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.
