In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:
I am looking for advice on what to do about a paper that I've tried to get published for years and is, frankly, kind of ruining my life. For context, this paper is the biggest idea I have and comes out of my dissertation. Every one of my advisors speaks very highly of the paper, so I do think the general idea is quite good and novel. In response to various forms of feedback, however, I have rewritten the paper many times over the years in order to reframe it and the like. I do not yet have a TT job, and I unfortunately seem to take far longer than the average person to rewrite papers. So, the opportunity cost on this one paper has been fairly enormous for my job market prospects. It feels like I may have gotten a TT job by now if I'd only ever had smaller, more publishable ideas and had never come up with the idea for this particular paper.
This summer, I am in the process of rewriting it yet again. Every time I interact with this paper, though, it feels absolutely awful on a visceral and spiritual level. I think it has become something of a symbol at this point of my failures thus far at making it in academic philosophy. Given that, I would love to just abandon it, especially for the time being. Since I've already sunk so much time into it, though, I worry it will look bad if my CV doesn't soon have that paper in the publications list, which is currently too light for my years since defending. Given that, I'm tempted to just send it off somewhere now in its former version, but that would also mean that the past month or so that I've been working on the new version during my precious teaching-free summer time will have been a complete waste. That said, every time I seriously work on this paper I get very close to quitting my teaching job and leaving the profession altogether.
Any advice (or commiseration) would be greatly appreciated!
I'm sorry the OP is dealing with this. I know how it is, so I deeply empathize. I actually had a paper just like this: it was from my dissertation, and everywhere I presented it, people told me it was great. Yet, journals repeatedly rejected it (14 times, if I recall). So I rewrote it over and over again (about 60 times, if my memory recalls). It tortured me–and yes, like the OP, I seriously considered leaving the profession. But you know what: I kept at it, ended up publishing it (albeit in a new-ish and pretty out-of-the-way journal), and … it's my most-cited philosophy paper. Since then, I've published several follow-up pieces (in some well-ranked journals) building on it.
Obviously, I'm just one person–but my first piece of advice to the OP would be this: keep at it as long as you're able to and so long as you're convinced the paper is strong (I've dropped a number of papers after referees convinced me they were irreparably flawed–but that never happened with the paper above, which is why I kept at it). My second piece of advice, though, would be this: don't put all of your eggs in one basket. Work on it, send it out. But work on other things too. It took me 6 years to publish the piece mentioned above. If that had been the only thing I worked on (let alone published), I don't think a TT job would have ever been in the offing for me. So, I'd advise the OP: finish up the new draft as expeditiously as you can, and then get to work on something else (or something new!).
Do any other readers have any help or commiseration to offer?
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