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A list of grad student journals?

In our March "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Looking for a (partial) list of (US) Philosophy Graduate Student Journals ideally already posted on a website link.

Hmm…I don't know–but I also guess that I wonder about the wisdom of publishing in such journals. Given that publications in grad journals probably doesn't help on the academic job market or with tenure, are grad students better advised to shoot for 'professional journals'? And in any case, does anyone know of any list of grad student journals? 

Perhaps we can crowdsource a list here?

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14 responses to “A list of grad student journals?”

  1. Michel

    I was managing editor of a graduate journal about 10-12 years ago. I also have one publication in such a journal.
    I’m not convinced that graduate students today are well-served by publishing in these outlets. It made sense back when the professional landscape was very different, but it doesn’t any more. Indeed, the journal I ran has since closed down for exactly that reason (plus the general dearth of submissions and the impossibility of finding referees).
    Offhand, I can only name two graduate journals, both Canadian–Gnosis and De Philosophia.

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  2. no

    Like Marcus, I would not recommend sending papers to grad journals. Your competition will be sending papers to regular journals, that are read and cited by professionals. That should be your goal.

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  3. J

    Just to through another log on the fire it isnt a good idea to publish in these when you could instead publish in a normal journal

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  4. ABD

    While in a lot of contexts, I think the advice to try to publish in professional journals instead of graduate journals is probably good advice, I do to think there are times where it makes sense to publish in a graduate journal. Looking back at my own publication in a graduate journal, that article was never going to be published in a professional journal. However when it was published, I took a lot of pride in having something published, even if it was just in a graduate journal, and the process demystified publishing enough for me that within a short period of time I was sending out articles that would ultimately be published in professional journals. Plus my graduate student publication has been cited in someone’s dissertation, so even if I now think the argument in that paper is ultimately confused, it was at least helpful to someone at some point.
    I do think it is a bit weird that there is constant talk about how graduate education needs to think about alternative careers to academia but then any activity that doesn’t immediately serve academic professionalization is denigrated. While if someone has an article that they think is good enough to get into a professional journal and they want to go on in academia, then they should probably try the professional journal over the graduate one. However, it does seem entirely appropriate to look at graduate student journals if one has a term paper that they like and wants to publish it in a lower stakes context, especially if they are not interested in going on in academia.
    But even if one thinks that something only has value if it ultimately contributes to academic professionalization, I would still defend potentially publishing in a graduate student journal, and I would defend book reviews in the same way. I started publishing papers in good journals before a lot of my peers did, and I think partly because I had low stakes practice with graduate student publishing and book reviews that gave me the confidence to try my hand at publishing before many others did.

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  5. Noah

    I’m going to disagree with ABD above and say that there is generally no reason to publish in a graduate journal. If you have a legitimate contribution to the philosophical literature, it would be a waste to publish it in a graduate journal where it will be generally ignored. If you do not have a legitimate contribution to the philosophical literature, it is a waste of time for everyone involved (author, readers, referees, etc.) to put half-baked ideas into the the philosophical literature.
    Responding to some of the ideas put forward by ABD:
    – Graduate journals are a low-stakes opportunity to get comfortable with the publishing process.
    * Professional journals are a low-stakes opportunity to get comfortable with the publishing process. There is no penalty to having a paper rejected or to asking an editor for clarification about the submission process. You do not need to practice this process before your ideas are actual contributions.
    – People who are going non-academic do not need professional publications.
    * People who are going non-academic do not need graduate publications. Academic publications are generally left off of non-academic CVs, though this depends somewhat on the particular industry (this is the advice I received as someone who went non-academic who was professional publications). If you have a term paper that you like that makes a contribution, you should publish it in a professional journal. If you like it but it does not make a contribution, it is a pure vanity project to put it through the publishing process.
    [An exception to the above: if you are in an industry where you think having publications might be a benefit (e.g. research assistant at a think tank), and you don’t think your papers are good enough to get accepted at a professional journal, then perhaps it makes pragmatic sense to publish in a graduate journal. But this is a bit sketchy — if you represent the publications accurately as graduate publications, they will not be impressive, so you will likely have to obscure this fact. However, in the non-academic market, at least, misleading on your resume is par for the course, so maybe you won’t take this as a big deal.]

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  6. Tim O’Keefe

    Another possible downside of publishing in a grad journal: if you do go out on the job market, and if the paper is listed on your CV, and if some faculty member looks at the title of your paper and that topic seems interesting to them, they might go ahead and take a look at it. And then, if it’s not so hot–because, after all, you figured it was good enough for a grad journal but you didn’t need to get it up to professional journal standards–it could hurt you.

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  7. ABD

    To respond to Noah:
    I think that there is still a sense in Noah’s response that the only value a piece of writing can have, or more specifically, that the only value that sharing a piece of writing can have is if it has the possibility of advancing one’s career, academic or otherwise. I think this is a pretty sad place to end up, and it is worth noting that Noah’s arguments would work equally well against submissions to undergraduate journals, making blog posts (or anonymously commenting on blog posts for that matter), or even perhaps sharing a piece of writing with friends or family that one does not plan on publishing. In fact, Noah uses the claim that pieces in graduate journals will generally be ignored as an argument against submitting to them, but this sort of claim could be made against academic publishing in general. Most of the work in professional journals, whether we like to admit it or not, are ignored, not only by the general public, but by other academics as well.
    To respond to some of Noah’s more specific claims:
    Noah claims that submitting to graduate journals is a “pure vanity project” that wastes the time of authors, readers, reviewers, etc. I was involved in organizing an graduate student journal and thoroughly enjoyed the process and as far as I can tell, others around me did as well. It was part of the community building work we were doing in the department and allowed me a chance to see what editing/reviewing/etc. work was like long before a professional journal would let me even think about doing those things. Like I said, I took pride in my own graduate journal publication, and my friends and family (and presumably at least some of the hundreds of people who have downloaded it off philpapers and other repositories over the years) read something that I wrote that they wouldn’t have been likely to otherwise. I suppose Noah could regard this as confirmation of the problem because if graduate journal publications can only waste people’s time, then the fact that it has been read and shared would be an extension of this problem. I guess I just think there is more to value in writing and sharing writing than whether it significantly advances the professional discourse or advances one’s career. I suppose we’ll just have to agree to disagree here.
    Noah claims that publishing in an academic journal is already low stakes and therefore there is no need for lower stakes practice in graduate journals. Once again, if one thinks that the only stakes are career stakes, then this makes total sense. However, I have found submitting to professional journals to often be a pretty emotionally bruising experience. Editors and reviewers have generally implied or outright stated that the work I am submitting has no philosophical value. A recent review said that at best my work could be published as a “mere curiosity piece” that could show how wrong one could go when taking this position (btw this piece is now forthcoming in an equally good journal with only minor revisions). If a reviewer had said that to me around the time that I made my submission to a graduate journal, I’m not sure I would have gone on. I suppose that graduate student reviewers could be equally harsh, but in my experience, that wasn’t the case (and was discouraged at the graduate journal that I reviewed for as a graduate student).
    To tie this very small issue to something perhaps too grand, I guess I just worry that these types of attitudes are partly what are hollowing the life out of the discipline. (And to be clear, I’m not trying to personally accuse Noah of anything, I think we are all responsible for this shift on some level.) Lots of the departments I’ve spent time around in the last few years generally have low/poor attendance for department events, including by graduate students. And why would they attend? They are continually told that the only things of value are those things that get you ahead in your career, and the lack of a direct link between regularly attending colloquia or other sorts of events and one’s career completely justifies ignoring these sorts of things. As mentioned earlier, my experiences with being involved in things like running a graduate journal (or earlier, running an undergraduate journal) were meaningful experiences and (I think) helped play a role in fostering and maintaining a department community, including a graduate student community. Of course, if one still maintains that the only things of value are those things that advance one’s career, then one could just say that these sorts of things don’t have value (except perhaps as networking opportunities), and therefore, good riddance. I think this is a coherent and consistent view, but for me it seems to be robbing the philosophical community of the very things that made me want a career in it in the first place.

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  8. ABD

    To make this already too long response even longer, I just realized that Noah’s arguments would probably also apply equally well to submissions to graduate student conferences. Most of the submissions at graduate student conferences will not advance the discipline, they result in an insignificant line on a CV, in the same way that a graduate student publication will, they require reviewers/organizers/attendees/etc. whose time is presumably being wasted on what should be regarded as “pure vanity projects” because they don’t make a contribution and don’t (really) advance a career. Maybe we would want to defend graduate student conferences as lower stakes practice, but it seems to me that the stakes can be equally described as Noah described the lack of different stakes in the publishing case. Faculty, including prestigious invited speakers, attend these events, and in my experience can be just as harsh on graduate student talks as they are on talks at professional level conferences. So, would Noah then argue that graduate students should stop submitting to graduate student conferences or that we should stop holding them altogether? I think Noah can coherently bite this bullet if he wants, but I just want to be clear on what bullets he is biting.

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  9. been there, done that

    ABD
    One can always show their term papers to family members – one does not need a graduate journal to publish it to do that. In fact, I think one might be misleading their family a bit if they share their paper published in a graduate student journal and do not also contextualize it with some background about the culture of publication in philosophy.
    Incidentally, I have published in a graduate student journal and the paper has even been cited 4 times. But I do not list the paper on my c.v. No one cares.

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  10. it may backfire

    Just talking about the reality without trying to justify it: publishing in a grad journal and having it on one’s CV may send the wrong signal: you care about number of pubs instead of the quality of pubs. Got this advice from my former supervisor, who also happens to serve on search committees for a very successful program. To reiterate, it may be slightly worse than not helping you on the job market.

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  11. ABD

    “been there, done that”, if four people cited your paper, then at least four people cared enough to have read and cited your paper. So, I’m not sure you can say no one cares. If you are saying that no one cares as measured by what the job market values (can I put this on my CV? will this get my a job?), then you are kind of proving my point. I’d like to think there is more value in disseminating and sharing work, including through publication, than just a line on one’s CV. I don’t think I’d do much writing myself if that’s what I thought the sole point of it was. Publishing in a graduate student journal can still contribute to those other sorts of value, even if I grant you that it fails to contribute to one’s future career prospects.
    And I’ll ask you the same question as Noah – would you discourage undergraduates from submitting to undergraduate journals because “no one cares”? Would you discourage graduate students from submitting to graduate conferences because “no one cares”? This just seems like the end point of these sorts of arguments. Like I said to Noah, I think this bullet can be bitten, but I’m not sure that I’m all that interested in being part of the resulting philosophical community that only measures value in terms of career prospects (and I say this as someone on the job market who very much has to care about contributing to my own career prospects).

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  12. Noah

    Let me respond clarify my position in light of the above, noting that I was deliberately painting in broad strokes to try to make my advice as general. I’d like to disavow any sense that might have been present in my post that “the only value that sharing a piece of writing can have is if it has the possibility of advancing one’s career”. Indeed, I continue to (selectively) pursue publishing opportunities, even though these no longer have any non-negligible career impact for me in my chosen areas of non-academic work. Any suggestion to that effect was entirely unintended.
    What I do avow is that, in light of the features of the publishing process (such as: it takes a long time, you can’t really make revisions after it’s over, and the final product is preserved indefinitely and meant to have a “long tail”), the “constitutive aim” of publishing, to put it in those terms, is to make a polished contribution to the cutting-edge body of philosophical knowledge.
    In my previous post I left the background features of publishing that give it its aim implicit, stating only the aim. This apparently left me open to the charge that my arguments overgeneralize, which is the main thrust of ABD’s response. In particular, ABD questions why my arguments do not generalize against:
    (1) Sharing basically any philosophical writing at all in any context outside of a professional journal.
    (2) Writing philosophical blogs or commenting on them.
    (3) Attending or holding graduate conferences.
    (4) Submitting to undergraduate journals.
    Let me now explain why, for the most part, my argument does not so generalize.
    (1)-(3) straightforwardly lack the kinds of qualities that give publishing its constitutive aim. There are other valuable aims that these activities fulfill: for (1) and (2), these include generating ideas, getting takes on half-baked work, and getting suggestions for literature that one should look into; for (3) these include networking with other graduate students and getting a sense of what your peers are working on. By the nature of publishing, it is not well suited to fulfill these same aims. It’s therefore pretty straightforward to me why it can be valuable to pursue (1)-(3) even if you don’t think you have, or don’t know whether you have, a legitimate contribution to the body of philosophical knowledge.
    The case of undergraduate journals, i.e. (4), is admittedly an edge case that I’m unsure about. I was involved with these an an undergrad, both on the reviewing/editing side and publishing side. I did find it to be valuable, though I now think the publishing aspect was a bit of a waste of time. The undergraduate publishing process has similar, though not identical, qualities to those I listed above (notably undergraduate publications tend to not be as well preserved and aren’t intended to have such a “long tail”). So don’t my arguments generalize here? Well, there is one highly relevant difference between graduate publishing and undergraduate publishing — the latter involves undergraduates. What might be legitimately valuable for undergraduates is the actual philosophical practice one gets from the undergraduate publishing process, particularly the opportunities for receiving and responding to feedback, which are otherwise scarce at the undergrad level. Notably, this is not true for grad students as they have ample opportunities, even outside of the publishing process, to give, receive, and respond to feedback. That’s at least one decent reason not to lump graduate journals in with undergraduate ones.
    On a few smaller points:
    – Most work in professional journals is also ignored.
    * Yes, but clearly to a lesser degree than the work in graduate journals. If your work is a real contribution, you should give it the best chance for people to find it.
    – The work involved on the editing and reviewing side can be valuable because of community-building, editing practice, etc.
    * Agreed, but the question is whether this should be done in the context of a graduate journal. Why not have a working group where people give feedback on drafts together and so on? The issue is really about if there needs to an output in the form of a graduate journal and all that goes with it (a typeset, static paper that cannot be commented on or revised, will be sent to various indexes and databases, etc.). To me a graduate student shouldn’t contribute such an output unless it’s a legitimate contribution, in which case it should go into a regular journal.

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  13. been there, done that

    ABD
    The fact that my paper has been cited 4 times in non-graduate student journals suggests to me that I under-sold the paper. I should have sent it to a professional journal – then it may have been cited 6 times. Given my experience, graduate journals do not teach much about the publication process – the production of such journals is generally low quality.
    Personally, I lean toward the view that graduate school is a place to professionalize people – to make them professional philosophers. On the one hand, I think that fewer students should be admitted to PhD programs – there are too any dissappointed and angry people who entered a PhD program assuming they would get a job (maybe one at Harvard, or at least Notre Dame). On the other hand, I think it is good that many people can get into PhD programs – the “top” students at many programs often do not amount to much, and a number of dark horses end up having good productive careers. (I myself might be regarded as one of those). I think philosophy departments are generally ill-equipped to help people get jobs in industry.

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  14. it may backfire

    Re ABD on ” if four people cited your paper, then at least four people cared enough to have read and cited your paper”
    Just a small correction. “Cited” doesn’t necessarily mean “have read.”
    And a further thing to keep in mind that having been cited doesn’t mean that others have meaningfully engaged with your paper.

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