The Philosophers' Cocoon

Journals being unable to find referees

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

What to do when top journals reject papers without sending them for review not because the paper is bad but because they simply cannot find referees? My manuscript has been rejected from two top journals. One of the journals rejected the paper and the editor basically said that we do not have time to find competent referees for every paper and for that reason we have to reject some promising papers. Another journal rejected my paper after it has been "under review" for 6 weeks or so. They first contacted me and told that they have not yet found a referee for it because people keep rejecting referee invitations but that they will continue to find the referees. Just a day later I received another email saying that they have rejected my paper without any comments from the referees.

Is this practice common? Is it morally permissible? What an author can do to avoid this? Should I only submit papers to specialized journals that know more referees? (The problem is that if one does not publish in top philosophy journals, some philosophers think his/her work is not "real philosophy"). Should an author always recommend possible referees in a cover letter when submitting a paper? (at least some journals ask the author to recommend possible referees).

This is interesting, as similar phenomena happened to me for the first time recently as both an author and reviewer. In one case, an editor wrote to me apologizing for a long review time due to inability to find referees for a paper I submitted. Then, in another case, an editor for a different journal wrote to me asking me to review a paper because reviewers kept turning their requests down. In all my years, these are the first times I've encountered this phenomenon, and both instances happened in the past few months. I wonder what's going on, and whether this some kind of trend due to the professional conditions that David Velleman recently termed 'the publication emergency'.

Anyone else have any experience with this? On the one hand, it seems to me that members of the profession have a presumptive duty to take on review requests (viz. contributing their fair share to a system that plays a central role in our profession), so if people are turning down review requests left and right, then that's concerning. On the other hand, reviewing is 'unpaid labor' of sorts, so I know there's not much incentive for people to accept requests. But in any case, rejecting papers due to inability to find suitable referees seems super unfair to authors. So, I'm really not sure what to say on this. What do you all think? It might be good to hear from editors, reviewers, and authors on their experiences here!

Should more journals do 'targets and replies'?

In the comment section of my recent post on citation rates and journal rankings, Anon writes:

AJOB's journal structure is a main article and reply structure. There is one or two main ("target") articles, and then the other articles are replies to the main one. I actually think this is a cool format for a journal, as it motivates engagement.

I wasn't aware that AJOB does this, but I agree: it sounds like a really cool idea. As I've mentioned before, I think our current publishing model creates serious and unnecessary barriers to philosophical discussion. For example, many journals only permit 'replies' to articles published in their own pages. The result is that many published papers are never engaged with at all, and academic philosophy ends up more akin to a series of loosely connected monologues than a discussion. 

AJOB's 'target and replies' model seems to me a healthy antidote to this: a way of incentivizing greater engagement with published work. It would also make finding responses to published articles easier, as a journal might continually publish new replies to a given article on an ongoing basis below the original target article, enabling anyone who visits the article at the journal to see what other people have written on it in response (at least in that journal). 

What do other people think? Would it be good for the profession if more journals adopted this model? I suppose there might be logistical challenges, as it would probably significantly increase the number of reply submissions to journals, some of whose editors already report being overwhelmed with too many submissions. Still, given that AJOB evidently pulls it off, it seems like there is some way to handle these issues. Any ideas? Anyone know how AJOB does it?

Citation rates and journal rankings

Yesterday, this Google Scholar report on h5-index statistics of philosophy journals started going around my social media feed, and a few questions occurred to me: what, if anything, should we take statistics like these to indicate? Should they lead people who rank journals, or use journal rankings in hiring, tenure, and promotion, to revise how they think about these things? Although I tend not to care much about rankings in general, I still found myself curious about these questions.

In brief, my understanding is that in STEM fields, disciplinary journal rankings tend to follow journal impact-factors--that is, that people in those fields tend to identify the 'best journals' with ones that have the biggest impact in the literature. In philosophy, however, impact-factors rarely seem to be mentioned. Many journals do not even appear to report them. I found the above Google Scholar report interesting, in that although many highly-ranked philosophy journals appear in the list (with Nous and PPR in particular featuring at the top of the Google Scholar list), the list as a whole diverges fairly significantly from common journal rankings in the discipline.

One reason I found myself curious about this is that it is not clear what kind of validity subjective polls on journal-rankings have. If those kinds of common rankings merely represent people's beliefs about various journals' reputation, there is always the further question of whether a given journal's reputation is accurate. On the other hand, impact factors (such as h-indexes) merely reflect how often a journal's work is cited--which is a very imperfect (at best) measure of the quality of work. Further, journal citation-ranks may in part reflect the sheer number of articles a given journal publishes (as some journals publish far more articles than others).

Anyway, I don't have much of a well-developed view about any of this--aside again, from being skeptical about rankings in general. Still, I'm curious what others think.

How to write a referee report (John Greco)

This guest post is by John Greco, currently Leonard and Elizabeth Eslick Chair in Philosophy at Saint Louis University, and soon in McDevitt Chair in Philosophy at Georgetown University 

I am sure that there will be varying opinions about how to write a referee report. In keeping with the spirit of this series, I here offer my own opinion, based on my own experience as someone who has written and read quite a few such reports. I have written them as a referee, of course. I have read some as an author, but many more as the editor of a major philosophy journal. It is this last perspective, I believe, that is most useful for present purposes. For referee reports, remember, are written primarily for journal editors.[1] That is, the defining purpose of a referee report—its raison d'etre—is to help a journal editor to make a decision about a submission. And that is what gives us insight into the criteria for a good referee report.

Already I have said something (at least one thing) that is substantive and controversial. That is, I don’t think that everyone would agree that this is indeed the primary purpose of a referee report. Many writers of such reports seem to think (or at least this is what I gather from reading their reports) that referee reports are primarily directed at authors, and for the purpose of improving the paper that is being evaluated. In my opinion, this is a mistake, and it leads to many of the problems that are typical of referee reports. In any case, below I will describe what I think are the essential elements of a good referee report, guided by my understanding that referee reports are supposed to help editors make a decision on a submission. Following that, I will go over what I take to be some common mistakes and unhelpful practices.

The elements of a good report.

In my opinion, the best referee reports have a few essential elements.

Propriety, good structures, and justice -- thoughts on leadership in academia

In spite of its meritocratic aspirations, academia is not a just place. There is a striking disconnect between the ideals of academia - meritocracy and an emphasis on talent no matter where it comes from - and the reality. This includes prestige bias (in graduate admissions and hiring, see also my earlier paper here), an unwelcome climate for minorities such as trans people), ableism, sexual harassment and assault cases, and so on. 

What can we do to improve our departments, and particularly, our profession? In this post I'll focus on leadership in academia, but the post might well apply to other domains, such as the corporate private sector, any kind of sector that has problems in equal opportunity for employees, sexual harassment, and so on.  I'm going to explore two ideas from Chinese philosophy (both mainly from the Warring States period) that propose two different kinds of intervention, one is more focused on civility and change of culture, the other more on institutional and legal frameworks. 

The aim of both kinds of interventions should ideally be to promote both harmonious relationships and flourishing of members of the profession (not only of tenure-track professors but also, graduate students, adjuncts, etc), and to promote justice, particularly for people who are not in positions of power, such as graduate students, adjuncts, and members of various minorities.

Admitting 'wildcards' into grad programs?

I assume at least some of you have seen Eric Schwitzgebel's recent update to his 2007 series on applying to grad programs in philosophy. As many other philosophers have remarked on social media, some of the information Schwitzgebel shares is remarkable. Consider:

Looking at data on eight of our eleven admittees [at UC Riverside] this year (excluding one international applicant whose transcripts aren't comparable and two who quickly declined UCR for higher ranked programs), all but one had GPAs over 3.85 at their most recent institution, with a median GPA of 3.92/4.00. While it's not impossible to be admitted to a mid-ranked PhD program without stellar grades, it is rare. If you are applying as an undergraduate or M.A. student, you want straight As, or very close, in your upper-division philosophy classes. 

Many of my philosopher-friends on social media--many of whom are very successful and well-published--have remarked how, given the above numbers, they would almost certainly be rejected by such programs today. For my part, I had a 3.6 coming out of my undergrad at Tufts. Other friends of mine online noted that they got into philosophy grad programs with undergrad GPA's as low as a 2.7. Presumably, me and many other people who I've seen comment online would never be admitted to good programs with these kinds of numbers today. And I will be honest: this concerns me. Let me explain.

Taking time off work/the market for motherhood?

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

Would it be career suicide to skip the job market and adjuncting for a year (or maybe even two) to expand my family and be a stay at home parent for a little while? I would still attempt to write, publish, and present at conferences (in fact I'd have much more time to attempt to do these things if I wasn't adjuncting and on the market while parenting a young child). I was on the market during my first pregnancy and adjuncted right up until my due date. I'm not keen to try that again while also parenting a toddler. I also don't want to put off having another kid until after I get a permanent job (since it may never happen anyway). Would schools consider hiring someone with this kind of gap in teaching? If so, would there be a good way to explain it in my cover letter and/or CV when going back on the market at a later time?

'B' then answered:

Make a point of listing it on your c.v. or in your letter that you were on maternity leave. There are civilized departments out there. Hopefully no one will ask you to show the placenta to prove it.

While I think this is right--and I think this is an important issue--I also think that whether Anonymous should bet on 'civilized departments' may be a difficult question to answer. Allow me to explain.

I have heard two things anecdotally from a number of people. The first is that search committees may have a tendency to look askance at 'gaps' in one's employment record. The second is that, at many places, there may be fairly clear discrimination against women on the basis of motherhood. For example, I have heard from women academics I know personally that things like the following have been said in their presence, "Oh, she just had a child. Say goodbye to her productivity." Not only that: there is plenty of empirical research showing a very real "motherhood penalty" in hiring and wages--whereas men actually appear to benefit in the workplace from being fathers (whereas motherhood is prejudicially associated with less productivity, fatherhood appears to be prejudicially associated with greater productivity).

If you put these two (very) unfortunate things together--the anecdotal possibility that hiring committees may hold 'employment gaps' against candidates, and real evidence that motherhood is used against mothers in hiring--then B's advice may, sadly, not be the best advice to follow (at least if Anonymous does not want to risk these things, as the concerns in her comment suggests she is concerned about). That being said, I am neither a father nor (obviously) a mother, so I cannot pretend to speak to Anonymous' situation beyond this.

What do you all think?

Representation in professional organizations

Updated: 7:10pm, 6/11/2019

Last week, the APA announced the results of its most recent elections. I think everyone elected is highly qualified and deserving of their new positions, and I congratulate them all wholeheartedly. Nevertheless, I would like to make a modest suggestion to the APA and other professional organizations about representation. To be clear in advance, the suggestion I will offer is not intended as a criticism. I appreciate what the APA does, and have benefited from it tremendously as a member. Further, a voluntary association, I think the APA is probably well within its moral rights to represent its members in the way it currently does and traditionally has. Rather, I merely want to make the positive suggestion that it might be good for the APA, the profession as a whole, and many of its members for it--and other professional organizations like it--to pay additional attention to some issues concerning representation. Allow me to explain.

Upon receiving the notification of the APA's election results, I quite naturally looked at who was elected. I was in turn pleasantly surprised that a number of people I voted for were elected--which made me happy, both for them and for the profession. However, I then noticed something interesting: that of the nineteen people elected, 18 are from research universities (the lone exception being Rebecca Copenhaver from Lewis and Clark College). Because I found this striking, I looked at the APA's Board of Officers page to see what the composition of its Board has been. When I went down the list of 26 people listed, I found that 23 officers work at research universities. Of the remaining three officers, two--Rebecca Copenhaver and Jeffrey S. Dunn--work at liberal arts universities, and the third (Matthew O'Brien) has a non-academic affiliation. In other words, across both pages I found that 41 of 45 the APA's officers, or 91.1%, are from research universities.

While I understand that research plays a central role in the discipline, this strikes me as potentially a missed opportunity in several respects.

What It's Like to Be on the Philosophy Job Market: A Simulation

About a month ago, I gave a presentation to a group of graduate students about the philosophy job market. During that presentation, I showcased a short video that was designed to be a simulation of what it's like to go on the academic job market in philosophy. I think it's fair to say that it's not the most optimistic portrayal of how the job search can go. But given what was going on at the time I came up with this idea, that's probably not surprising. On the bright side, it did provide some use for the rejection notices that I had been accumulating over the past few years, and my search this past year was ultimately successful (though that story will have to wait for another post).

Anyway, I have now uploaded that short video to YouTube so that you can have the experience of going on the philosophy job market condensed into a mere 75 seconds. The video is embedded below, but I'd recommend full-screening it if you want to actually read some of the text. Note that all the rejection emails in the video are legitimate except one, and you'll probably be able to figure out which one that is.

To promote one’s work, or not?

Updated: 2:50pm, 6/4/2019

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

Should I be trying to get people to notice my papers in some way other than just publishing and putting them out there? Cold emailing relevant interlocutors, posting about them in a public Facebook post, something like that?

I think these are great questions, one's I've wondered about on a number of occasions given the visibility the Cocoon provides. Here, in brief, are the conclusions I've come to: some people may look down on promoting one's work - but I think there is nothing to be ashamed of in doing it, and it probably benefits the profession and individuals who do it, at least on balance. Let me explain why.

Job-market catastrophizing? It is not the only way

[EF: I discussed the blogpost "Job-market catastrophizing?: a conversation" with Krishna Del Toso, who continues to write and think as a philosopher but is no longer paid as one. He agreed to share his reflections below:]

Here's my two cents.

I must say that, as I see it, the root of the "catastrophizing" lies in the fact that as far as the academic work is concerned (whether it is philosophy, literature, physics etc.), you aren't totally in control of the effects of your choices, whereas in other domains you are. This condition that characterizes wannabe academics bring about two aspects: 1. you don't need to train the instant reactivity to external stimuli (I'm talking about the kind of reactivity that can make the difference between leading a business brilliantly… or not), 2. you enter a sort of vicious circle in which the "catastrophizing" is nothing but a passive, fruitless, element that nourishes, and is nourished by, the observation that things go as they go because of a sort of inviolable and tacitly admitted norm (kind of Heidegger's "das Man world").

Of course, I was myself in this very vicious circle when I was hoping (mind the word: hoping!!) for a position at the university, long ago, and I was wearing myself out of "I've never done enough", not to speak of the struggle for publications (a struggle often driven by the aim of adding an extra title in my cv: mere form, devoid of real substance… should research be like this? Definitely not!) and of the almost depressing waiting-time in the maybe-you’ll-be-the-next "parking lot" for researchers after a position. I was waiting for others to decide for me, and that, back then, looked quite obvious, normal.

Fortunately all this no longer wears me out, fortunately we live in a fast-changing world… and fortunately the Aristotelian saying, often remembered but rarely put into practice, according to which "being (and so philosophy too) can be said in many ways" remains always valid.

Now I'm bringing my knowledge of philosophy into non-strictly-philosophical fields, such as early-stage business (I'm currently working on a book on this subject) and personal growth (a colleague recently asked me to make together Youtube video conversations on this matter). The time to actualize the aforementioned Aristotelian message is ripe: consider that Google inaugurated the CPO position, Chief Philosophy Officer, not because it's cool but because they need philosophers. I also continue as an independent scholar with my research in the spare time, avoiding all boring stuff and focusing only on arguments that really tantalize me (of course now I write less articles than before, but they're published on the same international journals). But the most important aspect is that now I know (I mean, crystal clear awareness!) that if I work well, I pick up all the fruits of my actions because I damn deserve that, if I don't, the bad effects are entirely on me… because I damn deserve that. Such a huge relief!

The Special-Skills Fallacy

In my first post in this series, I argued that our profession--grad programs and professional institutions--should do far more to foster alt-ac opportunities for early-career people, and offered some simple suggestions for feasible things I think can and should be done. Then, in my last post, I suggested that for these things to happen, we probably need to combat the 'academia or bust' mindset in the profession, a mindset that seems common in grad program faculty, grad students, and job-marketeers. However, it occurred to me after reading comments in both threads that in order to combat this mindset, we may need to combat something more specific: what I will call The Special-Skills Fallacy. Allow me to explain.

Consider what 'job marketeer' wrote here:

The faculty at my PhD program did a good job reminding grad students that the market is tough...On the other hand, they didn't seem to acknowledge the possibility that those who intend to complete the program may also want to consider alt-ac employment. The biggest reason this seems like an oversight is...there are no obvious alt-ac career choices for philosophers. (my italics)

Similarly, consider what 'postdoc' wrote here:

If we fail at the TT objective, then there aren't too many other jobs a PhD in philosophy (without a STEM background) can do that match the status of University Professor (if any). (my italics)

Comments like these appear on the Cocoon startlingly often (I vaguely recall dozens of them). Consequently, it appears as though many people in our profession--grad students, job-marketeers, and grad faculty--probably (at least implicitly) believe something like the following argument, which I will call the Special Skills Fallacy:

The Special Skills Fallacy

1. Philosophy graduate students, MAs, and PhDs (without an additional STEM background) have no special skills relevant to obtaining good alt-ac careers.

2. If (1) is true, then there are no obvious alt-ac career choices for philosophy grad students, MAs, or PhDs.

3. Thus (from 1&2), there are no obvious alt-ac career choices for philosophy grad students, MAs, or PhDs.

4. If (3) is true, then screw it: philosophy grad students, MAs, and PhDs have no real shot for good alt-ac careers.

5. Thus, (from 3&4), screw it: philosophy grad students, MAs, and PhDs have no real shot for good alt-ac careers.

In other words, this line of reasoning seems to me a very common argument that many people implicitly accept to justify inaction--both individually and institutionally. However, should we actually believe this argument? I think it is (informally) fallacious in not one but two different respects.

The Shadow Self

Last year in November, Alia Wong published an article in The Atlantic that detailed the various ways that PhD students often suffer from mental illness. The factors that put a strain on these students’ mental health are familiar: long-term employment prospects are poor, some students accumulate massive debt, and getting the the PhD is an intellectually taxing enterprise. Mix that together, and you get a recipe for stress and unhappiness.

The article focuses on a study of economics PhDs, and according to the survey mentioned, they are three times more likely to experience depression than the general population. (About 6% of the general population experiences depression; roughly 18% of those surveyed did.) But economics is far from the only field where concerns about mental health loom large. A recent study at UC Berkley found that a much higher proportion of their student population suffered from apparent depression, including an astonishing 64% of surveyed students in the arts and humanities. Broadening to the full spectrum of mental health issues, a recent study found that 50% of academic scholars have experienced mental health issues due to their academic work, which is roughly double the rate at which the general population experiences mental health issues. And last year, Teresa Evans and her colleagues argued that there was sufficient evidence of a mental health crisis in graduate education.

I could list other findings, but you get the point: a lot of graduate students struggle with their mental health. Philosophy graduate students are no exception, and even after graduate school, most early career scholars who find employment spend time in temporary appointments where they are forced to go back in the job market within a year or two. Facing the need to continue publishing and teaching well so that they can brave the job market gauntlet again, these positions are often just as stressful as the tail end of graduate school. And even when stable employment is secured, many departments are just one change to the general education program away from their existence being in jeopardy. A tenure-track position is often not a panacea for the challenges of academic life.

When we consider all this, it should not be surprising that many of our colleagues are struggling to with depression, anxiety, and their ilk. The victims of these conditions are all around us, and yet we so rarely acknowledge this fact. Consider these remarks from Peter Railton’s 2015 Dewey Lecture:

And what of depression?  Perhaps we all know the mask of depression, that frozen, affectless face we catch glimpses of on our students, colleagues, and friends. I can’t do anything about that. But perhaps I can do something about the face of depression—its visible image in the minds of our children and parents, teachers and students. Because in truth, we are still to a considerable degree still in a world of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” with regard to depression and associated mental disorders, such as anxiety, even though these will severely affect one in ten of us over the course of a lifetime, and often at more than one point in a lifetime.

Changing the 'academia or bust' mindset

In my recent post, "Alt-ac: how our profession can do better?", I suggested that grad programs and professional organizations (such as the APA) should do more to foster alt-ac opportunities for their students. At the moment, our profession leads all too many its early-career members into an awful situation. As anyone who has gone to grad school or sent off undergrads to grad school knows, many people enter grad school with a false sense of their chances (youthful optimism is surely a very real thing). They then spend anywhere from 5-10+ years doing little else than academic philosophy, often while racking up student debt. Then, after 5-10+ years, only around only around 35% of those who finish the PhD end up getting permanent academic jobs. And the rest? As Ben Sheredos' paper on professional failure illustrates--and countless discussions both online and offline attest--those who don't end up with permanent academic jobs can end up feeling like abject failures utterly ill-equipped to make a living in the non-academic world. Insofar as this is our profession--and insofar as grad programs often seem to entice students to enroll with optimistic pictures of career success--I believe we should make changing this situation our responsibility. But how?

In my last post, I suggested there are a few simple things that grad programs and professional organizations might do:

1. Grad programs (placement directors, dissertation supervisors) could cultivate contact-lists of students of theirs who have entered non-academic industries, staying in touch with them personally for the purposes of helping students network for alt-ac opportunities.
2. Professional institutions (such as the APA) could also publish a "who's who" directory of philosophers in industry, as well as organize alt-ac networking events at major conferences (much like other disciplines do, where industry representatives have informational tables for potential job-candidates).

Readers who commented seemed to like these ideas. However, although I think simple steps like these might dramatically improve things, one major difficulty is getting them to happen.

Alt-ac: how our profession can do better?

In recent years, my primary focus on the Cocoon has been to help early-career people navigate the profession, particularly the job-market. To this end, Helen and I did things like the Job-Market Boot Camp and Job-Market Mentoring Program. Although I plan to keep doing these kinds of things--as a number of readers have said they find these kinds of things helpful--from time to time some readers in comments sections have been critical of these endeavors, saying that they don't do anything to deal with the deeper problems grad students and job-candidates face: specifically, features of the profession that put grad students and job-candidates in such awful positions to begin with. If, as appears to be case, only something like 35% of job-candidates can get permanent academic jobs at all, what does job-market advice really accomplish in the end...besides helping out this candidate or that candidate, while still leaving 65% of job-candidates without jobs? Ben Sheredos' paper on the phenomenology of professional failure really drove this point home to me: that for all too many candidates, all of the well-meant advice and encouragement in the world (viz. "You can do it...if only you improve your dossier materials and interviewing skills!") may not only ring hollow, but may even be harmful in a hard-to-quantify way (by perhaps fostering false hope, followed by many hours harder and harder work to become a better candidate, only to again be met with failure in the end). In this way, Ben's paper made me begin to reevaluate what in the world I am trying to do here at the Cocoon.

A Phenomenology of Professional Failure

Ben Sheredos (UC San Diego) drew my attention earlier today to his manuscript, 'A Phenomenology of Professional Failure.' I gave it a read this afternoon, think it is very much relevant to some recent discussions we've had, and think it is well worth reading, both by early-career people and more advanced members of the profession. First, it may help prospective graduate students better understand and appreciate the actual stakes involved in pursuing a philosophy PhD. Second, it may help other people in Ben's situation--by perhaps helping them better understand their own experiences, as well as by letting them know they are not alone. Third, it may help more advanced members of the profession better understand and sympathize with the point-of-view of a seemingly growing number of early-career people disaffected by the profession. Finally, to that extent, perhaps it can lead our profession to do something that is surely long overdue: namely, better grapple with the fact that this is the kind of situation that all too many early-career members of our profession find themselves in. I hope I am not alone, when reading Ben's piece, in thinking we need to do better. For, to summarize just one of his piece's many takeaways, our profession seems professionalize the vast majority of its members (the 60+% who do not obtain tenure-track jobs) to regard themselves as failures. We need to (A) stop professionalizing our PhD students into conceiving themselves as failures if a permanent academic job doesn't work out (which I have heard is a very common attitude in PhD programs), and (B) do a much better job of professionalizing our PhD students so that they have greater capacities to be successful--for example, by better preparing them for opportunities for success outside of the academy. 

Anyway, although I found early sections of the paper to be a bit protracted, the latter parts (sections 5 and 6)--where Sheredos gets to explaining the phenomenology of professional failure--contain some pretty moving passages that got me thinking about how I have responded in certain discussions, and how to do so in the future. So, rather than summarize and comment on Sheredos' analysis, I'd like to simply quote some choice passages that struck me as particularly meaningful and worth reflecting on, and then open things up for discussion:

Sweat Equity on the Philosophy Job Market

By Greg Stoutenburg (York College of Pennsylvania)

gstoutenburg@ycp.edu

In light of a recent post about basing one’s choice on whether to start a PhD in philosophy on the disvalue of not getting a tenure-track job, and a somewhat related post about choosing a non-tenure-track position over a tenure-track one, I thought I’d share something I have been thinking about for a while, which is my personal experience of four years on the philosophy job market. There is an abundance of job advice available to would-be philosophy graduate students and those late in their PhD progress, but very little of it comes with context that might help with figuring out what one ought to do. A lot of people with interest in philosophy have backgrounds like mine and hope to work their way on to the tenure-track. I now believe that such an approach is fundamentally misguided, as I will share in this story of what I did to prepare for the market that I have now given up on.

Since this is a personal story, I invite anyone who is interested to check out my website. It includes my CV and lots of job market materials: gregstoutenburg.com. You might use that information for comparison.

Feminist Philosophers is closing down - reflections on blogging as service to the profession

Feminist Philosophers is closing down. I'm sad to see yet another blog go. It played such an important role for me when I was an early career scholar, a postdoc with little job security navigating an uncertain environment. For me as for many other people, Feminist Philosophers was an authoritative and distinct voice in the profession, providing a valuable service.

As I wrote in a blogpost for the Daily Nous on philosophy blogs, I see the main value of philosophy blogs as service to the profession, and perhaps also as service on a broader scale, to people who are interested in philosophy and want to learn about it in a low-threshold, friendly and open environment, away from paywalls, specialist terminology, and pleasing referees.  

Have philosophy blogs run their course? I want to briefly respond to a few points by Jennifer Saul in her farewell post on FP, not in a way to contest or criticize their decision, as I think the blog's existence was already supererogatory and I'm very grateful for the service the bloggers did over the many years of its existence. I want to just briefly look at these points to see to what extent they might apply to blogging in general, particularly blogging conceived of as service to the profession.

On rejections for journal submissions

This is a guest post by Jon Robson, University of Nottingham for our series How to Write Philosophy.

Rejection is a big part of academic life. By far the most likely response to any job application, funding bid or journal submission is rejection. Here, I offer some thoughts on a very narrow aspect of this phenomenon: journal rejections (a very common phenomenon given that many of the most prestigious philosophy journals have an acceptance rate that’s well below 10%). Specifically, I will focus on the broadly professional aspects of responding to such rejections. Rejections from journals – especially those accompanied by ‘uncharitable’ comments – can also have negative effects on, for example, your psychological wellbeing. Advice for how best to deal with this is far beyond my limited area of competence. What I am competent (or at least experienced) in is thinking about the future of a recently rejected paper.

First, it’s important to remind yourself that a rejection merely represents the view of an exceptionally small number of your colleagues (often only a single colleague). To run the risk of comical understatement, philosophers don’t always agree. That one editor or a few referees judge your paper to be unworthy of publication is very poor evidence that this view will be the consensus amongst scholars in your area (indeed, I’d very be surprised if we could identify a single paper which every philosopher thinks ought to have been published). Yet, it’s similarly important to remember that the referee is a professional colleague and – at least when things go well – one with a reasonable level of relevant expertise. Often, they will have put a lot of work into their comments, ensuring that – again, all being well – the rejection is accompanied by useful feedback. It’s easy to be critical of referees (fun too), but many of them do an awful lot of diligent work for no real recognition.

So, what’s the best way to respond to rejections? Let’s deal with the easy cases first.

 

Doing better for our graduate students, making a PhD in philosophy worth it

This story, by Rachel Williams, is simply entitled "A PhD in philosophy was not worth it".  The title reflects the contents well. The story's familiar, but that does not make it less sad:  Rachel Williams writes about the disillusionment, lost opportunities, low wages, and a profession that looks increasingly hostile and unattractive.  She lists the problems that plague the profession: the obsession with brilliance, the editorial buddy circles, publish or perish culture, the slim chances of getting a tenure track job out of grad school, or at all (after years of precarious employment), and the lack of support from peers or mentors. 

Suppose you make it in the profession. By 'make it', we will typically mean that someone is in their mid or late thirties by the time they land a tenure track job in a geographical area they will often not have chosen to live in, working on a 3/3 or even 4/4 course load, and earning a starting salary of anywhere between 49 and 76k (often the lower part of this range), which only slowly inches up over the years. While that is still a decent salary, you have to take into account the years of lower earnings and the risk in the market. 

What if you do not make it? Did you then just waste at least six years (at least, in the US) on graduate school that could have been spent better elsewhere? "You don’t really know what academic philosophy is really like before it’s too late." - Williams writes, regretting her lack of opportunities and lack of money in her retirement fund at age 32. 

The solution, some might argue, is to just have fewer PhDs in philosophy. But I'm not at all sure that is a good idea. If we restrict the number of PhDs, the barriers to entry to the profession will shift to earlier on in the process, and it will be more difficult for people without the cultural, economic and social capital (middle class, white, etc) to do a PhD in philosophy. Moreover, I think that a PhD in philosophy has value. I've interviewed people who went to grad school in philosophy who are successful writers of novels and have produced and co-written TV series,  as well as career coaches, statisticians, computer programmers, and  I was recently filmed for television series on science and religion by someone who studied (but did not complete) a Philosophy PhD. A Philosophy PhD is currently running for Member of the European Parliament (see here for an article in Dutch).  

I will be placement officer next year, so I'm thinking about ways to help support our grad students. Absolutely, if our graduate students see academia as their plan A, we should support them in that and help them to achieve this goal. We should be realistic about the range of jobs on offer (not every job is a job at a research-intensive, prestigious university; most aren't and that is fine) and we should help them to prepare and tailor their CV and materials for the places they want to land jobs at. 

But if our graduate students feel some hesitation at academia over time, it is important to recognize that and to support them in alternative career choices. Typically, in the humanities (though I am not aware of any empirical work on this and would like to hear about it), it seems to me people mostly start graduate school wanting to have an academic career. But over time, some grad students start doubting that teaching is for them, or that writing papers is for them, or that the combination of teaching and research really suits them. And then we should also support them in that. Maybe it is prudent to talk about non-academic placement in any case, just as a sensible plan B. 

In praise of ordinary academics and their goodness

Averageness is a statistical concept, but often it becomes a normative one. Once you establish a bell curve, you can start looking for the exceptional and unusual, as for example Galton's quest for "nature's preeminently nobles" in eugenics, and this becomes the new norm. In academia, averageness is bad.  We all need to be exceptional: exceptionally productive researchers who publish in the right venues, gifted teachers. 

The drive for exceptionalism is toxic. People who go to graduate schools and write doctoral dissertations are already exceptional and gifted in academic talent, but if you find yourself in a pool of such people, it's hard to stand out. Eric Schliesser estimated in 2014 there are 44,000 philosophers alive worldwide. Yet just a few names keep on popping up.

We rely on heuristics and shortcuts to recognize brilliance, because it would be unfeasible to read everyone's work in detail. So we use prestige (as I've argued earlier, see also here) as a shortcut, or gender (although, I do have to say that situation has markedly improved over the years.) Still, even if somehow we had total gender parity and prestige bias could be mitigated the drive for exceptionalism remains. There are exceptional people deserving of recognition, of mention on blogs, of prizes, of symposia at the APA devoted to their books. And then there's all the rest. Whatever shortcuts we will use to gauge exceptionalism, as long as the drive for it persists (and given the job structure of academia, I do not see this change any time soon), that belief will remain.

Supporting struggling students

In the Daily Nous comments thread to Eric Schwitzgebel's excellent post a last month entitled, "Seven Principles of Humane PhD Advising", Chris Surprenant writes:

If [PhD students] lack motivation to complete their work while in graduate school, they’re not cut out to be professional academics...If folks can’t cut it, the sooner they learn that the better.

I have heard this sort of thing said many times. I've even heard that some graduate programs effectively codify something like it as a program policy, pressuring students to leave the program relatively early on if they are not making "adequate progress." Although I think the intent behind attitudes and policies like these may be good--aiming to save students "not cut out" for academic philosophy from wasting valuable time in their life pursuing it--I have nevertheless always bristled at this way of thinking. Reading Michael Huemer's (Colorado) new post, "A Philosopher Squeaks By", the other day helped me to clarify why. Allow me to explain.

In his post, Huemer details how "I barely made it in the profession": how he squeaked into graduate school, how get barely got an academic job, how many of his articles "have been hated by referees", and so on. On reading Huemer's story, my initial reaction was that he seems to have fared a heck of a lot better than other people who barely made it in the profession. For example, as I reported several years ago, in her 2014 APA Dewey Lecture aptly entitled, "Accidents", Ruth Millikan detailed how she had to walk out of a grad school exam for personal reasons (p. 4), how she entered grad school at Yale as only one of two women in a class of 22 students and one of only two students without a fellowship (pp. 4-5), how her dissertation supervisor left her program before she had made any real progress on the dissertation (p. 5), how during grad school she had a serious back injury, two children, a divorce, spent a summer in mental hospital, and how her dissertation took her 5 years (!) to complete, with basically no supervision (pp. 5-6). 

I've read numerous stories similar to Huemer's and Millikan's. A few years ago, I remember reading an APA address where Charles Mills detailed how he barely squeaked into the profession. Or consider Rae Langton's (Cambridge) self-confessed "career lowlights":

At Sydney, my background in Philosophy was deemed so poor I needed a remedial extra year. At Princeton, my PhD dissertation was initially failed, though (somewhat awkwardly) OUP had meanwhile decided to publish it, as Kantian Humility (see Books).

Being good at being good at philosophy

A guest post by Ian James Kidd, University of Nottingham

 Some years ago, a then-colleague would occasionally spot me sitting working in a coffee shop and join me to chat. Sometimes, he would ask about whichever paper I was writing, and often offer to take a look. After reading the first couple of paragraphs, my colleague would purse his lips, shake his head, and say, “No, you haven’t quite got it yet.”

What I hadn’t ‘got’ was the skill of crafting a good paper – a skill not only possessed but had fully mastered by my well-published colleague. Almost every paper he wrote soon appeared in the ‘top’ journals, so similarly mastering that skill would’ve supercharged my chances of securing a postdoc or a permanent job. Unfortunately, not once did my then-colleague offer any advice on the skill of crafting a paper, leaving me without a crucial skill – that of translating one’s philosophical ideas into the form of a publishable journal article.

I offer this recollection to illustrate what seems to be a crucial distinction between being good at philosophy and being good at academic philosophy. Sitting in that coffee shop, what I lacked wasn’t the ability to come up with good and useful philosophical ideas (one thing my then-colleague did, at the least, affirm). I lacked the specific performative academic competence needed to successfully understand and exploit the norms and structures of academic philosophy. Without that specific competence, my philosophical abilities were not able to do any professional work for me.

Clearly, there are many super philosophers out there, who can think widely, deeply, and clearly about aspects of existence and our place within it. The problem is that many of them may be good at philosophy but are not always good at academic philosophy – while they have a love of wisdom or craving to understand, what they lack are the practical and professional abilities to enact their philosophising within the accepted forms and norms of academia. Crucially, I don’t say this as a criticism of those philosophers - quite the opposite! My concern is that many good philosophers aren’t being helped consistently to also become good academic philosophers. Before speculating on what one can do about this, let me fill out the distinction a little.

Dealing with unresponsive journals

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

(Part of the reason I haven't been super alarmed by this issue is that the paper in question is a short side project sort of thing rather than my main research project, which has been doing better than this paper.)

But anyways: say a paper of yours has been under review for about a year, and that you started checking in on its status after the four month mark, and you haven't gotten a reply to your 3-4 short, polite inquiries that you've sent since then.

Is it fine to just send an email saying "I am withdrawing this MS", and then to proceed as if the MS has been withdrawn? I get the impression I shouldn't expect a reply (or for anyone to read my email), which makes me a bit worried about effectively double-submitting when I resubmit the paper elsewhere. But on the other hand, this paper has probably just been "lost" this whole time.

This is a good (albeit distressing!) query. As far as I am concerned, the moment you send an email to a journal indicating that you have chosen to withdraw a manuscript, it is withdrawn, whether the journal responds or not. You do not have to wait for the journal to acknowledge your message, particularly if (as in this case) the journal has been unresponsive. Further, if any problems were to arise (i.e. a referee never being told by the journal and complaining about you engaging in double-submissions), then by my lights you would be "safe" as an author: as long as you have a copy of your email to prove that you withdrew it). Or so say I. What say you?

Writing on obscure topics in philosophy: A few tips for younger colleagues

If you write on Plato, you should start in medias res. If you write on Thomas Aquinas, you can do the same (unless you are writing for a journal specialising on something completely different, say, business ethics). If you write on a slightly less known author, I would suggest adding at least the dates of birth and death and perhaps a short description of their main work (say "the epistemologist XW (1200--1250)"). What about writing on a niche topic, say, South Asian philosophy? If you are writing for a non-specialist journal, you will need to explain a lot, since no one will know even the main authors, ideas and schools you will name. Nonetheless, this does not mean that each new piece on that niche topic should resemble a pale summary of scholarhip on it. Even if you need to tell, say, who Jayanta was and what nyāyā means, this does not mean that you cannot make an original contribution to the debate.

1. Just start with what you discovered. Did Jayanta think that justification is not needed in the case of the "ought" domain? Are you the first one who noticed this move? Be sure that this is your departing point.
2. You can then move to the background needed to appreciate the depth of your discovery. Do not just start with the background, otherwise your reader will think there is nothing new and close your article before reaching its core.
3. Be sure that theme and rheme are well distinguished in your article. The reader should not be confused about what is just a short summary of the background and what is your new and original contribution.
4. Please remember that an article is not a book. You can only convey one point. Don't try to overdo or you will not manage to convey anything at all.

What do other readers working on niche topics do? What do you recommend to your students?

Cross-posted, with minor modifications, on my personal blog and on the Indian Philosophy Blog, where you can read some interesting comments

Making things easier for editors

In my last three posts in this series, I investigated ways the peer-review process might be reformed to:

• Incentivize better behavior by authors: incentivizing the submission of fewer and better papers for review.
• Incentivize better behavior by reviewers: incentivizing faster and more thoughtful referee reports.
• Improve turnaround times: giving editors resources to secure reviewers and completed reviews more quickly.

In brief, the general proposal I floated is that peer-review might be improved by creating a central peer-review platform--a central interface (perhaps at Philpapers?) which might use a clever author and reviewer scoring system to match new papers with reviewers whose scores are closest to the authors' own.

The idea here is, first, that this system would incentivize better author and reviewer behavior, as it would (finally!) create actual incentives to being a good author (submitting papers ready for review) and being a good reviewer (answering being timely in responding to review requests and timely and thoughtful in submitting reviews). The idea then is that this would in turn make things easier on editors, as instead of having to spend copious hours emailing possible referees, etc., the system would recommend reviewers to editors and enable them to send out requests to reviewers who are likely to say yes and do a good job more quickly!

At present, this is just a pie-in-the-sky fantasy. However, David Bourget (who co-runs Philpapers/Philpeople) chimed in saying that such a system would actually be quite doable--and I see no reason not to think big. Although the current system of peer-review has some positive features, there are also many things about it that everyone seems to recognize to be suboptimal: authors, reviewers, and editors. We should therefore think creatively about what could be done to make things better for everyone--and I am optimistic that the kind of system outlined above might help a great deal. However, it is increasingly clear to be--based on David Velleman's and others' remarks--that there is a fundamental issue that needs to be dealt with: the way in which journals are simply over-flooded with submissions. This is the issue I'd like to grapple with a bit today.

Improving journal turnaround times: a proposal

In my post sharing the results of the informal survey I ran on peer-review, I reported that a full 93.67% of respondents at least somewhat agreed with the statement that journal turnaround times are too long and inconsistent (with 67% strongly agreeing). Given that so many people seem to think this is a serious problem, I think it could be good to have a discussion about what could be done to best address it.

In order to think about how journals might address the issue, we need to know its causes. From what I have heard on social media (including remarks from various editors), long and inconsistent turnaround times appear to have the following two primary sources:

1. Difficulty and delays in finding willing reviewers.
2. Problems with unresponsive reviewers who fail to get their reviews in or respond to reminders.

Oftentimes, when I've heard (1) discussed on social media, it has involved editors imploring people to respond to review requests more quickly (like, within 24 hours). However, imploring people seems to me likely to be an ineffective solution--and, judging from people's responses to the survey, it has been pretty ineffective in practice. No, effective systems of compliance don't just implore people to do the right thing: they incentivize it. Moreover, good systems are also efficient. Instead of looking haphazardly for people who might say yes (but just as well might say no), an efficient system would also drive editors toward people likely to say 'yes.' All of which raises a first question: how might journals most efficiently (A) find competent reviewers likely to accept an assignment request, and (B) incentivize quick answers to review requests? 

I'd like to brainstorm answers to this question, and am curious what readers think...

Survey results on peer-review

Several days ago, I put up this informal survey to gauge readers' opinions about various features of peer review. I am going to leave the survey up so that people can still take it. But here are the results so far (n = 91), organized by what I will call the good, the ambivalent, and the bad.

As this is only an informal survey, the results should of course be taken with a grain of salt (and then some). Still, I found the results interesting and will be curious to hear readers' reactions.

The Good

64.1% of respondents agreed that anonymized review works well on balance, giving authors a fair chance (whereas only 23.07% disagreed).

An easier poll on peer-review

[Update: survey fixed!]

Following feedback on the poll on peer-review I rolled out the other day, I've tried to design an easier poll. HERE is a new survey that I think readers should have a much easier time with. Although it has 20 items, the items are so simple that I think it should take readers just a couple of minutes to click through. Hopefully we'll get some better data out of this one--and, although it's only an informal poll, my hope is that its results will give us some good material to discuss moving forward!

Reader poll: best & worst parts of peer-review

Based on readers' answers to my query on what works and what doesn't in peer-review, I've put together THIS POLL (poll suspended for revisions - see comments) for readers to rank features of the peer-review process in philosophy from best to worst. Although I'm by no means an expert at putting polls together, my hope is the results will give at least some rough indication of readers' attitudes. We'll see how it goes--and I plan to host discussion threads on specific issues moving forward--but I hope some of you take part!

Sexual Assault and Citation Practices

By Peter Furlong

Another philosopher recently looked over a manuscript I had been working on for a book. He noted that in a footnote, I cited a comment from someone that has recently fallen from grace because of sexual assault issues. My friend, reading my manuscript, noted that readers might not respond positively to the inclusion of this footnote.

Before moving on to the issue of how we should treat these sorts of offenders, I want to say something about my specific case. The footnote was not really necessary. In the book, I was saying something about conflicting intuitions concerning an issue that people have been weighing in on for centuries. People have strong intuitions on both sides; this is well known. In a footnote, I quoted a particularly forceful endorsement of commitment to one side of this issue (one that was not even made in a piece of scholarship). The person I quoted does not even really work much in this area, just, apparently, has extremely strong views on this particular question. So I cited it to illustrate just how committed some are to particular answers. It was an illustrative citation, rather than one that recognizes prior contributions from others.

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

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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...