I don’t follow the philosophy blogosphere that closely any more. Many of the blogs that I used to follow are now dead or almost so. Some well-established sites, like Crooked Timber and Leiter Reports, still seem to be going, but I rarely visit.
Still, this recent piece of advice for graduate students caught my eye. Apparently it caused a bit of a stir on social media, but I didn’t hear about that until afterwards. I see why some of the advice is controversial, but there’s no denying that the author has published a lot for a PhD student, so the advice clearly works – at least for him.
This was interesting to me, not only because I can certainly still learn from advice myself, but also because I’m scheduled to give some advice to our own PhD students later this semester. I don’t know exactly what I’ll cover/say just yet. If I write up something, then I may share it here. In the meantime though, I have been exploring some other advice, to see what’s already out there. This post is essentially my own literature review and notes.
Daily Nous have previous history here, having also featured this guest post from Jason Brennan, in which he advises writing for 20 hours a week (four hours per working day). No doubt this is why he is also very prolific, with 20 books published or forthcoming. To be clear though, he isn’t recommending being a workaholic; he suggests that most people spend too long on other tasks, such as email or preparation for teaching, when they could instead by writing.
Michael Huemer shares this advice on publishing, which takes a blunt and at times jaded/cynical tone. Maybe the comments on longwindedness and the randomness of peer review are probably slightly exaggerated, but it strikes me as realistic on many points. For instance, once you’ve published a bit, “Many people will vaguely know who you are but not actually have read anything of yours”. That sounds about right. There are plenty of people whose work I know of, but don’t have time to read it unless (i) I need to cite it in my own work, (ii) I need to teach it, or (iii) I’m asked to review it (usually anonymously). And, even though he’s often critical of academic publishing, there’s some good advice here, particularly I think on citations.
While Huemer is probably right that referees can be bad in various ways and for various reasons, and sometimes the best response is simply to send the paper off again and hope for a different outcome, it should be noted that even ‘bad’ reports (by which I do not simply mean critical ones, but ones that misread the paper) can be helpful.
Lewis Powell has a recent post focused on highlighting the evidential value of bad referee reports. It may well be that a referee is not an ideal reader. They may be careless or inattentive. However, they are actual readers. If a referee managed to misunderstand something, then it shows that another reader might also misunderstand that point. As he puts it, the aim should not simply be to make it so that a careful reader can get your point, but so that even a careless reader cannot miss your point.
Finally, for now, John Danaher has a pair of posts on writing and publishing articles, again focused on philosophy but probably somewhat applicable elsewhere. One thing I liked about the former is his observation that people are more likely to share successes than failures (apart perhaps from occasional griping at unreasonable referee reports).
Regarding his actual writing process, he suggests detailed planning (4-10 sides of A4) then writing 1,000-2,000 words per day, usually in a couple of hours in the morning. Unlike Hendricks and Brennan, above, he doesn’t say that this has to be two hours every day – only when actually working on a paper.
He says he’s more likely to submit to a journal before seeking comments from friends or colleagues. That may work for him, though it’s probably not good advice for inexperienced authors (and, of course, it produces more refereeing work for journals). It seems he, at least, has had some genuinely constructive referee reports – his piece on writing quotes one that says his paper is wrong, but nonetheless a useful contribution – though he also mentions going through the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) after rejections. Preparing for failure comes up in both pieces.
Having looked at some of what’s already out there, I don’t know whether I’ll have anything particularly ‘new’ to add. As I said, if I do find time to write up my own thoughts, then I’ll probably share them here (likely in March).
