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Job-Market Reporting Thread (2025-26)
Job-Market Discussion Thread (2025-26)

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How can we help you? (April 2026)

Now that it’s been a couple of months 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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24 responses to “How can we help you? (April 2026)”

  1. Wannabe Adjunct

    Does anyone have advice for finding adjunct work local to a specific geographical location?

    Reply
  2. Anonymous

    Why do journals desk-reject papers after a long time (more than two months)? I got desk rejections from two journals without comments. I know there’s probably nothing I can do about it, but it would be some consolation to understand the reasons behind this practice.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      Similar Query: I’ve recently got a desk-rejection from Nous after almost 3 months, with no comments, and I’ve heard countless stories about desk-rejection taking upward of 2 months at PPR. What could possibly be the reason for this? Is it because papers at these journals go through a round of screening by the editor-in-chief and then another round by an associate editor? Or it’s because they employ a model where desk-rejections are outsourced to external referees, but who are not asked for comments?

      Reply
  3. Anonymous

    What do TPC readers think the future of book publishing looks like? Recently I’ve had a book proposal declined by multiple presses that seemed, on paper, like natural fits given their past titles. Some of the rejections have cited financial difficulty with projects like mine mainly as a function of the current publishing landscape (for instance, reduced institutional/library demand for a print run in the age of digital media). It’s a real shame that worthwhile research projects may be killed in the womb, not for lack of merit, but for lack of a viable market.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      Related question: I’d like to publish a book but not if it’s priced such that few will purchase it. Are there options that will ensure my book is priced at a more reasonable rate? Also: the book project I’m working on is on the short side (probably 50k words or less). I don’t think it will be a good fit for the Cambridge Elements or ‘Why it’s okay’ series… does this mean I’m SOL?

      Reply
  4. Anonymous

    How do you handle publishing work that could appear to be critical of values held by your institution? Imagine you’re publishing on atheism at a religious school. Philosophers are good at distinguishing between endorsing a view and defending it or recognizing the weight of reasons behind it. But students and administrators are not always. There are ways of making clear that you are interested in a position, or find an argument persuasive, without accepting it, e.g., saying as much in print, or offering the argument conditionally. But I suspect that some will take up a more political stance and see any interest in certain views as damning enough. How might one handle such situations?

    Reply
  5. Anonymous

    I would like to ask about the attitude toward sexual harassment in North American philosophy. A friend of mine has recently experienced something involving a professor. After hearing about other students’ experiences, she feels unsure about trusting official reporting procedures. At the same time, she is worried that, in academia, if a well-known philosopher commits this kind of misconduct, people might not take it seriously.

    Reply
  6. Anonymous

    This is part of a previous post, but readers didn’t take it up. Could we give it another go?

    “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?”

    I once purposely wrote a brief, positive review of a paper for just this reason, and recommended publication. I’m not sure the editor appreciated it.

    Reply
  7. Anonymous

    Does it matter how recent a job applicant’s teaching experience is? If I’ve just completed a year of adjuncting, can I pivot to more research-oriented positions (e.g., non-teaching postdoc, permanent research associateship)? Or will committees desire recent teaching experience, such that I should continue adjuncting with some regularity? If so, how much would be a good benchmark?

    Reply
  8. Anonymous

    Is anyone aware of information about the time a paper spends under review and the subsequent decision? When I think about it, I’m pretty sure every paper I’ve had accepted was reviewed within a relatively quick time (say, six months at the very most), whereas whenever I’ve waited more than six months it has been rejected. It could be purely coincidental, but perhaps, say, a reviewer that leaves it for ages, then gets pushed by the editor for it, is quicker in their review (and so seeks out a few reasons for rejection) or is put in a slightly negative mood towards it, etc. etc.

    One reason I ask is that, if there is something to this, it suggests one may have good reason to pull a paper from a journal if it has been under review for a long time and to submit it elsewhere, on the basis that the longer it is under review, the greater the odds of rejection. As I say, I’m aware that this is speculative, but I’m curious whether others have noted a similar phenomenon.

    Reply
  9. concerned prof

    I was just talking to a student of mine who’s considering grad school in philosophy. They love philosophy and they are good at it, in the sense of understanding well what’s going on, coming up with good objections/ideas, etc. But they find that when it comes to writing papers, especially big papers for classes or a senior thesis, they hit a mental block because so much of their own self-worth is tied up with the quality of the outcome. It’s almost as if they’re so afraid it’ll end up badly that they become anxious to even start doing the work.

    Obviously that’s not going to lead to a productive academic career going forward. So my question is whether anyone reading this faced a similar obstacle early in their career, and if so how did you overcome it?

    Reply
  10. Anonymous

    Suppose I’m someone who has an M.A. from an institution that, deservingly or not, may be perceived negatively by many hiring committees (as a “conservative” religious institution). Would it make sense, and would it be deceptive, to remove my M.A. from my CV once I’ve obtained my Ph.D from a different, “respectable” institution? Suppose further that I was young and naive back when I decided to attend the M.A. institution, and so still understandably under the sway of the beliefs and values of the religious culture in which I was brought up, but that (having grown up) I no longer endorse or identify with those values.

    Reply
  11. Anonymous

    Sorry if this has been asked a hundred times. I can’t find the answer. Is PPR currently closed for submissions and, once they do close, when can they be expected to open again?

    Reply
  12. Anonymous

    To what extent can I expect that my writing will not be fed into AI at any point in the publication process? I understand that many journals now have AI policies that ask reviewers to not upload papers to LLMs, but what about after being accepted for publication? Are there efforts to renegotiate copyright transfer to include clauses banning our work from being AI training material? Or, in the case of open access journals, are concrete measures being taken to discourage “crawlers” &c. from lifting text from journal websites? I’m only asking because of the significant anti-AI sentiment voiced here and elsewhere (rightly so, I think)–I fear I may have missed announcements of actions being taken based on this shared sentiment to safeguard our collective work.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      I think it would be very, very difficult to avoid this. I ran a quick search on Claude and got very detailed summaries of all my papers, including ones that were paywalled. I don’t use AI in my work at all either, so there’s no way it would have gotten anything from me.

      Reply
  13. Anonymous

    I am currently tenured at an R2 university in the US. I recognize I am fortunate relative to many peers, though I also understand that I will probably be stuck here forever if my program won’t be eliminated (fingers crossed). Nevertheless, I still wonder what some potential career possibilities remain open for me within philosophy and how I might pursue them, knowing that most of them will be very unlikely to happen?

    For example, is publishing a ton at top journals the only way to make it possible to move to an R1? Given that my current position is teaching-intensive at the undergraduate level, what are practical strategies for carving out more research time? (Even more practically, would it be reasonable for me to not care too much about my teaching evaluations or pedagogical innovations but to spend more time doing my own research, if I would like to keep this possibility open?)

    I saw some people did parallel moves from an R2 to another R2 (or lower end R1). How does this sort of career path happen? Would some administrative experience help?

    I think I also saw some people moved from R2s to SLACs. In such cases, does research still matter most? Or does a strong undergraduate teaching record carry more weight?

    I have already accepted the fact that I will be at my current job for a couple more decades. But knowing some potential ways to be out would still help me understand my situation better. Thank you for your input!

    Reply
  14. Anonymous

    In a recent thread a lot of people were sharing a sentiment that it doesn’t really matter what you publish about because basically no one will read your work anyway. To people who feel this way, I wanted to ask, what are you doing philosophy for?

    Reply
  15. Anonymous

    Is it normal/considered acceptable to get a revise-and-resubmit based on one referee report, and then get rejected based on a completely new report, with no sign of the original reviewer? I am kind of a compulsive manuscript status checker — bad habit, I know — and the thing went back “under review” within like 4 or 5 days after I submitted the revisions, so I’m somewhat skeptical there was a failed effort made to reconnect with the original reviewer, but suspect they immediately went for a new eye. The whole process took 14 months, pretty depressing…

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      This happened to me once. I got a minor revision. I submitted the revised manuscript on time. It was rejected 8 month after that, with two new reports. I asked about it here. The comments suggested that this was acceptable.

      Reply
  16. Anonymous

    I’d like to know the recognition level of journals like Synthese. I saw that it’s ranked 11th in journal rankings, but unlike other journals, Synthese publishes a very large number of articles. I’d like to know what level this journal is recognized for in job ethics assessments.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      Sorry, there was an error in the last sentence of this paragraph. I have corrected it. I’d like to know the recognition level of journals like Synthese. I saw that it’s ranked 11th in journal rankings, but unlike other journals, Synthese publishes a very large number of articles. I’d like to know how recognized this journal is for job hunting.

      Reply
    2. Anonymous

      I’d really like to know this too. In my experience, when people feel jealous of your journal publications, publishing in Synthese can be dismissed as “they publish so many papers that they must just accept anything.”

      (Ironically, such comments sometimes come from people who have never published a journal article as a single author, and whose only publication was co-authored with their supervisor.)

      Reply
      1. Anonymous

        Synthese has plenty of special issues, so this might explain the high volumes of papers published. Anedoctally, I review for them a lot, and most of the papers are rejected in the end. I feel standards are quite high, all things considered (though not as high as, say, bjps or philsci of course)

  17. Anonymous

    I was wondering whether people would recommend having a personal academic website, perhaps using something like Google Sites or WordPress, or whether it is enough just to have a PhilPeople page.

    I’m currently a PhD student, and I’ve noticed that quite a lot of professors have their own websites, but quite a lot do not, so I’m not really sure whether having one is necessary. My main concern is whether it would make a meaningful difference on the job market after graduation. Do people think having a personal website is important, or is PhilPeople enough?

    Reply

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