In the comments section of our most recent "how can we help you?" post, a reader writes:
I'm on the market again this year and I'm trying to select my best writing sample. The worry is my most solid *recent* work is co-authored publications. Even though it's equal contribution in each case, I've only read recommendations *against* submitting co-authored work as writing sample. I personally think it's silly given parallel recommendations to co-author work, engage in collaborative projects, be a good colleague, etc., but the norms of the discipline still seem to favor single authorship as evidence of scholarship. This would sound preposterous to many social and natural scientists, who coauthor most of their work, but still. So my question is, is this frowned upon if the piece is good? Can it be appropriate to submit a single authored publications that's not very recent and a recent coauthored piece? Should I rather submit a recent piece of work that hasn't been published?
On a similar front, how narrow should the topic of one's sample be? If the area and the subject matter are quite specific, does this risk turning off committee members not familiar with the area?
In response to the reader's question about co-authored writing samples, Amanda wrote:
Sadly, I find co-authored pieces are mainly looked down upon and I would not submit one for the writing sample. I have seen search committee members look at CVs and completely discount every co-authored publication as "not a real publication". I think this attitude is common.
I very much disagree with this anti-co-authored paper stance, but it is there. I really think submitting a co-authored piece for a writing sample would hurt, if not kill, your chances.
I've heard similar things, and so share Amanda's overall impression: submitting a co-authored writing sample is probably a very big risk not worth taking. We could, of course, just leave it at that. However, I don't think we should, as it seems to me an important cultural issue in the discipline worth addressing openly.
In brief, I think looking down on co-authored writing samples is problematic in two ways. First, it discourages co-authoring–which I think is a bad thing: co-authored pieces are often very good, benefiting from multiple-authorship. Second, I think it arbitrarily punishes early-career scholars who find themselves a co-author on their strongest work. For let's think, on the one hand, about why early-career people might end up co-authoring, and then, on the other hand, how not so different many single-authored works are from co-authored ones.
Why do early-career people (including, most saliently here, grad students) end up co-authoring? In some cases, it may be because the main idea for a paper was developed jointly–by them and their advisor or another colleague. In other cases, though, a person may well find themselves co-authoring a bit against their will, perhaps because of a power-differential between themselves and a supervisor. I don't know how often this happens, but I have heard at least a few early-career co-authors say, "co-authored paper X was 90% me, but so-and-so has their name on it because they did 10%." Looking down on this kind of paper simply because it has more than one name on it seems to me unfair to the primary author (the person whose writing sample it might be).
This seems to me especially problematic given just how similar many "sole-authored" papers may be, in terms of how much they benefited from outside assistance. When I was in grad school, one of my committee members, Jerry Gaus, used to give me about a page of written comments per page I submitted to him. It was, obviously, an overwhelming amount of feedback–but the main point is that my work benefited tremendously from it, in much the same way that it benefited from workshops, conferences, and so on. Since Jerry didn't actually write any of my work, questions of co-authorship never arose–as they usually don't in such circumstances. But what of it? Compared to some co-authored works–where I've heard examples of co-authors doing next to nothing–much of my sole-authored work (and other sole-authored work in the discipline) probably had at least as many "hands in it" as a representative co-authored article.
These seems to me to be reasons to stop looking down on co-authored work. The way I see it, given that co-authored articles are becoming more and more common in the discipline (which I think is a good thing), our discipline–and yes, hiring committees–should consider adopting the conventions of other fields where co-authored work is common: namely, identifying the first author listed on a work as the "main author", treating such work as essentially no different than a solo-authored piece by that author. Such a practice would more closely approximate fairness, by correcting for bargaining disadvantages early-career co-authors currently face.
Finally, in terms of the reader's final questions–on whether a writing sample's "narrowness" might count against them–I suspect it might in some circumstances. However, I think it is probably hard to say for sure. In brief, while I expect hiring committees at R1 schools might look favorably on narrow work (provided it is very good or published in top-ranked journals), my sense is that hiring committees at teaching schools may look more favorably on more accessible work–in part because really narrow work can be hard to get into (having read really narrow papers not in my AOS, sometimes I find them impenetrable), but also because it can be important at teaching schools for a faculty member's work to be accessible to students, administrators, and people in other departments (who serve on tenure committees). Still, because this is something I'm less sure about, I'd be very interested to hear other readers' impressions!
Anyway, what do you all think on both issues–that is, on (i) co-authored writing samples and (ii) narrowness of topic?
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