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How many papers do you/should you write?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I am starting a TT job in a research heavy institution and have not done my PhD in an elite US program so I have what are likely silly/self-evident questions: how many papers do people work on at the same time? Or, how many papers do people typically write in a year? I am sure it varies tremendously but I wonder if people start one new paper a year and keep working on the ones who are going through review or if they start more projects than that, esp. while being on the TT. Thank you for your help!

These are great questions, especially given that some people are starting new jobs right now. I think there are two important sets of questions here:

  1. How many papers do people write in a year, and work on at the same time?
  2. How many papers should one write a year at an R1?

Here's my own quick answer to (1). I looked in my paper draft folders last night, and found that I now write, on average, something like 4-5 new papers per year. Because I often end up revising those papers over several years, this means that I often find myself with 10 paper projects at a time. I'll often bounce around between them, revising papers that are already written while beginning new ones. It wasn't always like this, though. Earlier in my career, when I got my first job, I worked much more slowly–on maybe like one or two new papers per year. Why the change? I think there are two explanations: it gets easier to write papers over time, but also, I wasn't publishing enough early in my career, so I had to increase my output.

This brings me to (2). I don't work at what one would call a 'research heavy institution', so I don't know the norms of how people work in those kinds of places. But offhand, to return to the OP's "wonder if people start one new paper a year", my sense is that this is probably not nearly enough. I've now known at least a handful of people who were denied tenure at R1s, and while I don't know the details of their tenure cases, my sense is that one probably needs to absolutely 'kill it' in the publishing game–both in terms of quality and quantity–to put oneself in an optimal position to get tenure at places like these. And here's the problem: the publishing game is both slow and a low-probability gamble. Journals can take anywhere from 3 months to a year to even review a paper, and the best journals have rejection rates well upwards of 90%. Just yesterday, I saw one of the most well-published philosophers I know say on social media that their 'strike-out' rate with journals is above 50%. This means that even the most successful people, who have a ton of experience publishing in the best journals, get rejected most of the time. So, I think, to publish successfully enough to get tenure, one probably needs to work on several new papers each year, while revising and resubmitting older papers.

I realize this is probably very stressful to hear, and it may be incorrect. But given that the OP is at a research-heavy institution and presumably wants to get tenure, I think it's probably best to err on the side of writing too much rather than too little. But, again, this is my reaction. What do you all think, particularly (but not only!) those of you who are at R1's? How many new papers do you write each year? How many papers do you work on simultaneously? And what do you think someone in the OP's situation should do in order to put themselves on a good path toward tenure?

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9 responses to “How many papers do you/should you write?”

  1. David Brink

    Like much planning, it’s helpful to identify the destination and work backward to where you are. You should try to get a clear sense of the tenure expectations at your department and figure out a plan for getting there. At my R1, we expect every productive faculty member to produce an average of one to two articles per year or their equivalent in book chapters and the like. We attach more significance to substantial articles/chapters and distinguished venues. So, for the normal tenure candidate over a six year period, we would expect 6-12 articles. 6 would be at the low end and potentially problematic, unless the articles, venues, and external letters were uniformly great. So I tell junior colleagues to aim for 9-12. In recent years, all our junior candidates have made tenure, and most have had at least 9-12 articles, sometimes more. So, at my institution, 9-12 articles/chapters would be the goal. Unless you publish everything you write in a timely manner — most of us don’t — you should probably aim to work on more than two papers per year, in most years. But this is on average. There will be other demands on your time, notably teaching. And teaching is very labor intensive, especially at the start of one’s career when much of what one teaches is new. To make room for research, it’s important over time to try to teach courses you’ve taught before and limit your new courses to one or two per year. If you can do this, it’s likely you’ll have more time for new research later in TT job. Also, I think many of us find it more difficult to start new papers while teaching, unless perhaps it’s connected with something we are teaching. It’s easier to revise existing papers than create new ones while teaching. If this is your situation, you’ll want to make sure that you use non-teaching time (e.g. the summers) to start papers that you can nurture and polish while teaching.

    Reply
  2. hopefully helpful observations

    Good questions, and I’m not sure how helpful this observation will be, but for what it’s worth, I find that there is a lot of variation among subfields, even across R1s.
    I work in history of philosophy, and concerning (1), my rule is to have three active paper projects going at all times, being sure that I send out exactly three papers for publication review per year. (My own acceptance rate has been exactly 50%.) Among (e.g.) my applied ethicist friends, that number needs to be closer to ten.
    Previously I had a (non-TT teaching) job at an R1 with a strongly analytic profile. There, the norm was to publish tons of articles, usually around ten in top or good journals, to get tenure. Currently I have a (non-TT teaching) job at a strongly continental R1. People here need to publish a book with a university press to get tenure, and articles are viewed as far less essential, more like secondary support for the book-centered portfolio.
    So my point, it seems, is that there will be a lot of variation across subfields and institutions.

    Reply
  3. Michel

    Like Marcus, I write three or four new papers a year, and then these kick around in various states for a while. I’ve had as many as eight under review at a time, but three is more typical. (I’m also somewhere where research doesn’t matter at all, however.)
    Years ago, on the CHE forum, a user in English posted her 2-2-4 rule for R1-level publishing: 2 major and 2 minor items a year, plus a book every four years. (Major = articles and refereed chapters, minor = book reviews and solicited/less refereed chapters, public pieces, etc.) That doesn’t quite seem right for philosophy, but I’ve always thought it was a useful way to set up the goalposts. Say, 2-1-6, with the goal of exceeding that a few times?

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  4. hopefully helpful observations again

    In response to Michel above, I find this 2-1-6 idea very interesting, but the ‘2’ seems high to me in my subfield, i.e., history of philosophy. I have had years in which I’ve published two major works in two top-five journals, but I really feel like I’m flooding the marketplace when I do that, and I notice that my peers tend not to do that (and get better jobs than mine).
    My sense is maybe that something like 1.25-1-6 might be right for history of philosophy, but maybe that’s too low and I wonder what others think.

    Reply
  5. anonymous tenure track at R1

    I’m at a (well-regarded-in-philosophy) R1 on the tenure track (am in a good position to get tenure so long as my external letters are good) and, while I tend to work on 4-5ish things at the same time, it takes me multiple years to finish a paper. I don’t produce very much. I think it’s important to balance the arms race against actually producing things you are proud of and think are excellent, getting many many rounds of feedback at conferences/written, etc. But this also matters at a lot of places instrumentally to the tenure process more than people might think. If you are at a place where external letters matter a whole lot (many many R1s!) you really need to think hard about the quality of your papers–not just quantity and publication venue–and make sure that lots of people in your subfield’s community think that they are good. The most important thing is to talk to people doing similar work to you in your subfield, and to talk to as many people in your department and in other humanities departments in your university about expectations for tenure, the university’s process, what the administration cares about the most vs. your department, etc. (But, if these things are especially weird, of course you need to balance that against being a desirable candidate for jobs if you need to move or are denied tenure.)

    Reply
  6. Michel

    Hopefully: just a chime to say that my anecdotal impression is also that history subfields also operate at a gentler pace. Or, at least, the non-German ones seem to.

    Reply
  7. Tim

    I’d second David Brink’s approach: try to determine the requirements they have for you, and work backwards from there. My institution is a research school, and the general expectation is one publication a year. I normally finish (not start) a paper every four months, so I would have three new submissions a year. Given how hard it is to publish, that amount is good for the one-a-year expectation. But the expectations may be different, as other people have pointed out, in others areas (e.g. history).

    Reply
  8. howmuchtowrite

    Thank you very much for taking the time to respond to my question. Your responses are very helpful. I was actually worried it was a sign of me being all over the place if I were to start 3-4 papers per year so I’m happy to know it’s actually normal!

    Reply
  9. Meh.

    When yall say your acceptance rate is x, do you mean that on average an arbitrary submission is x likely to be ultimately accepted from where you send it, or that 1-x of the papers you have written are in the drawer and will never see the light of the day?

    Reply

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