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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? (May 2026)

Now that it’s been 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, 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. 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. 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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31 responses to “How can we help you? (May 2026)”

  1. Anonymous

    Do conferences matter at all on the job market? I’m a grad student and I feel like I hear such a wide range of perspectives on this topic. Some people say they’re important, but only for practicing giving talks and networking, some people say it’s a red flag if an applicant has no conferences but not a “plus” if they do, and others seem to think that some of the fancier conferences are a boost. Part of the rationale for this question is that I’ve definitely been encouraged to put a lot of effort into applying for and attending conferences, and I’m wondering if this is a good use of one’s time as a grad student.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      I’ve been wondering about this too! I’d also like to know what “level” of conference is considered enough. Are graduate conferences sufficient? And are big, crowded conferences like the APA meetings or the Joint Session actually helpful for the job market?

      Reply
  2. Anonymous

    I’m currently a PhD student at a PGR top-15 department. Given the current job market situation, I’m wondering what a realistic publication record should look like by the time I graduate. Roughly how many journal publications would be enough to be competitive? I already have one paper published in Synthese. My minimum hope is to secure a postdoc, though of course a tenure-track job would be ideal. What should I aim for from here?

    Reply
  3. Anonymous

    I’m a PhD student in the US. I was supposed to go on the market last year, but unfortunately developed a very serious health condition, for which I’ve been receiving treatment (lots of surgery etc). I’ve basically been fully off work for the last 12 months, although I’ve stayed enrolled as a student for visa / health insurance reasons (fortunately my department has been very understanding). My condition is stable, so I’m hoping to apply for jobs this Fall.

    I’m wondering if people have advice on whether to disclose this leave of absence to hiring committees / ask my letter writers to mention it? On the one hand, I want to explain why I’ve been so unproductive in the last year. I would also require some disability-related accommodations if I was offered a flyout. On the other hand, I don’t want departments to see my health as a risk to my productivity going forward, especially since it probably is(!) — the situation is unfortunately still very uncertain, and will require at least three more major surgeries in the next couple of years.

    I would welcome all thoughts, especially from those doing the hiring! I’m also curious to hear from other people who’ve been through prolonged medical sagas at this stage of their careers.

    Reply
  4. Anonymous

    Are there any organizations, societies, or mailing lists that people working in this area should join or follow? Also, are there any conferences, workshops, or regular events in the philosophy of mathematics that are worth paying attention to?

    p.s.: My own work is closer to epistemology. It is not very formal, so groups or conferences mainly focused on logic may not be the best fit for me.

    Reply
    1. Marcus

      Could you clarify which area you are inquiring about in your initial question? Thanks!

      Reply
      1. Anonymous

        Sorry, I should have made that clearer. I meant conferences and events in the philosophy of mathematics, though not ones that are mainly focused on pure logic. Thanks!

  5. Anonymous

    Let’s say one tries to publish a paper that engages with a fairly small and semi-isolated area of literature, but keeps getting negative referee reports on it (seemingly written by people who know about the area/topic in question). At some point, one will either (a) run out of journals that are willing to publish stuff on this topic, or (b) run out of reviewers who are willing to take on the manuscript (or both!). Given that many areas of literature are small and that we’re in a refereeing crisis, I’m curious as to how often this situation arises, and what one can do about it. Should one simply to abandon the paper and move on, assuming that one can afford to do so, of course? Or is it better to try journals that seem far less interested in the topic, at least on the surface?

    Reply
  6. Anonymous

    I have just received, hot on the heels of each other and two in one batch, three negative-to-relatively negative (two reject, one major revisions) referee reports that *all* incorporated, near the beginning, a sentence containing the *exact* phrase “in its current form”. The gist was always ‘the paper is interesting [another exact word], but cannot be accepted/does not succeed/etc. IN ITS CURRENT FORM’. Is this some kind of AI signal or something? If it was just two I think i’d have made less of it, but three in the course of three weeks is bugging me out. I don’t recall seeing this exact language ever, or at least with such frequency. Anybody else seen this phrase, or this type of sentence in a referee report? Is this just well-known referee speak?

    Reply
  7. Moving to Europe

    I’m moving from the US to Europe. How do I find regular philosophy conferences in the area? Majority on philevents seem to be US based. Also, are there conferences in Europe which tyypically result in journal publications after? (e.g. In the US, there’s Madmeta, WiNE, Chapel Hill Normativity Workshop, that all lead to a publication).

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      I’m actually in the opposite situation: I’ll be moving to the US later this year. Could I ask which regular US-based conferences or workshops you would recommend keeping an eye on?

      Reply
  8. Anonymous

    At what point (if any) does a revised paper count as substantially new? I’ve been working on a paper on and off since early in my PhD program (I am now several years into postdoc). When I was a grad student, I sent it out to a few good journals and got rejections with helpful feedback that convinced me the paper needed more time in the oven. Since then, I have substantially rewritten the paper 2 or 3 times from the ground up. I don’t think anybody except me and maybe somebody who held the papers up side by side would be able to tell that one is a revision of the other. The current draft uses different terminology, starting assumptions, and argues in a different way for a different thesis. The only holdover from the original draft is a 2-page section, which has itself been reworked a number of times.

    With that said, I’m wondering if, at some point, it might be appropriate to send the paper to the journals that rejected the earlier draft. I haven’t done so because my understanding is that doing so is against implicit or explicit disciplinary standards. I’ve recently read, however, of people resubmitting papers when they’ve judged them to be substantially new, with an explanatory note to the editor. My instinct is to err on the side of caution and just submit to new journals, but I would be interested to hear from authors or editors who have had relevant experience.

    Reply
  9. Anonymous

    What are some classic papers that every analytic philosopher should read, regardless of their specific area? I mean, for example, Frege’s “On Sense and Reference” and Russell’s “On Denoting” seem like papers one should have read even if one does not work in philosophy of language. If a metaphysics/epistemology professor had never read them, it might seem a little surprising. What other papers have a similar status?

    I also have a related question. Some papers seem to have been canonical in the past, but are no longer regarded as required reading for everyone. For example, one of my professors told me that in his generation, everyone read Davidson, but for my generation this no longer seems necessary. Do people agree with this? And are there other texts that have this kind of status?

    Reply
  10. Anonymous

    How should one handle self-citation in manuscripts prepared for double-blind peer review?

    Phrases like “as I have argued elsewhere…” might reveal who the author is. I saw people replacing their names with “Author (year)”, but this can be transparent in context such as a sentence like “for details, see Author (xxxx)”. People familiar with the literature (who are supposed to be reviewers) can easily know who this is.

    Should one engage with one’s own prior work entirely in the third person throughout the draft? If so, do journals allow authors to change back to the first person perspective after the review process, during proofreading or copyediting?

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      I would also like to know the answer to this, since, I now have a view that is distinct in the niche my work fits into, and I am somewhat senior enough that I have enough publications to self-cite. When I have not cited myself adequately, I have received reviewers reports telling me to cite my own work more, and in some cases, suggesting that maybe I don’t understand what my own view actually is …..

      It is becoming quite an irritating feature.

      Reply
  11. Anonymous

    How do you write a good referee’s report? For a rejection? For a revise and resubmit?

    Reply
  12. Anonymous

    Does anybody know what’s going over at the journal Dialectica? Are they ever going to get up and running again?

    Reply
  13. Anonymous

    A bit of a lighthearted question: at my institution, I’m co-ping pong champion for the Spring 2026 semester. I will defend at the end of Fall 2027.

    I’ve thought about putting that on my author CV for things like book proposals as a bit of whimsy. Would it be seen that way, or would that probably cause editors or others who saw it to just roll their eyes?

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      The real question is whether you’re willing to challenge the philo-pong champion. See https://toconnor.org/

      Reply
  14. Anonymous

    Is it common to complete a U.S. PhD within four years?! I’ve seen many people discussing the news that the U.S. government may limit the duration of F visas for international students. Previously, F visas could often be valid for five years or more, but now it may be changed to four years. As an international student starting a PhD program this fall, I’m quite worried. Is it realistic or reasonable to expect students to complete an entire PhD within only four years? If someone cannot finish within four years, would that mean all their work is wasted? Are universities aware of this issue, and have they prepared any plans or solutions for international students?

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      As a supplement, Leiter Reports recently had a relevant post on this issue.
      https://leiterreports.com/2026/05/14/another-blow-for-american-universities-trying-to-recruit-and-enroll-foreign-students/

      Reply
  15. Anonymous

    About withdrawing submissions: a while after submitting my draft to a journal, I found a tons of typos and structural problems. I am sure that the draft has been sent out for review but not sure if it is under active review. What should I do? I am early-mid career so I do have some (minimal) reputation to keep. I am embarrassed about having submitted it, but wonder if withdrawing the submission would be even more embarrassing. 🙁

    Reply
  16. Anonymous

    I would appreciate some advice about how to structure one’s dissertation committee. As it happens, I’m deliberating between some plausible but non-obvious options for the “chair” person for my committee: one is more senior, widely known in the profession, but is farther removed from the (sub-)area of my dissertation research. The other is more junior, a few years out of PhD, but is more closely aligned with my work. There’s no procedural barrier either way, but let’s say they’d both say yes if asked.

    Would it ever make sense — from a job-market perspective — to have the more senior person as chair, even if you might get more substantive feedback and perhaps interact more with the junior person, given the specialized expertise? I believe I’ve seen in the past candidates who had an assistant professor as chair had great success on the job market. But I’ve also heard advice to the contrary. (I’m aware that, due to all sorts of conscious and unconscious biases that people have, recommendation letters from big-names might be particularly beneficial. But I’m not sure if letters of similar content would be weighted more simply because they come from the “chair,” if you’d have it anyways by bringing them on your committee.)

    Reply
  17. Anonymous

    If I have a bunch of shortish, unconnected criticisms to offer for a bunch of new theories in my field, does it make sense to try to put together a paper that goes through them all, instead of trying to beef up each of them and scatter them across different papers?

    I’m thinking about a case where some of the points

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      … where some of the points can’t be made into papers on their own, either because they are too small, or because they are responses to work in an edited volume or a journal that doesn’t publish response pieces

      Reply
  18. Confused Brit

    More out of curiosity than any practical use: as a recent UK postdoc, I’d like to be able to better understand all of the (to my eyes) distinctively American discussion of grad school and early career that I see. What is a dissertation committee and why does it require a small army of people? What’s all this R1/Rₙ business? Why does “going on the market” seem to have a meaning beyond just “starting to look for jobs”? Things of that nature. A big ask, but: can anyone offer a potted overview, or recommend one?

    Reply
  19. Anonymous

    Is it better to send a published or unpublished piece of work as a writing sample? And if published, do you send the journal’s pdf from the journal site, or your own manuscript?

    Reply
  20. Anonymous

    I’m coming to the realization that I need to build a system to organize papers I’d like to read if I’m actually going to find the time to read them. Would love to hear from PhilCocoon readers about what kind of infrastructures they’ve designed for themselves/their reading lists 🙂 What does your reading list look like? Do you plan what to read in advance or do you read on a whim?

    Reply
  21. Anonymous

    It has become more and more apparent I think a major speed-bump for my papers is that they are getting sent out to referees who have read them as drafts, and so (rightly) decline. Is there any way to circumvent this? For example, can you sometimes say to an editor, don’t send it to so-and-so since they’ve read it already? Any other advice?

    Reply
  22. Anon postdoc

    How should I change my CV after getting a postdoc? In particular, which of the following should I delete from my CV?

    – Graduate coursework
    – TA-ing experience
    – One-paragraph dissertation blurb
    – One-page dissertation summary (stapled to the end)

    Reply
  23. Anonymous

    What do folks suggest as alternatives to discussion board posts in large, asynchronous online courses? I’m teaching a large intro ethics online in the fall, and I used to do discussion posts as part of that course, prior to the rise of AI. I’m moving towards doing only in-class work in all my other (in-person) courses, but I’m left with little options for reasonable course engagement activities for the online course. Any suggestions of activities which are low-stakes and AI-resistant are appreciated!

    Reply

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