Oh alright, let's talk about the publishing for graduate students @DailyNousEditor piece. I was a fairly prolific PhD student, published ~12 articles/chapters and edited a collection pre-PhD. Tl;dr most of this “advice” is either self evident, wrong, or aggressively wrong

So let’s take the high level points. First, this is bad. Complain about styles but don’t make hell copyeditors. Better advice is basically “learn how to use bibliography software” which is super useful anyway. /2


This is on its face decent, but (I hope) relatively self evident. Academia is lot like show biz - audition a lot, get rejected almost as much. /3

This, however? Is fucking pernicious. This one made me actually hiss at my screen. This is some mediocre crap if ever I saw it. /4

Instead: don’t always acquiesce to reviewers. Some (many) are just bad reviewers. But *do* pay attention. Write a quick response. Think about that response. Then resubmit. Reviewers change but reviews are often similar. /5

Also? Editors talk to each other. They do remember your bullshit, and are beings fueled almost entirely by vengeance. This dude is in for a shock one day (or not, but *because* he's a dude). /6

You don’t say. /7

This is the kind of garbled claim I’d reject from a journal. But say something like “there’s something good here but the revisions requires justifies a totally new submission” /8

Ultimately? Depending on the area of philosophy, yeah, have a couple of projects on the go, and papers in different areas of production. /9

I use a Trello board to keep track of my projects because I’m a monster and I have maannny. But I *am* a monster. Even @pennprof thinks so. You don’t need to publish like me to get a job. Even in 2021. /10

Writing “an hour a day” is nonsense. Write when you can. I wrote half a book (coming out soon, delayed by COVID) in literal 5-minute chunks because @rocza was sick and I was teaching a lot because money is tight when you are sick in America. /11

Write when you can. Be adaptive. Most of you already are because you’re reading this & that means you lived 2020. My advice? Don't write when you know you're just gonna write bad stuff. Take the night off. Have a bath. Cry. Whatever you need to. Sometimes words don't happen. /12

Also different schedules for different folks. I thrive on an obnoxious 90 straight minutes every day. But life rarely lets me have that, or my body fails. But I know people who have tried it and burned out, and need either much more or much less, or different contexts. /13

I think writing term papers as journal articles can be useful and teach that to my postdocs, PhD students, and even undergrads. Happy to help folks workshop this. /14

Everything in this point mostly obvious, except this one which isn’t so much wrong as a RED FREAKING FLAG. /15

I read—as a guy who hires philosophers—“you don’t need a complete overview” as “I hammer a single point in the literature unreflectively as a way to goose metrics.” He raises many /16 https://twitter.com/neva9257/status/1352285880195698688?s=20

Don't submit to "bad journals," but also publish where you can publish, as long as it isn't predatory. Most won't publish in Ethics. I haven’t. He also has advice about putting stuff online that often obviates the need for the best possible journals. /17

In bioethics in particular, there is an obsession with publishing in medical journals. Yet someone who publishes in that elite realm once told me “JAMA is a crapshoot unless you’re Zeke (Emanuel).” Are you Zeke? No, I didn’t think so. /18

Also, loads of good journals publish bad papers. That goes for bioethics and philosophy journals. Med journals can be even worse. Yes, I’m sure, I’m sure you were rigorous with your 800 words. Lol. /19

Alright practical info. This may be how he does it, but meh. I write down my paper ideas. Most of my paper ideas are either a) bad, or b) derivative *because I take time to read the literature* & a waste of an article. Oh to be a dude who thinks idea-to-papers work like this. /20

“Publish ideas you think are right” I mean, sure, fine. /21

Yes it’ll take less time, but this indicative of one of the key problems of this “advice.” Publish stuff that’s worth reading. Getting drafts read by people you trust makes your work *significantly* better. Reading people’s drafts is good collegiate behavior. /22

Yawn, signed the guy in the single income household with a spouse who has experienced multiple medical crises, and himself has had a shoulder missing bone in the socket for 4-8 years, and has diagnosed mental health issues from an abusive family member and his PhD. /23

Wut. I mean completion for completion's sake or something. /24

There’s a better diagnosis here. I’ve had a number of conversations over the last 6-8 years that boil down to “we don’t teach grad students how to select paper ideas.” I think we should, but that’s different to old mate’s diagnosis. /25

Dude publishing an article about abortion in bioethics is hardly “controversial” come on. And philosophy of religion—hell, *philosophy*—is always niche. Maybe READ THE LITERATURE MORE. /26

Honestly, having sat & run multiple searches, this matters for EXACTLY the reasons @DailyNousEditor described as central to the piece. We don’t count pubs up & move on. We look closer. So if you want to publish to get employed, this is spurious advice. /27

Also LOL this guy thinks this is how you respond to criticism, good one. /28

Okay, why did I publish so much? A couple of reasons. The first was that I knew I didn’t have a philosophy undergrad, I went physics BSc ->philosophy PhD. So I needed something to stand out. /29

Second, on the international market Aussie students can languish because we don’t teach as much as (exploited) US and other PhD students. So I had to hope for sufficiency in teaching, and absolutely BLIND people with publications. /30

Third, I wanted to do research, and that’s key. I didn’t want to teach as my (sole) job. I like teaching. But research is my jam and I knew what that meant. /31

Finally—and critically in philosophy—as a student at RSSS at ANU, I couldn’t compete *if I wanted what I wanted*. I like John Matthewson and his scholarship. But I’m never going to publish with Michael Weisberg or Paul Griffiths. So I developed my own strategy. /32

The post in q isn’t great advice even if you want to do research work. If you do, you should get a couple of publications and show the capacity for good Ideas. Get your supervisors to teach you how to publish. Reach out to senior colleagues for help. And form relationships. /fin