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Publishing with your advisor?

In our newest “how can we help you?” thread, a reader writes:

I have a question about publishing with advisors. What do people think about it? Do people do it? Should people do it? My advisor and I work on similar things (unsurprisingly), and there’s an idea we think about a lot that has kind of developed organically in conversation. On the one hand, it seems this is how most ideas of advisees develop: they get a lot of input from their advisors but still call the idea “theirs”. So I could just keep on working on it alone and have a single authored paper as a result. On the other hand, I could co-author with my advisor, and it could become a better paper and be out faster. I know that it’s the norm to co-author with advisors in pretty much all the fields but philosophy, but I don’t see it all that often in philosophy. So, what do people think?

I know that publishing with advisors is common in scientific fields, but my sense is that it is against the norm in philosophy and probably in other humanities fields as well. In terms of the job-market, I suspect the OP would be far better served publishing on their own, as I’ve heard people say things like “If you publish with your advisor, people will assume they did most of the work.” On the other hand, if the OP’s primary concern isn’t the job market per se–but rather putting out the best possible philosophical work–then publishing with their advisor could make sense. So, I guess whether it makes sense may depend on the OP’s priorities.

What do other readers think?

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5 responses to “Publishing with your advisor?”

  1. Anonymous

    Thanks OP for bringing this up. I have a similar question: if one has a TT job and several individual publications already out, would publishing with one’s advisor negatively affect their tenure case? E.g., suppose one has 6 peer-reviewed publications (post-hire). Assuming all else is equal (even though all else is never really equal), would this person’s tenure case be weaker if one of those publications were co-authored with their advisor? I suspect context will matter a lot, and this will differ dramatically across institutions, but I’d still love to hear what folks think.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      You ask: would this person’s tenure case be weaker if one of those publications were co-authored with their advisor?

      I think the answer is: absolutely not. If you already have, say, 6 independent articles, you already absolutely established yourself as an autonomous researcher. In this case, it rather looks like you now publish with your advisor as a colleague / equal, not as them being a ‘superior’.

      Reply
  2. Anonymous

    It is fine to publish with your advisor, but early in your career these will be looked at with a bit of skepticism about your contribution. As the OP notes, the paper will probably get done quicker and be better … Well, a hiring department wants to know that YOU can get tenure (not you and your advisor) … and you cannot count on publishing with your advisor all the way to tenure.
    Further, I know a case where a young philosopher published with their parent (an academic) early in their career. And that paper was placed in a very good journal. Well, what was striking is that it took this person many years before they began to publish in journals of that calibre again. Clearly, it looked like the only reason they had been able to publish in such a place was BECAUSE of their parent. You can run a similar argument, but put supervisor in for parent

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  3. Anonymous

    A lot of this is context dependent. In philosophy of science, it is more common to see co-authoring and to see advisor-advisee coauthor. Unfortunately, philosophy as a whole views coauthoring suspiciously. Some departments will welcome it, some will not. If you are on the market, you will need a solo paper in a top journal in order to counter balance the co-authored piece. Hiring committees will be worried that you won’t be able to write high quality papers without your advisor, so you must have other things on the CV to assuage that worry.

    Depending on your subfield, co-authoring with your advisor can be a sign that you are too close to your advisor’s work. I’ve seen this happen more than once. Say there is a famous philosopher X who is really well known for defending view A, which is controversial. Hiring committees may view you as too closely aligned with view A and too much of a protege of Professor X. If other philosophers are going to engage with view A, they will engage with Professor X’s work, not yours. In this case, it is actually a detriment to you to coauthor with X, because you will never be known for A. In philosophy, it often pays to distinguish yourself and establish your own point of view independent of your advisor.

    Reply
  4. Anonymous

    The way I have often heard it explained (and the way I explain it to junior colleagues) is that a requirement for tenure is establishing an independent research program beyond the dissertation. If you have one pub with the old advisor it is not going to hurt (it is reasonable that you would publish together to wrap up work you did together before graduating), provided you have enough of your own work, too. But more than one could start to be problematic. Tenure committees want to know things like percent of effort between co-authors, too, so be sure to agree with co-authors about how that will be sorted. (A cv line might look like: (co-authored with X; my contribution was 75%, including a and b) “title,” journal, etc.)

    Reply

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