The Philosophers' Cocoon

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In our new “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:

How much does it matter to have papers under review on your CV? I’ve had some recent publishing success and I’m hitting the job market for the first time, but my next few papers need substantial work before they’re ready to send out. I’d like to take the time to get them into shape and shoot for some really good journals, but I’m feeling pressure to do some quick and dirty revisions and submit earlier so that I can demonstrate active progress in my research. It would help me to know whether this sort of thing matters to hiring committees–whether having a big clump of ‘in preparation’ papers without anything under review is some kind of red flag, and so is worth making an extra effort to avoid.

In general, I don’t think having papers under review is likely to matter much on the market. Search committees in my experience tend to be much more concerned with publishing success, as anyone can put papers under review. That said, if you have only published a few papers, a list of papers under review on a CV might convey to search committees that you have a lot in the pipeline and are likely to publish more. Then again, a list of papers “in preparation” might suffice for that, and sending papers out to journals that really aren’t ready seems like a bad thing to do, given the “referee crisis.”

What do readers think?

In our new “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:

Is it useful or worthwhile for graduate students to submit papers to the APA? Looking at the schedule for submissions, supposing that I had a paper that I wanted to conference, it looks like the soonest possible APA that I could submit to would happen in January 2027. That seems like a lot of time to “bench” this paper, and given that many PhD programs are putting pressure on a quick time-to-degree, I’m not sure it’s a very wise option for graduate students who aren’t very early in their programs. Am I missing something, or are specialist conferences with quicker turnaround times the way to go?

I think the OP is missing something that a couple of other commenters asked about. One reader asked, “Can you submit a paper to a journal *and* a conference simultaneously?”, and another asked, “What is the etiquette regarding submitting the same paper for multiple conferences? If the same paper is accepted, and you present them in relatively short succession?”

The answers are: (1) of course you can submit papers to journals and conferences simultaneously, and (2) yes, you can submit the paper paper to multiple conferences and present them in short succession. So, to come back to the OP’s query, submitting a paper to an APA (or any other conference) doesn’t amount to “benching it.” Assuming your paper is in decent shape, you should be submitting to conferences and trying to publish those same papers. Conference submissions should in no way hold one up from publishing, etc.

Do readers agree/disagree?

Neil Mehta (National University of Singapore) wrote in to share this guide he put together for graduate students in philosophy. It looks like a great resource!