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How can we help you? (July 2026)

Now that it’s July, it’s time for a new “how can we help you?” thread.

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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13 responses to “How can we help you? (July 2026)”

  1. Anonymous

    I am starting as an assistant prof in the fall, and will be teaching my first graduate seminar in the spring. I’d love to hear how you vary your teaching approach and methods with graduate students. I suspect that teaching a grad seminar won’t be all that different from teaching advanced undergrads in small seminars. But I don’t want to pitch things at too low a level, and I also want to teach in a way that recognizes that many graduate students are aspiring professional philosophers, which involves a set of skills that I might not prioritize with undergrads. I’d appreciate reflections on this, or any general advice. Thanks!

    Reply
  2. Anonymous

    Some tips on correcting proofs would be helpful. Given the number and granularity of errors that can journals sometimes introduce during the production stage, especially to punctuation and references, they really seem to require a fine-toothed comb. I find this so exhausting that I need to break up the work into multiple sessions over a few days, and even then it takes a lot of time for me just to proofread a single article to my satisfaction. I’d be interested to hear others’ typical process here, and how they make it as efficient and painless as possible.

    Reply
  3. Anonymous

    Following the discussion about checking proofs, can people share the worst mistakes they caught at this stage?

    In 4 papers, I only ever had really minor things to fix, but some people in the other post seem to have seen some really bad stuff.

    Reply
  4. Anonymous

    Anyone knows about the editorial changes at PPR and/or Nous? They recently shifted theirNovember opening date early to August (it’s on their submission portal). In the meantime they also seem to have been overwhelmed by backlogs and papers awaiting decisions. A data point at the APA Journal Survey listed a 3.5-month review time for a desk-rejection, with a comment saying that they are “exceptionally busy.” I myself have paper under review for 4+ months with them; when I inquired about its status I was told that they “are struggling with a large backlog owed to increases in the volume and quality of our submissions stream,” and that they “have increased our editorial staff by 50%,” though from their website they don’t seem to have more editors than they usually do. Can anyone, perhaps recent PPR/Nous submittors, or anyone in the know, illuminate what’s going on at these places?

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      I would also love to learn about this!

      Reply
  5. Anonymous

    Looking back through my submission history, I noticed a pattern: my incremental papers on well-trodden topics received far fewer rejections and much more sympathetic referee reports than my attempts to defend bold, ambitious, or unprecedented claims.

    I’m curious whether this is just my anecdotal experience or a more general pattern in academic publishing. And there’s a related, more pragmatic question I’d welcome thoughts on: should early-career philosophers who need publications to survive avoid writing ambitious papers defending unprecedented claims?
    Curious to hear others’ experiences.

    Reply
  6. Aspiring full prof

    What’s it normally take to be promoted from associate to full professor? Is it normal to go up within only a few years time of being promoted to associate? Do external letters carry as much weight? Is a book necessary? Any guidance whatsoever would be appreciated.

    Reply
  7. Anonymous

    May I ask what to do in this situation? Thanks! My paper has been with a prestigious journal since early January. The editor invited referees in two rounds, in February and March. In early June, I nudged the editor and they looked for referees for another round. It is now mid-July, and either no referee or fewer than two referees have been secured.
    My two questions:
    (1) When would it be appropriate to inquire again? It is summer. People are busy. I do not want to annoy the editor. They appear willing to help but seem to be dealing with an overwhelming workload.
    (2) When would you consider withdrawal? Withdrawing now in the summer seems also poorly timed. But at some point, I may have to consider it, given the job market pressure.
    Some background information: the topic has a fairly decent number of philosophers currently working on it. The handling editor does not work in this field and may not know the right persons to ask, which may be a small contributing factor here.
    Any input will be hugely appreciated!

    Reply
  8. Anonymous

    Could someone with a large platform host a “Moral and Political Philosophy Journal Rankings” poll? I don’t think Leiter plans to run one anytime soon, and given that there’s been so much change since his 2022 poll, it would be helpful to know where things stand now.

    Reply
  9. Anonymous

    I’ve had a number of papers recently where after sitting “under review” for some time, they switch back to “reviewers assigned”, often for a long time. It has become enough of a trend that I was wondering if editors are having a problem with reviewers failing to produce reviews or dropping out of the process after having agreed to provide a review? Or is this just some quirk of the manuscript management software that doesn’t necessarily mean anything? I am asking mostly out of curiosity about general trends behind the scenes, and less so about my particular situation.

    Reply
  10. Anonymous

    I wanted to ask what one should do to get their paper more noticed and ideally cited. I suspect that this is a phenomenon that is quite widespread but I’ve found that in the areas of philosophy that I work in, a lot of papers go uncited and unengaged with. For example, a couple of papers I’ve published in my subarea about 2-4 years ago (within the top 20 generalist journals) were only marginally engaged with in the work that has been coming out in this area. I recall that even when I was publishing those papers, those reviewing my paper didn’t direct me to other papers that were published that engaged with the arguments I was making. People just seem to keep repeating the same dialectical epicycle seemingly unaware that others have said similar things, and I found this is true even of work that I think is more influential than my own. Maybe philosophers are just terrible at doing lit review or are just lazy. One thing I’ve been thinking of doing (after hearing that some do this) is to email folks who have published recently letting them know about my work and its relevance (like a ‘hey what do you think about this argument that you missed?’). Does this seem like a plausible strategy? Are there any better ones?

    Reply
  11. Anonymous

    Where are the top places to publish in contemporary metaphysics? Are the venues different for work being done in Higher-order metaphysics?

    Reply
  12. Anonymous

    I have a nice paper in ethics that I thought was very promising and I still believe in, and it got pretty good reviews at Ethics and a great generalist journal, but they both ultimately rejected it. Now I just went through almost a year racking up 6 desk rejections at other generalist journals of similar caliber *after* those good reviews at the other journals, and I just submitted it somewhere else today.

    Do people have advice on how to read the situation?

    Reply

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