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How can we help you? (February 2026)

Now that it’s been over a month since our last “how can we help you?” thread, it’s time for a new one.

For those of you unfamiliar with this series, this is a chance for you to post openly or anonymously in the comments section below on anything you could use help with related to the profession. After you post your query in the comments section, I will then post new threads for readers to discuss your query. 

As usual, feel free to ask questions on anything (within the Cocoon’s mission) that you could use help with, including but not limited to:

  • The job-market (applying for jobs, etc.)
  • Issues in the profession (including issues of social justice)
  • Graduate school
  • Publishing
  • Teaching
  • Work-life balance
  • Mental health & well-being
  • Professional or personal struggles
  • Etc.

Ask away – we’re here to help! 

Finally, a quick reminder of the following RULE: Please do not submit replies to other comments in this thread. It makes these threads unwieldy and difficult for me to keep track of which queries I’ve posted new threads on. If you’d like to respond to a comment in this thread, please wait until I dedicate a new post to the person’s query myself and comment in that thread instead! I have not been enforcing this rule consistently recently, but need to recommit to it as it has been hard to manage these threads. Thanks!

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27 responses to “How can we help you? (February 2026)”

  1. Anonymous

    I was at a conference and began talking with one of the reps from OUP. I got to talking about a few of my articles, a couple of places the articles had been picked up, and then decided to just take the plunge and gave a broad overview of a book idea (only two sentences). Then I asked if that was something it may be worth talking to OUP about. The rep gave me the email of one of the area editors and told me to get in contact.

    Is this just a polite, “Please go away” thing that reps sometimes do? Or is it worth it to go ahead and reach out to the editor?

    Reply
  2. Anonymous

    I am curious how other people teach writing in the age of LLMs. I am teaching in a political science department and have to teach students some philosophical writing in order for them to be able to write term papers and theses in political theory/philosophy.

    Previously, my strategy would have been to give students a couple of small writing tasks during the semester and provide some feedback on those tasks. However, with what LLMs are currently capable of and with the degree of LLM-use I have seen, I am pessimistic about the prospects of that strategy. My expectation is that anything like “Summarize the argument on p. 2” or “Write a brief response to argument X” will yield a large number of machine-generated responses.

    So I would be curious to hear how others are teaching writing now. In particular, I am curious how you can integrate it into a regular seminar for students that might only take a small number of philosophy courses. Do you do writing exercises in class? Do you just stop teaching writing?

    Reply
  3. Anonymous

    I was recently admitted to a PhD programme at the University of Notre Dame and will be starting this autumn. However, an American professor I know mentioned that since it’s a Catholic university, there might be some cultural differences that could take time to adjust to.

    As an international student with no background in or prior exposure to Catholicism, I’m not entirely sure what that actually means in practice. I’m starting to feel a bit anxious about it.

    Does anyone here have concrete experience with Notre Dame or with studying at a Catholic university in the U.S.? I would really appreciate any insights about what to expect, especially in terms of campus culture and academic life.

    Reply
  4. Anonymous

    I’m an Asian student and was fortunate to receive a strong offer this application cycle. I’ll be starting a PhD in the U.S. in Fall 2026. However, I’m very worried about language issues. In philosophy, classroom discussion is extremely important, and I know my spoken English will never be as fluent as that of native speakers. My reading and writing skills are actually very strong, but my listening and speaking are quite weak. In my home country, no one speaks English to me in daily life, and I’ve basically never had real opportunities to speak it out loud.

    Sometimes I really miss how articulate and intelligent I sound in my native language… In English, I feel like a much less capable version of myself. Do professors tend to doubt a PhD student’s academic ability if their spoken English isn’t very good? Will limited oral fluency be interpreted as limited intellectual ability?

    Reply
  5. Anonymous

    I’ve increasingly come to appreciate how much rejection figures in academic philosophy. It’s not easy. What strategies do you all have for dealing with rejections, whether it be from journals, programs, jobs, summer-schools, etc.?

    Reply
  6. Anonymous

    I’m starting to teach soon. Do people have recommendations for books or any other material on teaching methods, assignments, evaluations etc, that are useful for philosophy classes?

    Reply
  7. Anonymous

    Is the readership consideration still relevant when choosing which generalist journal to submit to?

    I know that in the past it used to be worthwhile to publish in journals that had more subscribers because you could expect more people to find your article when flipping through the pages of physical copies of the journal. Nowadays, from what I gather, most people only “browse” the specialist journals that are relevant to them, and no one opens up generalist journal websites casually looking for new stuff to read. Instead, people find stuff on depositories like PhilPapers with helpful search engines, and there isn’t really much a difference between journals aside from the prestige. Is this true?

    Reply
  8. Anonymous

    If I already have multiple publications in the top 2 journals in my specialty, does it make sense to send something to the next journal down the list in my subfield instead just for variety or some other similar consideration?

    Reply
  9. Anonymous

    I submitted a paper to a journal back in 2022-23. It went through two rounds of review and in the end I got 4 distinct referee reports, including one that was almost 6,000 (!) words long. The editors did not give me any direction about how I should deal with such unwieldy reviews (at the time I was a postdoc and had less publishing experience). But during the 3rd round of revisions, I felt defeated and gave up. Now, with some time and distance from the paper, I would like to return to trying to get it published again. The debate has not moved on since my paper and I believe it still has something to contribute to the conversation. I do feel quite terribly about the whole ordeal. How should I go about doing this? Should I write to the editors about a paper that was left in limbo from a few years ago (though the editors have since changed)? Should I just start over, rewrite the paper to update it, and submit to a different journal? What obligations do I have towards the original journal?

    Reply
  10. Anonymous

    I would like to ask which journals are particularly highly regarded in the fields of epistemology and phenomenology.
    As far as I understand, Cambridge University Press’s “Epistemology” journal and another titled “Social Epistemology” are dedicated to publishing papers in the epistemology field. How highly regarded are these two journals? How do they compare to the top 10 journals?
    In the phenomenology field, I’ve noticed a journal called “Phenomenology and Cognitive Sciences” with a relatively high impact factor compared to others.
    Would publishing in these journals be considered to confer a level of distinction worthy of respect?

    Reply
  11. Anonymous

    I have recently landed my first permanent position and I am about to publish a book with a respected academic publisher. It’s my first book publication. A few of my papers have circulated in the field, but I’m still roughly what you’d call a nobody and I do not anticipate that my book by itself will attract much attention. I’m also not awfully well-connected. Since I’ve worked hard on this book, I’m wondering what I could do to make sure it receives a decent amount of attention. Here are questions that I have in mind, I would love to see what others think:

    1) How to maximize the chances that my book gets reviewed? Can I do anything beyond asking the publisher to send copies of the book to journals who do book reviews?

    2) More specifically, how to maximize the chances to be reviewed in the NDPR? I feel like these reviews are 10x more read than the others

    3) Is it acceptable for an (independently motivated) student of mine to review my book? If so, under which conditions?

    4) Can I contact colleagues at other departments and offer them to come give a talk about my book? Is this acceptable only if I offer to pay for my trip? Is it also acceptable if I cannot offer to pay for my own trip and thus expect their department to fund it? If the latter, how to formulate my suggestion/offer without sounding entitled or annoying?

    5) The dream is to have an author-meets-critics symposium about my book in a respected journal. How hard is it to make this happen? What is the best strategy to do so? Should I first contact some potential critics, and then journals once I have their agreement? Should I do it the other way around? Or should I do something else?

    Reply
  12. Short Articles

    I have a paper with around 4.5k words. I could see a version that is shorter that I can submit to Analysis, but I could also see one that is around 5.5-6k words. Are there good journals that accept shorter 5.5-6k papers? Would journals that have 8k word limits normally be happy to accept these?

    Reply
  13. Anonymous

    I am curious people’s thoughts on grading.

    We know (well, at least me and some friends) that many students do not care much about our feedback, and many of them do not even read them. And we also know that grading probably is the least interesting part of teaching (again, at least for me…).

    This semester, I am trying something new. First, I significantly reduced the amount of grading for myself. I made a lot of assignments in-class work, and as long as they were there thinking and writing, I gave them full credit. (Honestly, when I saw that they were that doing things, I cared less about what they actually did… I sometimes even did not read their in-class work… Shhh… Don’t let my students know it.) For a lower level undergraduate course, I only provide feedback for around three short writing assignments (500 words each). Second, for those short writing assignments, I ask them to do it in class and resubmit them later based on my feedback. I force them to engage with my comments.

    So far, I would say that it helped my “mental health” A LOT. I did not fall behind in grading as before, and I feel that I have more time focusing on teaching prep, so that most of my effort regarding teaching has been devoted to in-class time. I also feel that my time is more balanced, and I feel more comfortable working on my own research and doing service. Of course, this is partly because I simply have more time.

    But I do worry that if I give them too little feedback, or, if I assign myself too little grading to do. I cannot help but wonder if I am a bit too selfish. To be fair, I talk to students a lot during office hours and after class, most of whom are those who are interested in philosophy. My question is: how do you approach grading? How much grading do you think is reasonable for a course in this era (students not caring about feedback, the usage of AI, etc.)?

    Reply
  14. Anonymous

    Does anybody have experience organizing a philosophical debate in a large class (e.g., 50 people)? I’d be curious for how one might do this in a 3 hour seminar format, or perhaps divided across two classes (a portion of each seminar being dedicated to a different stage, say).

    Reply
  15. Anonymous

    I’m an early career (female if it matters) philosopher with several large tattoos. They are currently all easy to cover, and I’ve always kept them covered on campus visits and at most conferences. But I’m getting close to having one of my sleeves finished, and I’ve started considering having part of the design extend onto the top of my hand. I’d love to start a discussion about how such “job stopper” tattoos are perceived in the profession today. General wisdom in the tattoo community says to avoid visible ink until you’re established in your profession. I do have a TT job, but am imagining a very possible world where some circumstance puts me back on the market. How do hiring committees (and philosophers in general) feel about visible tattoos? I’d particularly be interested in hearing experiences from others with significant body mods.

    Reply
  16. flummoxed

    I have a question about why search committees “ghost” candidates after second-round interviews/flyouts. I’ve had this happen to me twice, and I don’t understand the psychology. These are departments whose members have gone to the trouble of flying me out, interviewing me for a day and a half, going out to dinner with me, getting to know me as a person, and so on. After all of that, they then tell me they’ll let me know in the next few weeks whether I’ve gotten the job or not…. Except I never hear from them again, only to find out that someone else accepted a formal offer through other channels.

    Why do departments do this? As a candidate, I’m not asking for much, just a one-sentence e-mail saying that I wasn’t chosen for the position. Do search committees view final-round candidates they’ve rejected as so beneath their notice that they can’t even write them a one-sentence e-mail? Or is it that they forget we exist? Or do they feel that it would be awkward/uncomfortable to convey this bad news, and so refrain from doing this at all? What on earth is going on? Are these search committees knowingly misleading me when they say they’ll get back in touch either way within a few weeks and then never do??

    Reply
  17. Anonymous

    I recently read a post on Daily Nous written by a philosophy professor reflecting on her experience of sexual harassment during her PhD years. What struck me most was that when she tried to address it, the response she received was sarcasm and dismissal. She wrote a line that stayed with me: “The university is the power structure. The university is the Man.” She also described how, even during ordinary academic conversations, she had to pretend to be engaged in discussion while quietly monitoring the physical distance between herself and certain men.

    Reading this made me deeply uneasy. As an Asian woman, I experienced quite a lot of sexual harassment during my graduate studies in my own country. For a long time, I told myself that perhaps this was partly because gender equality in parts of Asia still lags behind. I hoped that things might be better in Europe or the United States.

    Now I am about to begin a PhD in the United States, and reading this account has made me worried. I would genuinely like to ask those who have studied or worked in American PhD programs: how serious is the problem of sexual harassment there?

    Reply
  18. Anonymous

    I’m an early career philosopher and I have a few publications that I think make interesting and valuable contributions, and I’m itching for my work to be engaged with, though I understand that it takes time.

    Can people share insights about this and maybe tell about the first time their work was engaged with?

    Reply
  19. Anonymous

    I would appreciate some advice about submission strategy. This relates to recent discussions about publishing multiple papers in the same journal, but my question concerns the submission and review stage.

    I have two papers that seem like good fits for the same journal. Paper A is already under external review there. Paper B is ready to submit and, in my own assessment, is much stronger.

    Should I submit Paper B to the same journal now, or wait until Paper A receives a decision? I am unsure whether having two papers under review at the same journal is frowned upon or could bias editorial decisions. The journal does not explicitly prohibit it.

    My main concern is that because of Paper B’s somewhat idiosyncratic focus, submitting it elsewhere would likely mean aiming one or two tiers lower, which I am reluctant to do unless indeed necessary.

    Any advice from people familiar with editorial practices would be greatly appreciated.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      I’d also like to know this! And does it make a difference if Paper A is an R&R?

      Reply
  20. Anonymous

    I am wondering what to do with a submission about which I cannot get any update.
    Here is the context: I submitted a manuscript to an Oxford Studies volume. I got an email confirming that they have received the manuscript and they would send it to external review. Six months after submission, I sent an email asking for updates on the status of the manuscript, but I haven’t heard back from them. It’s now been eight months since submission, and I am wondering if this is a normal thing to happen, especially with a prestigious journal like the Oxford Studies series. I am also wondering what I should do next—should I withdraw the submission, or should I just wait, or take some other step? I’d appreciate any advice. Thank you!

    Reply
  21. Anonymous

    I have a question about the journal of moral philosophy. I submitted a paper there more than a month ago and its status on editorial manager is still listed as “submitted to journal”. Usually in other journals the status would have at least changed to something like “editor assigned” so I am a little worried that it is languishing without editorial attention. But maybe this is typical for JMP?

    Reply
  22. Anonymous

    How common is it for a paper to be rejected after R&R after a positive second review from one reviewer and suggestions about structural and stylistic changes (but nothing substantial about the argument) from the other? I thought a second round of revisions would be more common in this case (or at lease a desk reject earlier if the editor did not think the paper was going to have a chance at publication). The other reason I am asking is also in light of my reviewing work – I would not appreciate my structural and stylistic suggestions to be used to reject a paper whose main argument I judged to be valuable. Is it better not to mention it altogether in an environment where many journals are aiming for ever higher rejection rates?

    Reply
  23. Anonymous

    Does anyone have experience with American Philosophical Quarterly? I submitted there *several* months ago, and the status still says only “Successfully submitted”. I don’t know if they simply don’t update their status, or if I need to reach out.

    Reply
    1. Marcus

      I’d recommend reposting this as a comment under the recent “submissions in limbo” post.

      Reply
  24. Anonymous

    How do I choose between sending my book to OUP NY and OUP Oxford?

    Reply
  25. Anonymous

    Does uploading my dissertation to PhilPapers hurt my chances of getting it published as a book later?

    Reply

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