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How can we help you? (June 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, 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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14 responses to “How can we help you? (June 2026)”

  1. Anonymous

    If a paper is taking a longish time (say, more than 3 months) at a journal, is there any point in sending an email inquiry as the author? I assume that the reviewers are being slow and that the editors are sending reminders. I also assume that there’s nothing the editors can really do to speed up reviewers that they are not already doing. Suppose I’m not considering retracting my submission (yet), is there any point in sending an inquiry?

    Reply
  2. counterpart

    What is distinctive about a “lecturer” position in the US? Should my application materials for such positions be meaningfully different than other TT jobs?

    Reply
  3. Anonymous

    I recently had a “minor revisions” verdict from a journal that was actually an unofficial acceptance and an instruction to de-anonymize the manuscript and to to the final formatting in line with the journal’s house style (etc.). They explicitly said that the peer review process had finished and that I needed to do the final formatting before they can accept it.

    Now, though, I’ve been waiting to hear back from them for several weeks. I know that’s normal for an actual revision, but does anyone have a sense of how long this can take for a fake revision that was effectively an acceptance? This is the first time I’ve had to do all the final proofing steps with the acceptance hanging over my head—indeed, I’ve published with this same journal in the past and they didn’t do this! Is this the new norm? Time is of the essence for me in terms of being able to report that it is accepted and uploading a pre-print and all of that, so I’m wondering if there’s a point at which (2 months? 4 months?) I should just treat the damn thing as having been accepted. Is there any chance that they could reject it at this point?

    Reply
  4. Anonymous

    I have a CV question. For research talks that were given as part of an on-campus invite, should these be in the CV? And if so, should they go under the label “invited talks” or under the general “talks” section? From a tenure-review perspective, I can see why it would be maybe unusual and misleading to list those under ‘invited,’ but I wonder if this is how search committees for tt positions are looking at dossiers. Maybe it depends on the kind of institution.

    Reply
  5. Anonymous

    Perhaps June is the month for journal questions. I have a paper that is going on 18 months under review. The confusing thing is, it isn’t being held up by lack of reviewers or long review times. Instead, the reviews come in, and then it stalls at “decision in process” for long stretches. For instance, it sat at this stage for nearly 6 months before I got my first decision. I’ve been through a round of revisions, and I’m back at “decision in process.” My question is, how long should I wait before contacting the associate editor (or should I contact the associate editor at all)? I don’t want to annoy the editor, but I’m also very junior and worry about hitting another job market without many publications to my name.

    Reply
  6. Incoming TT

    I just graduated and will be starting a TT job in the fall, and I am trying to figure out the best way to manage the publication process without the support that grad school often provides.

    Here are some specific questions:

    1) How many people do you send papers to before sending them to journals? Who are they? Is it common to send papers to journals without having other eyes on them as one gets more and more experience publishing?

    Surely some people will recommend conferences, but in my experience a lot of conferences don’t seem to offer the kind of detailed, groundbreaking feedback that leads me to make major changes to my papers, so I feel like only doing that would leave something important missing.

    2) Relatedly, I have seen advice to not send papers to potential referees for feedback for fear of shrinking the referee pool, but I am also keenly aware that it is advantageous to an early career scholar to develop solid relationships with senior people in one’s subfield. I would have thought that one of the best ways to build such relationships (as well as improve my papers) would be to ask for their feedback on my work. Is this incorrect, or perhaps something that is more of a grad student move and less advantageous for someone with a TT job? If so, how does one go about making the kinds of relationships that will allow one to improve one’s work, get a sense of how others view one’s work, etc., so that one can help establish oneself in their relevant subfield.

    Reply
  7. Waiting

    After a paper languished under review for over a year with no replies to inquiries, I wrote to retract it. Two months later I’ve had no reply to the retraction and I can still view my submission in the system. Is it safe to submit it to another journal or would it still be considered “under review” at the first journal and therefore against the rules?

    Reply
  8. Anonymous

    I have a question about academic norms around romantic relationships involving power imbalances, especially in the U.S., though I would also be interested in how this differs across countries. Clear cases are easy: most of us would say that a professor should not pursue a student, or that a TA should not pursue someone currently in their class, because of the power imbalance. But in practice, many cases seem much more ambiguous.

    For example, if a PhD student is over thirty and has no research overlap with a professor in the same department, would it still be inappropriate for that professor to pursue them? Or if a TA repeatedly invites students in the class to meals or private conversations in a way that seems intended to build romantic intimacy, but never explicitly says so, and then confesses only after the course ends, is that acceptable? Another case: if a married professor privately and repeatedly tells a female student that he and his wife have no real emotional relationship and that he remains married only for the children, but never explicitly proposes an affair or sends sexually explicit messages, is that still inappropriate?

    I am trying to understand how academic communities judge these gray areas, especially when the person’s intentions are never explicitly stated. (I should add that I am not asking this as a purely abstract question. I am currently one of the students in situations like these, and my friends and I have repeatedly encountered similar incidents.)

    Reply
  9. Anonymous

    Thoughts on interdisciplinarity?

    Reply
  10. B

    What’s the etiquette around acknowledging helpful input on a paper from reviewers at a journal where the paper was rejected? E.g. Reviewer 1 at Journal A gives helpful feedback, but Journal A rejects the paper. Paper ends up published in Journal B; how should one acknowledge Reviewer 1’s help, if at all? I have seen acknowledgements that named the other journal explicitly, but this struck me as a bit awkward in terms of revealing prior rejections. (Which we all know happen but might still be a bit awkward to publicize.)

    Reply
  11. A

    I’m wondering what the norms are around making revisions in an R&R that were not asked for by the reviewers. I suppose there are a variety/continuum of cases to consider, but here’s what I especially have in mind:
    A manuscript has been under review at a journal for 6+ months. In the meantime, I’ve continued researching and thinking about the topic. Naturally, there are now some minor changes I wish I had made to the paper (an added sentence here, a reworked footnote there, etc.). Should I think of an R&R as an opportunity to make these changes, even if they are unrelated to the reviewers’ comments?

    Reply
  12. Anonymous

    I’d like to understand in what situations, as a reviewer, one would firmly reject a paper that they have already reviewed once. Over the past year, I have experienced two cases where my papers were rejected after a round of major revisions, which has made me quite apprehensive about “major revision” decisions. If possible, I would also greatly appreciate any advice on how to handle major revisions (I realize this may be a lot to ask, so even brief suggestions would be very helpful).

    Reply
  13. Anonymous

    ‘Radical’ as this might sound, I wonder Marcus if you would consider eliminating the job market reporting thread, and also placing an enforceable ban on reporting in the discussion thread (which obviously people would try to do) so that we could go back to a place where you just do your best on your materials, send your applications out, and get back to your life. I won’t pretend this is an entirely unselfish request, but as far as I am concerned we all did just fine without a reporting thread for years, and it doesn’t seem to me like the amount of compulsive checking folks do on here starting 9/15 and going all the way until mid-April is really supportive of the mental well-being of individuals in the profession (and isn’t it at least somewhat part of the mission of the blog to be a space where the rough side of our profession is considered and brought into open reflection? Well, this is now one of them IMO).

    Should we vote? I vote eliminate.

    Reply
  14. Anonymous

    Suppose you’ve just freed up a bit of time and are ready to work on the first draft of a new paper. What’s your process? Do you get coffee, do you have notes beside you? Morning or evening? Do you do it all in one shot or spread it out over days?

    Reply

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