Long-time readers of the Cocoon may recall that I've wondered on a few occasions whether many academic job-candidates end up adopting a sub-optimal job-market strategy. First, last year I floated a hypothesis that job-candidates coming out of lower-ranked PhD programs may have a tendency to adopt a job-market strategy that fails to make them competitive for R1 jobs (since top-ranked programs fare best with those) while simultaneously 'pricing them out' of teaching-focused jobs. Second, I've often floated the idea that one fairly common piece of conventional wisdom–that publishing in low-ranked or no-name journals 'looks bad on the market'–is just false when it comes to jobs at teaching schools. My clear sense, both as a job-candidate for many teaching jobs and (more recently) as a search-committee member at a liberal arts university, is that a lot of people at these kinds of institutions could really care less about journal rankings. And, as luck would have it, a recent study appears to bear out my skepticism: publications in 'weak journals' appear to help, at least if you publish in good places too.
Anyway, a recent exchange I had with a friend got me thinking this morning about a more general issue: namely, the potential importance of tailoring your job-market strategy to a realistic picture of your 'situation' . Allow me to explain.
A friend of mine recently asked whether they should publish in a particular journal. Another person chimed in with the conventional wisdom that because the journal in question is very low-ranked, publishing there 'wouldn't look good'. I think this kind of general advice is deeply mistaken, and that the kinds of journals one should seek to publish in depend very much on where one is at in one's career–at least if you want a job. Why? Having spent seven years on the market as a job-candidate before getting a tenure-track job, and then having served on four search committees, my sense is that the following three things probably tend to be true:
1. Unless you constantly publish in top-5/top-10 journals (and maybe even then), your probability of getting a research job is likely to plummet the longer you've been on the market. This, at least, seems to me what hiring trends suggest year after year. R1 programs often snatch up the 'most promising star candidates' either right out of grad school (usually graduates from top programs), or after prestigious R1 postdocs. I've seen a number of people with really excellent publishing records (including top-5 and top-10 journals) not end up getting a tenure-track job anywhere despite being on the market a really long time.
2. All things being equal, the longer you are on the market, the more attractive you may be for jobs at many teaching institutions. In brief, this is because people care a great deal about teaching experience, well-developed pedagogy, and a consistent enough publishing record to get tenure at their institution. Indeed, my real sense here is that in contrast to R1 jobs–where recent PhDs are coveted the most–at teaching institutions recent PhDs tend to be coveted the least, because of their relative lack of teaching experience.
3. Publishing in highly-ranked journals can 'price yourself out' of a job at a teaching institution. As I've mentioned before, for better or worse, people at teaching institutions (particularly those in the middle of nowhere) can worry about flight risk, as well as whether a new hire will be happy at their university. If you have a string of top-20 or top-10 publications, you may look like 'someone who belongs at a research university'.
Anyway, here's my bet: unless you are really publishing in top places (e.g. top-5 or top-10 journals consistently), the longer you are on the job-market, the better off you are likely to be not publishing in the highest-ranked journals you can. After you've been on the market a while, there is a serious risk that you may be 'too stale' to be competitive at research universities, and publishing consistently in journals that are too highly-ranked might price you out of the jobs you would be more competitive for at that point: teaching jobs.
This is, admittedly, just a bet on my part. However, I followed something like it as a job-candidate and it had good results in the end. Early on in my time in the market, I tried publishing in the best journals I could–and for a couple of years I received interviews at some pretty prestigious places. But after a couple of years (and only a couple of brief 'reply' publications in a top-20 specialist journal), those interviews dried up. What I did then was change my job-market strategy: I started aiming lower, avoiding the most highly-ranked journals and mostly targeting lower-ranked journals so that my CV would show that I was publishing actively but in a way that might make me a good 'fit' for teaching places. It worked. The more publications I got, the more interviews and fly-outs I got–and I often had people at teaching schools talk quite positively about my research record (indicating, as noted above, that they were more concerned with output than with things like journal rank). At the time, I knew publishing in lower-ranked journals was a risk…but it was also a calculated risk, as I knew by that time that my chances for a prestigious R1 job were probably up. My thought at the time was that I just needed a job, and that I could always return to trying to publish in the best places if and when I finally got one.
Anyway, I don't mean to advise everyone who has been on the market a while to try this strategy, as it is (admittedly) a risk. If you're a few years out from the PhD and you're in a good research postdoc and publishing effectively in top-ranked journals, then by all means, you still may be competitive for a research job. I am just inclined to think–on the basis of a variety of experiences–that if this isn't your situation, and you've been out a while, then trying to continue publishing in top-20 journals might not be the best strategy. Top-20 publications are not likely to make you all that competitive for R1 or prestigious SLAC jobs (where top-5/top-10 publications and recent graduation from a prestigious grad program are likely to matter most), and continuing to rack up top-20 publications may make you look less attractive for many teaching jobs. At the end of the day, the real message of this post isn't that there is a formula for tailoring your strategy to where you are on the market–but that it may be wise to be aware of these kinds of potential complexities in deciding which type of strategy to risk and when.
But these are just my thoughts. What do you all think?
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