Publishing in "Graduate" Journals?

A young philosopher in a post-doc position writes:

I'm a regular reader of your Leiter reports blog on the philosophy profession. I wonder if you might consider soliciting responses from readers on the subject of graduate journals, by which I mean not journals on the graduate experience, but philosophy journals whose aim is to disseminate the work of graduates and early career philosophers.

My university has recently started one up, but I have misgivings about it (because of this, please don't mention my name if you raise the topic of graduate blogs with your readership). The concern I have about these journals is that they invite the suspicion that they have lower standards than those which  prevail in the profession.

This suspicion simply stems from the fact that the qualifier 'graduate' suggests that they differ in some way from regular journals, and they don't differ in the interests of their authorship or readership, or in the topics, coverage and scope. They do have a restricted and more junior authorship. Youth and inexperience do not matter for publishing in regular journals because there contributions are completely anonymous, so the point of difference that naturally suggests itself is the quality of the work and the standards required for publication.

Whether or not the suspicion is justified, if it is widely shared, graduates should be discouraged from contributing to graduate journals because they risk 'wasting' their good paper ideas in a forum where they won't receive the credit they deserve.

I am inclined to think the suspicion is justified, and that it is a mistake--or in any case, a waste--for young philosophers to publish in such journals:  I don't think they're taken seriously or read.  I'm opening comments in case other philosophers have a different perspective on these journals.  Post only once, please, and non-anonymous comments strongly preferred, as usual.

Comments

[Ross Cameron]

I've heard differing opinions on this. Some people think it counts for something to have published in these journals, because at least it shows an interest in research or something. Others, and I incline to this, think it's at best a waste of your time, and at worst could actively hurt you (the presumption being, however unfairly, that you tried a bunch of the good journals and were unsuccessfull, so are settling for a graduate journal). On balance, I'd recommend against it: there's at best not much to gain, and at worst a lot to lose.

[Phil Grad]

I think the author's suspicions are spot on. I have been told by professors (from many different departments) many times that it is a waste to publish even in lower tier professional journals, and even a lower-tier professional journal is going to outpace all but the very very best graduate journals. (suppose that Rutgers or Princeton put together a graduate journal, it would not be too much of a stretch to suppose that such a journal might contain better work than the lower-tier professional journals). Long story short, the prevailing wisdom seems to be that one should avoid extraneous or meaningless publications whether in grad student journals, or just bad professional journals.

[Kris]

I second Ross's view. I guess I think something stronger: the only people who can reasonably *hope* to benefit from a publication in a graduate journal are *undergraduates*. Even then I'm not sure, though I can imagine some committee members thinking that publishing in that sort of forum provides additional evidence of preparedness for graduate school. (That said, I don't know if graduate journals even accept submissions by undergraduates.)

[Manyul Im]

I'm not sure "wasting" good paper ideas is exactly the right way to put it. By hypothesis (and as a matter of fact), the journal won't be read by more than a few people, but there might be some good peer feedback (and if you're lucky, feedback from the faculty advisor--student-run journals tend to have advisors) and it might be a good practice run at producing a self-contained, article-sized paper. The proper advice here should be not to place too much weight on, or even mention, the publication on your future CV or descriptions of research. Maybe the paper can be modified/improved subsequently and submitted in the later version to a professional-level journal. No one will hold an unmentioned student-journal publication against you with any credibility.

(Rhetorically) Really, what's at stake? Why discourage some potentially useful "practice" writing? That seems slightly mean-spirited and far too narrowly focused (needlessly so, I might add) on career-advancement. Graduate-student run journals are often "pride of ownership" projects (to borrow a real-estate phrase), both for those who get student funding to edit and publish them and for those who contribute to them. Why discourage students from participation in a potentially self-improving and satisfying experience? Really.

[Tim O'Keefe]

Another possible downside is that the one time your paper might be read is when you're on the market. And the seminar paper that you were proud of in your second year of grad school--and that you subsequently published in Local U Graduate Journal--might not look so hot to you when you're finishing up your dissertation. But now it's out there.

We once had a decent-looking candidate who had published a paper in my area (which he listed as an AOC)in an anthology by some obscure press. So I went ahead and ILLed the piece, since I was curious anyway, and also I thought I'd be in a good position to judge its quality. The same sort of thing could happen with your grad journal paper, although you'd hope that charitable search committee members would take into account that the piece was published in a grad student journal.

[David Beard]

One small thought from a non-philosopher communication person who edited a small journal for three years.

Some graduate programs believe that, in the name of professional development, students should submit seminar papers to journals at the end of a class "for the experience," a process that is brutal to the students and time-intensive to the journal editor (turning them into adjunct teaching faculty).

Is there a relationship between these phenomena? Is there a reason to think that one causes the other, or that one enables the other?

I wouldn't object to an MA student trying a grad journal as a way to buttress an application to a better PhD program, I guess.

db

[Gualtiero Piccinini]

I would recommend against publishing in graduate journals too, for the obvious reasons already given. But since there are people who found graduate journals and presumably people who publish in them, I'd be interested in their reasons: what do you see as the value of graduate journals and publishing in them?

[Tom Wilk]

I'm currently a graduate student in a terminal MA program and hoping to apply to PhD programs in the next year. I'm aiming fairly high, mostly top 25 programs, and I have a sort of follow up question to the one raised in the post. Do any of you perceive a benefit in someone in my situation publishing in a graduate journal? That is, if I were to publish in a grad journal before applying to PhD programs, will that be a worthwhile addition to my application?

Thanks!

[Chuck Cross]

If your paper is good enough to send to a professional philosophy journal, send it there. If it isn't, keep working. In considering whether to publish in a graduate journal and then omit it from your cv later, keep in mind that papers published in graduate journals are often indexed and abstracted. If so, they'll follow you around (on, say, the Philosophers' Index) for the rest of your career.

[Marc Bobro]

My thinking in grad school was that it is a bad idea to publish papers in grad journals, but not a bad idea to publish book reviews. Grads are (or should be) reading many books and most book review editors of top journals do not consider unsolicited book reviews.

[CW]

Some time ago I worked on an anthropology journal run by anthropology graduate students. According to our faculty advisor, our anthropology journal existed primarily as an educational experience for us, and only secondarily as an outlet for professional work. We published mostly graduate student work, but also occasional minor pieces by Ph.D.'s in anthropology. This journal has been around for 30-some years and can be found today in a couple of university libraries across the US.

Our advisor told us that if we ever received a paper good enough to be published in a "real" professional journal, he hoped that we realized it, rejected the paper, and sent the author to a better journal. To do anything less, he advised, would be immoral.

This is just one example, of course, and the proof is really in the pudding. Still, I think the general perception of student journals makes it risky to publish in them.

[Michael Kremer]

In response to Tom Wilk's question: in considering an application to grad school I don't think I would lend much weight one way or another to a publication in a graduate journal. Students applying to graduate schools need good letters, good grades, and a good writing sample. If all those pieces are in place they have a good chance of getting in somewhere; if all those pieces aren't in place, they won't get in anywhere worth going to; and a publication in a graduate journal won't make or break the deal.

[jonathan weinberg]

If you have a paper good enough to get published in a real journal, then that's where you should be trying to get it into print. What you really don't want, though, is a permanent, public record of some piece of your writing that wasn't good enough to land somewhere even semi-decent. I think Ross' evaluation of the likelihood of good and bad outcomes is on the money here.

[David Hunter]

I pretty much agree with what has been said and would generally caution against these, or writing book reviews or for the most part conference proceedings or book chapters. Basically on the not enough bang for your buck concern ie the work that goes into preparing one of these is not dissimilar to a paper for a proper journal but the level of respect gained is comparatively minimal or even negative...

However I do think all of these things do play an important role in confidence building. I know for me book reviews & conference proceedings and book chapters gave me the guts to actually send my papers to proper journals (and endure the rejections...) So I would encourage people to use these venues for that purpose, but not to overly focus on them or waste too much effort on them.

[Notorious Ph.D.]

My first publication was in an interdisciplinary journal in my area of specialty that specifically published only articles by grad students OR scholars who had earned their Ph.D.s in the last few years. I've never thought to question whether this was a good idea. It let me publish the good core 10% of an M.A. thesis that no one will ever read (thank god!). The sponsoring organization, plus the fact that it occasionally published papers by Ph.D.-holders as well as grad students, lent some legitimacy. Most importantly: it was PEER-REVIEWED. And not by *my* grad student peers, but rather by faculty members on the editorial board.

Two bits of advice, for those considering this:

1. Ask your doctoral advisor or faculty mentor, and do what they say. They know the field and the journal (not to mention the quality of your work) better than you do; and

2. If it ain't peer-reviewed -- and by faculty, not grad students -- don't bother.