institutions "to interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum essential criteria for a job vacancy and consider them on their abilities." Amanda wrote:

So I am applying for a job in the UK and would really appreciate feedback as I am super conflicted about this. So I have a disability, but usually lie or give no answer when asked this on the job application. So someone on this site mentioned that the Uk guarantees an interview if you have a disability. This time around, I said yes on the application, and sure enough they informed me that I would be guaranteed an interview and asked if I wanted to proceed. I am very conflicted about this. It is not so much that I am against affirmative action, but this seems a pretty extreme version of it. In addition, I don't want to go through an interview when they are just interviewing me to comply with the rules. Also, if I would get an interview anyway I would rather they not know about the disability. What does everyone think of this? I have not turned in the application yet, but I only have a few days. Feedback is much appreciated!

Similarly, 'Stuck PhD' wrote:

The Two Ticks scheme in UK job applications is also of interest to me. I have a rather serious and sometimes-disabling autoimmune disorder, but I've always figured that an obligatory interview is a waste of my time and the interviewers'.

Does anybody (most likely, I suppose, a person who's been offered a job) know of a case where a disability-guaranteed interview has resulted in a job offer?

As this is a policy I was not familiar with until now, I think it might be best to have an open discussion of Amanda's and Stuck's queries: Should Amanda feel conflicted ('really' doesn't think so!)? Does the Two Ticks policy work (i.e. does it benefit candidates with disabilities)? Also, given the very broad definition of disability provided, who should avail themselves of the policy? (An example: I've never given a second-thought to declaring a disability myself, despite having a very serious sleep disorder and some other conditions that, before they were well-treated, did seriously compromise my ability to carry out day-to-day tasks).

Passions of philosophers outside of philosophy -- Tomas Bogardus

Today's interview with a philosopher who shares his passion outside of philosophy is Tomas Bogardus, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. He works mostly on the mind-body problem and the rationality of religious belief, and has a forthcoming paper on whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Let me know at helenldecruz at gmail dot com if you'd like to be featured! 

1. Can you tell me something about your side-interests/hobbies, and how you got into them?

Most of my free time is spent hanging out with my wife and daughter, and that’s what I enjoy most. Aside from that, these days, I have three main hobbies. I’ve been surfing for about twenty years now, and being near the ocean was an attraction of my current job at Pepperdine. My commute into Malibu takes me down the coast through Ventura and western Malibu, and there are lots of surf spots on the way. When I have some extra time and the waves are good, I’ll magically compress a longboard or a funboard into my Honda Accord and make a little surf stop on the way to campus.

My wife, my daughter, and I live at a bit of an elevation now, close to Los Padres National Forest, and it gets cool at night, so I’ve learned from my neighbors how to hunt, butcher, and season firewood. (Don’t worry, the trees have all fallen naturally.) On one of these adventures, I happened into some really beautiful and rare wood from a giant Catalina Ironwood tree that had died in the drought. The wood has a shimmering ochre color, it’s super dense (hence, “ironwood”), and looks almost like copper when it’s sanded and finished. After burning more of the wood than I’d like to admit, I decided to try my hand at shaping it into little hearts and triangles, and gifting them to my wife and daughter who display them around the house. At first I had only a circular saw, which I’d run with one hand while guiding the wood with my other hand. By the grace of God, no fingers were lost during that reckless confusion. Things have progressed a bit now, I have better tools, and some of the necklaces I’ve made are featured in a local store here in my hometown, and on the website of a chic local clothing line. (You can see some by following the new ojai_holtz account on Instagram.)

Should authors respond to book reviews?

I came across Pea Soup's NDPR Discussion Series today, which features authors responding to book reviews, and am curious what readers think: should authors respond to book reviews? If so, when? If not, why not?

As an author of a relatively new book myself, I confess to feeling a bit torn here. On the one hand, I very much appreciate why authors might want to respond to reviews, particularly if they are invited to do so or if they have philosophical concerns about the content of a review, such as misrepresentations of their work. Further and more generally, as a philosopher I find myself attracted to the idea of scholarly debate and discussion: if a book is reviewed, it might be illuminating to see how the author responds. Finally, because academic books are expensive; because the reception of a book can make a difference to an author's career (including tenure and promotion decisions); and because books by early-career authors may only receive a handful of reviews (journals can be selective in which books they decide to review), there may be a pragmatic case to be made for responding to some reviews. I cannot help but be reminded here of R.M. Hare's brutal two-part review of Rawls' A Theory of Justice in The Philosophical Quarterly, which concludes:

In concluding this not very sympathetic notice, it must be said that a reviewer with more ample patience and leisure might possibly have done better for Rawls. I have taken a great deal of pains (and it really has been painful) trying to get hold of his ideas, but with the feeling all the time that they were slipping through my fingers...The book is extremely repetitious, and it is seldom clear whether the repetitions really are repetitions, or modifications of previously expressed views. I have drawn attention to some of these difficulties, and there are all too many others. Rawls is not to be blamed for failing to keep the whole of this huge book in his head at the same time (the only way to avoid inconsistencies when writing a book); and still less are his readers. He is to be blamed, if at all, for not attempting something more modest and doing it properly.

Many years ago [Rawls] wrote some extremely promising articles, containing in germ, though without clarity, a most valuable suggestion about the form and nature of moral thought. It might have been possible to work this idea out with concision and rigour (Rawls' disciple Mr Richards has made a tolerably good job of it in his book A Theory of Reasons for Action, which is much clearer than Rawls' own book as an exposition of this type of theory). If Rawls had limited himself to, say, 300 pages, and had resolved to get his main ideas straight and express them with absolute clarity, he could have made a valuable contribution to moral philosophy. 

Because reviews can be fair or unfair, charitable or uncharitable, etc., it is not hard to imagine philosophical or professional reasons why an author might want to respond to some reviews. And indeed, as a new author, I have given some thought to doing so myself.

At the same time, there seem to me to be pretty good countervailing reasons not to respond to reviews. First, there may be good pragmatic reasons not to: it might reflect poorly on the author (prejudicing other reviewers?); the author's time might simply be better spent publishing new work; and so on. Second, and perhaps more to the heart of the matter, my own feeling is that a published work can, should, and usually will ultimately speak for itself. After all, despite Hare's review, Rawls' book caught on. What Hare took to be serious errors in A Theory of Justice, generations of other philosophers took to be the foundations for research programmes. Similarly, as I'm sure we all know, Hume famously remarked that his Treatise "fell still-born from the press"--and, or so Wikipedia tells me of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, "Although now uniformly recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, this Critique was largely ignored upon its initial publication...It received few reviews, and these granted it no significance." 

Now, of course, very few of us will be a Hume or Kant (I certainly don't pretend to be!). Still, my feeling is that the following principle may be the best perspective for authors to adopt: good work does not usually go unrecognized forever, bad work usually does not stand the test of time, and one must leave it to readers to decide for themselves. 

But these are just some of my current thoughts--and I am far from certain about them. What are yours? Should authors respond to book reviews? If so, when? If not, why not?