In our May “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:
Is it better to send a published or unpublished piece of work as a writing sample?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?
Good questions. I’ve heard that one should simply send one’s best work, published or unpublished, but I’m curious to hear from readers.
What does everyone think? It would be great to hear from search committee members and successful job candidates in particular!
Whatever’s the best thing you’ve got should be the writing sample IME! I guess it being published is a good sign that it is high-quality, but that does not necessarily mean it represents the best writing one has done.
We’ve had five searches in philosophy in the last eight or so years at our R2. The writing sample is a key part of assessing philosophical acumen as well as evidence of really having a claimed AOS. But sometimes, the committee members’ areas of expertise don’t overlap with those of the candidates. (Often, we are hiring to fill a gap in the areas we are able to cover.) When the writing sample is an already-published paper, that can be a helpful reassurance of quality. This isn’t a formal criterion, just part of the gestalt of the evaluation. FWIW, an excellent unpublished paper in the AOS we are seeking is usually worth more than a published paper in some other area. Another caveat: A highly technical paper none of us can understand is of no value at all, published or not, since part of what we care about at a teaching-focused university is evidence that you can communicate philosophy to non-experts.
I could see some high-research departments having a different preference: There, if you make it to a stage where you are being seriously considered, committees can (and will) look up your already-published work. Then an additional consideration might be whether can you produce new high-quality work at the right rate, and a new unpublished (and equally good) paper might be better as a writing sample.
Complicating all this is that you have to have something else high quality and yet unpublished as your job talk. (I’ve seen candidates give a presentation of their writing sample as the job talk, and it never impresses.)
(Relevant experience: twice SC member) I’d say simply send the best work, where best = you are most proud of rather than having been placed at the best journal. A good writing sample might convince me to look you up and read more of your work (either published or as drafts). If the writing sample doesn’t impress me, it’s still possible that other parts of your file will make me try to look for a better piece of writing to read, but that probability is significantly lower.
Agreed with above. All else being equal, publication and a printed version may be preferred, but it’s a small-ish cosmetic factor. For job talks, all else being equal, unpublished work is slightly preferred since it gets people excited for what you will publish after you get the job. But again, it’s a pretty small factor.
Strongly disagree re job talks. I would absolutely not recommend giving a published paper as your job talk. Whether or not it’s justifiable to look down on this, it is widely looked down upon. Among other things, I think it gives people the impression you have no new ideas and that you have plateaued. We all know that a paper published today year was probably first drafted three years ago or more.
I agree with the objection to presenting published work. The disciplinary norm is that if you’re presenting to an audience, you present unpublished work. That norm holds for job talks. It’s discourteous to present work on which audiences will have no impact.
Plus, as a candidate, you’re probably not going to get the job anyway. More useful to present something you’re still working on and get the feedback. That way, you at least made progress on something.
I’ve been on a couple of search committees, usually at R1s with PhD programs (not fancy ones). Search committees at these places are looking for someone who definitely fits the AOS and will be able to supervise dissertations.
So, you should submit your best thing that fits the AOS. What “best” means, though, is really subjective. I think it is helpful if it is not boring.
One thing an unpublished piece can do that published piece cannot is demonstrate where your research in this area is headed – and that you have a deeper or broader competence than your published record shows. Published stuff tells me where you’ve been. Unpublished work tells me where you’re going. (Research statements can do this too, but some people want the actual work in front of them.)
You might like to keep the unpublished thing for a job talk, though. I don’t think that’s a bad decision.
I don’t really care, but to the extent I have a preference, I prefer unpublished stuff, since if I want to read the published stuff I can just download the paper myself. So, sending one of those as a writing sample doesn’t give me anything that adds to the application.
Just mentioning that I encountered two occasions where search committees, a few weeks prior to the interview, demand an unpublished work as writing sample. On both occasions, the original application package didn’t include a writing sample, and the interview didn’t include a job talk. On one occasion, committee members asked substantial questions about the writing sample, as if it were a written version of the job talk. On the other occasion, it wasn’t discussed.
So I guess it is good that one has some work in progress written down.
Two things:
1. OP asked, if they’re going to send a published paper, whether it should be the journal’s version or a manuscript. Answer: Send the published journal pdf.
2. I strongly disagree with the people above who said, “Don’t send a published thing, because if I wanted to read it, I could just look it up.” To me, your writing sample should be the piece of yours such that, if I’m only ever going to read one thing of yours to judge the quality of your philosophy and your fit with my department’s position, that’s the thing you’d want me to read. Because, odds are, that’s the one thing I am going to read to decide whether to even bother looking you up and reading more.
Send the published article. Very few people will look it up or read more of your work anyway. And the sheen of legitimacy absolutely matters. Just try asking an LLM (without an account) to assess a a word doc version 1-100 and then asking it again in a new window to do the same for the published version. It’ll inevitably rate the published version 5 points higher. Insofar as LLMs average human responses, this is what you should expect.
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