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In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:
How much weight does publishing a booklet (max 30.000 words) in the Cambridge University Press Elements series carry? Is it like publishing an article in a good/top journal or more like a monograph with CUP or something else? I am junior scholar, working in history of philosophy.
Do any readers have any helpful insights?
I have read a few Elements. Some are good and some not so good. I have also refereed a few.
I have not published one but I have published a few monographs with CUP. Given that a typical monograph is 3 times longer than an Element, an Element is not equal to (or does not carry the same weight as) a monograph. The reason to do an Element is because you have something interesting to say in 30,000 words. Given that the authors are invited to write the Elements, they do not carry the same weight as an article in the best journals. Also, if I recall, the compensation for an Element is not so high (is it US$600?). In contrast, with CUP monographs, authors get royalties (not a lot, but I have earned about US$ 10,000 for my CUP books).
I’ve written one of these, and my view is that they are not worth that much if OP is thinking in terms of job market or promotion. The key reason for this, at least in the UK, is that Elements books are quite clearly not going to do great in the REF, and hiring/promotiion are focused around how well people do/look like they will do in the REF. Element books, however good or well cited they are, just are not likely to be getting the top marks. I could imagine relatively similar concerns might impact how useful one would be for US-style tenure cases, at least at some universities, but this is just my sense.
I did one because i) I got asked; ii) I didn’t think it would take me too long; iii) I thought that it could help raise my profile (which I guess indirectly could help with job applications/promotions in a small way). I’d say that if you are not in a permanent job, its a nice extra to do if it won’t impact how many journal articles/proper monograph you produce, but it won’t ever be the decisive factor in an application.
IMO, writing a Cambridge Element carries indirect weight: they signal that you are someone who is an expert in your corner of the sub-discipline. Presumably you write one of these when you have a very strong grasp of the topic, and you display that by having good publications in good journals. On their own, I don’t think they would count for either a good journal article or a full-fledged monograph.
I agree that Elements range widely in quality, and I agree with CUP author’s overall assessment of their perceived weight. An SEP entry might be the best comparison in that respect, though I think there’s much more room for originality in an Element. I usually find Elements much more enjoyable to read as well. (I’m curious whether others agree.)
I agreed to write one. I thought the field needed an up-to-date introduction to the metaphysics of laws, especially for teaching purposes, and I had some original ideas I wanted to fit in that required a broad background.
Also, I thought it would be a fun challenge. It was, and I’m glad that I wrote it.
I’ve read a few Cambridge Elements. They mostly involved review of terrain that’s already been mapped out in the literature. I think of them as carrying a bit more weight than a Philosophy Compass article, but not much more. Certainly not as much as a genuine book, and certainly not as much an article in a top generalist or specialist journal. At my institution (Leiter R1), they are given far less weight than full-length monographs for purposes of tenure.
I think it depends on the particular series OP has in mind. Some, for example, Cambridge Elements in Ancient Philosophy, edited by James Warren, are more established than others. Each book gets many views and quick citations.
Since several Oxford faculty recently published there, I wonder whether this series counts so little, as someone in this thread said, for REF in the UK.
@Alsowondering
With the caveat that I’m not involved with the REF (in the sense that I’m not on any panel scoring outputs), I don’t think that some Oxford people publishing in the series would change the overall perpection of Elements books as not being good REF submisions.
Generally (exceptions may apply!) the books in any elements series will not score well on novelty, orginiality (for both because they are mostly mapping exercises), rigour (because the scope of each is generally quite big actually…) or significance (because of stuff related to mapping too).
Personally I would hope that just because some people in Oxford published there would not change this as the REF is (meant to be) about assessing the quality of each work on its own grounds, not where it was pubished or by who. If Oxford people doing it made it better scored that starts to sound like elitism-bias to me…
The Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science series, which are the ones I know best, are also well established, and my entry has loads of views and citations. I still will not put it forward to the REF when by uni asks as it will not score well given what the REF is looking for (Note: I’m ignoring the debate of if this is what the REF should look for. I’m only commenting given what they actually are looking for)
I tend to rank them far lower than a CUP monograph because the quality can vary greatly. I think of them as somewhere between a philosophy compass article and a SEP article.
My experience is mostly about the philosophy of science series. My impression is that a few of them might be like the OUP Very Short Introduction series (so, not very exciting). However, others are far more original: they are basically very long papers with well-constructed arguments and original ideas that, because of the space available, can also do justice to the complexity of the debates they are addressing (which is something that often we cannot do in our 9,000/10,000 words, especially in philosophy of science).
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