I would like to sound a note of caution in taking the advice that, if given an R&R, “[t]ry to have your paper resubmitted within a week.” As a frequent referee, I must say that a too-quick turnaround for an R&R raises my suspicions that the referees’ recommendations have not been adequately implemented (and typically, a journal will ask at least one of the same referees to re-review the piece). R&R’s are usually granted when a fair amount of reworking is required, but the fundamentals are sound, so my advice would be not to rush it but to take the opportunity to improve the paper in line with the referees’ concerns (or if it seems like that would take too much work, then feel free to submit elsewhere)

Lots of interesting ideas in here. Two things I’m worried about. I’m sure you CAN go from initial idea to submission in two weeks, and maybe sometimes that works out. But experience says the best papers tend to have benefited from good feedback, which often involves presenting them or getting advice from good people. I don’t see how you get to do that in two weeks. If you want to hit the top journals, I think taking your time makes a lot of sense in most cases. The other things was R&Rs. My suspicion is that a lot of reviewers may be put off by a very fast resubmission. If you identify what you think are significant issues with a paper, and it comes back with revisions in a week, this may not give a good impression of the seriousness with which those revisions have been undertaken.

Look, although the advice in this article is not bad, per se—sure, it is good to set aside some time every day to write, and it is good to send articles out in parallel instead of a serial fashion, and you shouldn’t take rejections personally—the delivery here fails to consider that grad students in other subfields may not be able to just write an hour a day to produce an article in a week.
Some fields of philosophy have differential burdens with respect to research. Does it take the same amount of time to write an article on theism or abortion as it does to write a proof-heavy logic article, or an historical article that requires going to an archive and sifting through unpublished documents, or to keep up with machine-learning research (which moves at break-neck speed) to say something insightful about the philosophy of AI? Maybe. I sort of doubt it though.
As well, there is an obvious ignorance on display with regard to individual differences in the field—for example, the increased burdens that may exist for women, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, individuals with disabilities, first-gen students, etc. Sure: try to publish in grad school, don’t be upset with rejection, try to put some time aside for writing, and all of these things.
But here is some additional advice: one should not let a toxic attitude toward productivity make one personally feel bad just because they aren’t publishing 18 articles in grad school.

Not sure what the editorial standards at Daily Nous are, but repeatedly telling people not to be a wuss seems unhelpful at best.

I commend this student for trying to better his/her situation coming from a “less prestigious graduate program.” As someone who also came from a “less prestigious graduate program” and had to publish and network my way into a job, I applaud his/her work.

But “I’m halfway through my third year of a PhD program, and currently have 18 articles accepted or published in journals and several book chapters published or under contract” – holy crap. Is this really what our discipline has become? I went from BA to completed PhD in 4 years. Had a handful of publications in that time because I was mining dissertation chapters. I have no idea how anyone in this person’s position could possibly have 18 articles worth publishing. But I will assume this person is a superstar. Is this really the way our discipline is going? Graduate students from less prestigious places having to crank out publications like they’re some sort of factory worker in order to have a chance at an academic job? Something needs to change.

This is going to be very judgmental but if I hadn’t seen it over and over again I wouldn’t say it.

Most grad students who “make it” have either financial/household support from family or a partner, or they are a “perpetual bachelor/ette” and never form real, lasting relationships and eschew other family/life obligations. Neither is typical.

What we need is advice for the grad student who doesn’t fall into these categories: what should the grad student do who has to work a part-time job to supplement their stipend, who maintains a healthy non-dependent relationship, who meets their non-academic social and family obligations, who doesn’t have a financial cushion, who doesn’t have someone at home washing dishes, doing laundry for them–how does THAT student write a dissertation and publish? What advice do we give them?

Thanks for this.
Just to offer a bit of a different perspective, which is more focused on helping grad students getting to do the writing they want to accomplish, I published this here: https://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2021/01/writing-advice-for-graduate-students-writing-that-energizes.html

Two weeks from idea to submission? This is a brutal reductio of the value of the research norms in our profession.

I do not agree with the comments that this is ableist. I also don’t think, more generally, that advice-giving needs to tailor itself to all possible qualifications and/or objections. I found this to be an invigorating and inspiring read. It could not be further away from where I am currently in my professional abilities, nor from what I see my innate abilities to be. Nonetheless it is helpful and encouraging to see what is possible in others who are different from me. It is helpful to see that this ideal exists, and it allows me to think that maybe I too can work towards goals such as these. Moreover, I found the playful tough-love tone of this piece to be compassionate and empathetic, not exclusionary. The author seems to me to be saying yes, I know you are human and have human foibles, but this is worth aiming towards; and, more importantly, less unachievable than it seems. And perhaps even more importantly, that your attitude, rather than your material ability/lack thereof, is what is standing in the way. This is an empowering message because my attitude is something that I can change, whereas my material ability is something I cannot.

A message that encourages me to try a little harder is welcome in these times, because without some discipline my work lands up bleeding into the entirety of life (given that my days do not have the structural format that they used to). Now that I don’t ‘head to work,’ or ‘head home from work,’ or see people throughout my day, if I’m undisciplined I land up at my desk 12 hours a day and can feel quite lonely. Some advice that says, hey dummy (or yes, hey wuss), there is no need to spend 12 hours a day doing 6 hours worth of work, is incredibly well received right now. I mention this so that this is not seen as a ‘cope’ or something of the sort. I do not take heart from this essay because I hope to become an automaton of academic publishing, but precisely because I am actually trying to achieve greater balance and distance from my work in my life.

As always the worry with such advice is that it can’t generalize. If all candidates follow it then none will stand out. It’s just amplifying an already intense arms race. Of course, given that the arms race is ongoing, it would be irrational to not do what others are doing to stand out, unless you have a secret trick to really stand out. But the collective action problem doesn’t disappear.

As someone who has been both a placement director and a hiring committee member, I just want to echo the idea that publishing this much is *not* a good idea for job market purposes. There would definitely be a prima facie stigma (I’m not saying a justified one) against this kind of candidate in my R1 department, which I think would suspect that such a candidate was not serious about their own work, didn’t spend a lot of time polishing papers, or thought that the right thing to do is to try to publish every idea one has (it’s not–that part I’ll stand behind!). Of course, we would try to read some of the work before making a real judgment, but I think this would cloud our initial impression significantly. (And I admit that when I first read this post, my initial impression was–and I’m not saying this is rationally justified or fair at all, and I did immediately call myself out on it, but I do think it’s worth admitting to–that there is no way this person’s work could be good.

Similarly, as Caligula’s Goat says, I do think this would scare off many non-R1 faculty.

However, I suspect there is a special exception to all this for Christian candidates who work in philosophy of religion. For some reason my impression is that many Christian colleges like this sort of relentless output and don’t find it threatening. I’m not sure why or if that is the correct impression or not. (Perhaps they think that Christian candidates will be more likely to genuinely want to work at a Christian university or something.)

Many of these points raised in my Publishing Advice for Graduate Students found here – https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1085245 – for those interested. I am working on a book length ms on getting into academia.

Others have said it but I’ll reiterate: aiming to have a paper complete from first idea to submission within 2 weeks is not good advice.

By this I do not mean that a good paper cannot be written in 2 weeks. I do not mean that anyone who works this quickly *must* be doing poor work. I do not mean that everyone should try to take longer than two weeks to write a paper. I mean that it is advice that is inappropriate and will lead to bad consequences for at least the majority of those for whom the advice is intended: grads and ecrs.

Some grads and ecrs might be the special kind of super-genius who is intimately familiar with all the relevant literature on the topics they’re working on already and can consistently knock out great and original ideas in a well-polished piece of work within 2 weeks. But most aren’t like this. For most, if they’re going from idea to submission in 2 weeks then the likely result is either going to be half-baked, or, on the off chance the initial idea was a really good one that doesn’t need further development, then it’ll probably be saying something that’s been said before, resulting in a paper that reinvents the wheel but without any attribution or acknowledgement of those who’ve come before. Either way the likely end result in most cases will be is poor scholarship. And for the rest of us, we get yet more papers submitted to a crowded journal system that’s already creaking under the weight of salami-sliced ideas and papers putting forward points that have already been made dozens of times before.

(yeah yeah I know: extremely high publication rate doesn’t entail poor scholarship. I never said it did. I said that if many grads and ecrs were to follow the advice to submit papers within 2 weeks from initial idea, the likely result in most cases will be poor scholarship. Most such papers will get published somewhere eventually because peer review in this discipline is a joke and you’ll get in if you roll the dice often enough, but you’ll also look bad to those who pay a bit more attention to the work (eg, those on hiring committees).)

What does his wife do? Relevant for the usefulness and applicability of the advice, it seems.

Thanks for all the comments, everyone!

As Justin notes, this post *does not* say that grad students should publish 18 papers (or even a lot of papers). (I’m puzzled about where anyone got that idea from! This is never even hinted at in the post.) Instead, this post is just advice on how to publish. This should also do away with other criticisms that suggest that I’m urging quantity over quality in publications. I do not encourage that. I’ve never written anything in order to make my CV look better. The only time I write is if I have an idea. And if I have an idea, I tend to want to get it written out (and this includes doing the necessary research). I suggest other grad students do the same.

Additionally, there have been accusations that this advice is sexist and ableist. These charges are serious, but their merits aren’t: there is no reasonable interpretation of anything I said that is sexist or ableist.

Finally, one piece of advice that I’ve been convinced should be changed is on B.1.a and B.1.b: a more appropriate suggestion would be 1 month (each) instead of 1 week each. (Of course, for some projects this isn’t possible.) Let’s chalk this mistake up to my status as grad student scum!

“As Justin notes, this post *does not* say that grad students should publish 18 papers (or even a lot of papers). (I’m puzzled about where anyone got that idea from! This is never even hinted at in the post.)”

One of the things I have noticed in my own writing is how easy it is for others to misunderstand what I have intended to say, and even what I think the words do say. (Especially if/when my ideas are very different from the currently received view.) I often spend the most time on my papers in editing/rewriting. One paper that I finally published in 2015 was rewritten, start to finish, more than 4 times (this one: https://faculty.ucmerced.edu/cjennings3/PhilStudies.pdf). While the ideas and basic arguments were the same, in my mind, the papers were very different. The framing, wording, etc. were different. I sometimes had different audiences in mind, or different starting points. Each version grew out of a frustration with a previous version. In one case, I presented a version of the paper at a conference and realized that the way I presented the arguments in the slides I presented was easier for the audience to understand than the written version, so I started from them for the next draft. (True story: the only revision requested by PS for publication was to add an “objections” section. Given how many times I had presented the paper that was easy; I wrote the section with a long line of footnotes: “thanks to xx for this objection.”) Given everyone’s reduced capacity to read and consume information, it is all the more important that your own writing is framed in the right way if it is going to reach your audience, especially if you are relatively junior in the profession (because people aren’t as likely to make an effort; especially especially if you are minoritized). In my view, it just takes time to see how your framing is received (especially, again, if your way of thinking is very different from that of your audience). Echoing Daniel Munoz above, I would suggest that it is perfectly reasonable to write drafts and try them out at conferences/reading groups/workshops for a year or two before trying to publish them.

A separate issue worth considering, that is more general, is that your profile as a graduate student can inform your career fit, so if you publish a lot in grad school you may well get a job that expects that pattern from you. if you are not that person, you may be unhappy in that job. Once you have figured out what the normal/expected range is for the kinds of jobs you want (say, 2-5 peer-reviewed journal/chapter publications at graduation), you might want to shoot for somewhere within that range that reflects your values. If you value slow philosophy, shoot for 2, and you will be more likely to find a place that values that, too. If you value a more nimble publication pace, shoot for 5, and you will be more likely to find a place that values that. I understand that even getting one offer is very difficult. In my personal view, this is more likely, too, if you have a clear, coherent, authentic brand that you can stand by.

All of that said, I am sure it is difficult receiving so much negative feedback at once, especially as a grad student. I am glad you have been willing to share your perspective with us all, even if I disagree with it.

As a woman of color and a non-native English speaker, I feel these “guest post” terrifying. In all honesty, I am also puzzled why daily nous publishes such posts. I also respect this perspective, but I wonder whether whatever perspective needs to be represented in the daily nous platform?

I personally take long time to write every sentence in perfect English, and shifting the way of thinking from Chinese or Arabic to English NEEDS LOTS OF TIME. And come on, writing good philosophy takes time. As we also know, just introducing some “philosophical questions” and writing too many long essays for a native speaker is much faster, and much doable. I really hope that the meaning of “success” in academic philosophy is not going this way.

I agree with almost all the concerns that have been raised above, and more generally that, in a world that was even a bit better than this one, a lot of this would be bad advice. Still, there’s a point that I think the author is trying to make here that I fundamentally agree with, and I do think it would be good if it were more widely accepted and internalised, especially by graduate students and other precariously employed members of our profession. The point is that producing work that is “publishable”–that is, of a standard that has a real shot of being accepted by reputable journals, even the very top journals–is not some special. rare skill that only philosophical geniuses or people studying or employed at fancy departments possess. it’s just an ordinary skill, one that anyone doing a PhD in philosophy is able to develop with enough time. Of course, this isn’t to downplay the difficulties people face in actually publishing their work. For any skill that most people can, with enough work, develop there will be people who aren’t able to develop that skill, whether because they just lack the time, or for some other reason, and the fact they don’t have the skill merely reflects the fact that something has prevented them from developing it. It is often the case that this obstacle is structural, in which case we should try to remove it. But, at least in the case of this particular skill, I think one of the barriers to developing it is often a basic misunderstanding about how difficult it is to publish your work. So much mystique seems to surround publishing that it is important to dis-spell this misunderstanding.

All good advice from Perry Hendricks. Even if one cannot or perhaps should not publish 18 articles as a graduate student, it’s a good idea to publish more than 0 articles, and the advice, if followed, will be helpful in doing so.

There can be too much pressure to publish, but the fact of the matter is that in the current job climate, having some publications can be enormously helpful. This is indisputable. Given this, the advice offered is helpful. It will help with that first, very valuable publication, just as well as it will work for that 18th (if you ever get there–I haven’t). I wish I had gotten this advice in such concise form as a graduate student–I had to piece it together from a variety of different sources, but what I pieced together conforms quite nicely with what we find here in one place, provided by Hendricks. What he’s written should be read and, at a minimum, seriously considered by every graduate student in philosophy who intends to pursue an academic career.

As for those who claim that not everyone has the time, it’s important for you to know that you’ll likely have less time as a professor.

Like many others, I was a combination of shocked and amazed to learn that the author has 18 publications only three years into graduate school. No matter how you slice it, the author has been very successful in getting stuff published. And the heart of the advice is very good I think (i.e. “Get into a regular writing routine”, which is something I wish I had done many, many years earlier. It is quite amazing how quickly an hour’s worth of writing a day adds up).

But it is worth contextualizing the author’s success a little, since I think it’s very easy to walk away with an inaccurate impression of what “18 publications” means here.

First, a fair number of the author’s publications are just a few pages long. I don’t point that out to belittle the work. My point, rather, is that if people translate “18 publications” into “18 papers” and have in mind full, philosophy-journal-length papers, then they will walk away with an inaccurate picture of the author’s publication record.

Relatedly, moving from an idea to a draft in a week looks less demanding when the paper in question is only a few pages long (though it is certainly fast, and certainly faster than I do anything!). This is true both because there’s just less to write but also because such short papers tend to be very, very focused indeed. They’re usually about spelling out a particular idea in the context of a very particular debate.

Related once again: bioethics has more opportunities for publishing these short pieces, either as statements of an original idea or as responses to other people (who have, perhaps, responded to your original paper). So, it’s easier in bioethics to generate publications that are, in effect, cycles of discussions carried out via relatively small philosophical bites. I don’t mean to knock this! I like that bioethics journals allow this kind of back and forth. My point is just that the subfield presents opportunities for publishing that many (most?) other subfields don’t.

And then finally: I think it’s just easier to publish in bioethics than it is in many other areas of philosophy. I think there are various reasons for this, but I’ve already mentioned one: the bioethics journals just publish more, in part because they publish kinds of papers that most “mainstream” philosophy journals won’t consider.

This is in no way meant to diminish the author’s publication record (among other things, many of his publications aren’t in bioethics. And even just counting the “full length” papers, he has published a ton for a graduate student), but rather to correct what I suspect is an inaccurate picture in many people’s minds of what “18 publications” means in this context.

I second the person above that said that if you don’t enjoy writing/publishing your work, then you need to move on. I am a slow writer and many of my ideas are bad, but I am constantly thinking about how to tweak ideas and term papers to become publishable. I see many people in my department (I am an MA but there are many PhDs there) loathing the idea of publishing their work. I just want to grab them and shake them out of the delusion that doing philosophy is just reading and teaching. Oh well.
Also, if that wuss line is offensive to you and “toxic” to the field, then I think you should probably go out into the real world and see what people would call you outside of the tower.

The timeline for journal responses doesn’t fit my experience. A verdict within 3 months is rare; 6–12 months is typical.

I feel like many criticisms of this post would go away if:

(i) There were only vague references to the student’s life/accomplishments
—Ex: why say “I’ve published 18 papers, here’s my advice” when you can say “I’ve been fortunate to publish a lot, here’s my advice”?
–Ex: Why say something like “you have time to publish-after all, I’m way busier than you, probably have more commitments, in good shape and STILL out publishing you ” when you can say “here are tips to help you find time”?

(ii) The somewhat patronizing tone was considered
–Ex: Why call reasons why one might have for not being able to publish a lot, reasons for not turning a one-sentence idea into a paper draft in a week, reasons for not turning in referee reports in 1-2 WEEKS [like a pandemic] “excuses”?
–Ex: Why call people “wusses”?
–Ex: Why say, when considering the objection that some people may not have novel ideas, that writing a response paper “is simple enough”? Why not just say: “here is something you can try if you don’t think your ideas are novel?

“These charges are serious, but their merits aren’t: there is no reasonable interpretation of anything I said that is sexist…. ” Ay. Well, here’s the obvious “reasonable interpretation”: you could have said “spouse” or “partner”, both far more linguistically common when talking to a general audience. You didn’t. When someone needlessly singles out only one gender when discussing life burdens, they are expressing the belief that this gender is particularly burdensome. Similarly, when your parents are worrying about the new family that moved in next door and needlessly call them “that black family”, you are licensed to believe that they are drawing some weird connection between blackness and being troublesome. Maybe they don’t have that belief, but they are *expressing* it anyway (we don’t get to have total control over what we linguistically express). What you do in a situation like that is recognize that the expression took place, apologize, and move forward.

Otherwise, thank you for taking the time to write this, much of it is helpful and important. Perhaps one more general lesson from the comments is that people differ radically when it comes to what motivates them. We can all stand to reflect on the fact that each grad student is different and that genuine care requires that we see each person in their particularity. As advisors, we shoulf not try to simply things with one-size-fits-all formulae like “exercise, write an hour a day, and don’t be a wuss”.

I genuinely have a hard time understanding how this post is sexist and ableist. Do some of you really think that it is sexist to suggest that women write down their ideas whenever they have a free moment if they want to get anywhere in this field? Is there something about being black or gay (as one person above insinuates) that prevents one from following the spirit of this advice? Do lgbt bipoc people operate on a different time-continuum that excludes them from having to prioritize their career prospects like the rest of us poor saps?

Yes, being productive is hard, and having to juggle kids/side jobs/family, etc. makes it even more so. Still, you all are acting like Perry is a monster for telling you that being successful in a highly competitive field means that you have to (uuuhhhh) compete.

let me explain to the confused people here what is sexist or problematic about this:
a) People have already questioned what job his wife has and who takes care of the household and the kids. Also, about who takes care of the almost-famous mental load of managing all these tasks (doctor’s appointments of kids, the laundry, the grocery shopping, etc.) … and people did so because this is unfortunately a common picture that a man is able to achieve his career goals and maximize his productivity because he has someone who does not only do all his work outside of his job but also organizes which few tasks he should do at home (if any at all). For the people who also have wives who do all their household chores and have no clue what this means: managing all of these chores, doing more than 50% of it, and taking care of a kid is at least a full-time job, if not even two or more. And this whole scenario is not only problematic because this graduate student does not even acknowledge the work his wife does that makes it *possible* in the first place for him to publish this much.. And yes, without saying a word about it, I know that his wife does most of the work at home and is probably also currently homeschooling or babysitting the kids when the kindergarten or school is closed because of the pandemic. Unfortunately, overall this is also a wide-spread phenomena within the Boomer Generation (so most philosophy professors) and is also still the case for following generations.
b) He talks about his wife in this whole article once, only to make the point that she is taking up time or standing in the way of his productivity. And yes, he did not say partner or husband. He was making a point about wives in general. And this is not only out-of-line given a), but also just a classic sexist stereotype: that women, especially wives, are just so annoying to their husbands with all of their women-stuff and reminding them to clean after themselves and wanting some attention—you know, just all these wonderful stereotypes from the 50s. And sure, maybe he was making a joke, but jokes whose punchline is just a stereotype are really neither funny nor anything else than the stereotype in lame. (They are also really simple, do not require any work at all and any ten-year-old can do better jokes than this).
In conclusion, this article just has values, work-life-balances, and gender relations of the 1950s written all over it, including all the weird stereotypes about women that should have died with our grandparents.

And if you agree with a) and b) being the case but do not know why this is problematic and/or sexist: maybe read literally any book on feminism or literature produced by women addressing these issues that was published anytime since the beginning of history. or maybe have friends that are younger than 50? I can’t help you.

(And yes, this did not even address the obvious heteronormativity in this post)

Re: Who Knows: Well, suppose he had written “Unless you have … more than two daughters” instead of “more than two children.” Even if his own children are both girls, this phrasing would clearly suggest that there’s something relevant about the children’s gender, and that the point he’s making does not apply to sons, right? Exactly the same is the case for choosing the word ‘wife’ rather than ‘spouse’ or ‘partner.’ He’s saying that his readers don’t have an excuse unless they have more than one *wife*. So he’s either forgetting that not all of his readers are straight men, or he is (maybe unintentionally) suggesting that wives are time-sinks whereas husbands are not.

How odd.

This is irresponsible and unhelpful. Clearly you made no attempt to understand the authors intent. Instead, because you don’t care for one line and word he chose, you thought it would be productive to craft some stereotypical narrative about the inequality found in some relationships from baseless assumptions? Assumptions you could not and should not make about the author and his family members.

Not sure what the goal of this bullying was. Just a chance to show your morally superiority? None of this is constructive and I highly doubt the author will take into account any of your concerns after your attempt to punish him. Which, doesn’t appear to have been your goal anyway.

Hopefully you will reconsider your approach when engaging with content you find problematic in the future. I’m sure you would appreciate others take a more charitable and meaningful approach when critiquing your work.

I have written a post at BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY that derives from this post. You can find my post at our blog here: https://biopoliticalphilosophy.com/2021/01/23/hendricks-philosophy-maid-and-eugenics-making-the-connections/

@Arie I must have missed Dostoyevsky’s great Russian novel “Criticism and Punishment”

I think that the comments on the wife part have misunderstood what the author meant, to me, very clearly, he is meaning unless you have two families (ie two wives and hidden from each other) which is a practice much more common in heterosexual men but altogether rare.
On the publishing rate, I think people don’t give themselves enough credit, although I would encourage a thorough literature search before embarking on a paper, the common wisdom that your ideas have in all likelihood already been published by someone, unless you’re publishing hyperspecialised baby steps, is not true at all, and even so it could be that your idea is just a much more interesting framing even if the argument is similar.
Also any literature not available on sci hub nor research gate, nor academia.edu nor in open access should not be expected to be found nor cited.

There is plenty to dislike about this post. As several commenters have pointed out, most of the good suggestions have been made a thousand times before, and the suggestions that are somewhat novel are at best highly context-dependent and at worst totally counterproductive. It also takes an odd, moralistic detour in the middle by singling out drugs and alcohol as something grad students ought to cut out in order to be more productive. This being said, many of the accusations being lobbed at Perry are absolutely ridiculous. His usage of the term ‘wife’ is obviously due to the fact that he is referencing his own life and commitments in response to the ‘excuse’ that most grad students are too busy to publish. There is absolutely no reason to infer from this usage that Perry thinks wives are especially burdensome or distracting compared to husbands, common law spouses, thruples, boyfriends, girlfriends, or any other sort of romantic partner/partners. Equally if not more absurd is the insinuation that, by not qualifying his short blog post in a million different ways to address every possible difficulty a grad student might face, he is failing to acknowledge the fact that his productivity is due in large part to his privilege relative to “BIPOC, LGBTQ+, individuals with disabilities, first-gen students, etc”. By his own admission, Perry has two dependents and works a part time job (presumably to make ends meet). In several important ways, this makes him significantly *less* privileged than the average Philosophy Ph.D candidate who has no dependents and does not need to take on additional employment outside of their T.A. contract while completing their degree. Of course, all of the various personal and socially imposed challenges people face are not perfectly commensurable, but speaking as a grad student with a couple chronic health issues that have limited my ability to work in the past, I certainly don’t think that Perry’s life circumstances are so much more conducive to academic work than my own that I would have absolutely no success if I tried to apply some of his tips in an attempt to publish more.

A majority of the criticism of Perry was careful, thoughtful, and made me think harder about my own writing and about the problems of Perry’s argument. That said, I wish to express my agreement with AnonGradStudent, Grad Student4, Get Over It, and Arie about how “ridiculous” some of the other criticism was. I feel bad for Perry, and Justin, who clearly wanted to be helpful or at least generate discussion about the actual topic, and then were subject to these inane comments. I think it is rarely appreciated how hard that can be on someone, in real life, when people respond to your writing online this uncharitably. Perry was probably shocked and hurt. Two quick items:

Three (by my count) commenters made something like the trivial argument that Perry should not be considered above criticism. Uh, what several of us are saying is that your particular criticisms are unfair and profoundly not compelling, not that there should be no criticism at all. It seems people who make the most unfair criticisms often hide behind “are you saying there can be no criticism???” but we’re not saying that, we are just holding you to the same standard to which you claim to hold others.

Avalonian’s post was particularly unhelpful and seemed to be a jumping point for other inane criticism. I agree with AnonGradStudent there is absolutely no reason for the relevant inference, the word in question was not “singling out” anything because he was referencing his own life. Avalonian your analogy to the neighbors is unhelpful and not an analogy…you are trying to make the OP guilty by association to a case of racism that is clearly offensive. Your saying the OP should “apologize” is absurd in the extreme, and it is an empirical claim whether “partner” and “spouse” are more common (and you say not just more common but “far more” common! Wow, armchair empiricism with confidence)…I observe the opposite and I see “my wife” and “my husband” used constantly in the situation you say (speaking to a general audience). Last, you never answered what you promised which was the “reasonable interpretation” of sexism. Your post was anything but reasonable.

Much of the comments here have been focused on particular pieces of advice or expectations of a level of productivity. I’d like to come at this from a different angle: that of the referee. Increasingly, I am finding myself refereeing what seem to me to be seminar papers — they are perhaps specialized enough to be able to avoid desk rejection. While these papers merit an A as a seminar paper, they are far from ready to be published. More often than not, I end up writing a fair amount of comments to help the author work the paper up. But at the same time I am muttering that this sort of comment is the responsibility of the seminar instructor or supervisor. The time I spend being a good referee takes away from my own research, my own students, and my departmental responsibilities. I do not get paid extra for refereeing these papers. I do not get extra hours in the day. So, as graduate students are thinking about whether or not they should try to publish a paper first, I ask simply: please talk to your professor or supervisor, ask them to read the paper you intend to submit and provide feedback, and ask them whether it is ready to be submitted for a full on refereeing process. Do not use the journal refereeing process as a mechanism to get feedback on your work. And to the faculty who are working with graduate students, please complete your end things: be willing to read grad student work, provide feedback, and give realistic and balanced advice about journal submission.

Re: MM, who said:

“But! All those things are written about as things that take up one’s time, and, given the way this whole thing is framed, the implication is that they take time away from (the all-important tasks of?) work and writing.”

We can assume that the author is religious, given his reference to “religious commitments“ in the list of “things that take up one’s time.” Do you believe he meant to imply that working on philosophy is more important than religion? I don’t know of any religious person, philosopher or otherwise, who would think such a thing. Of course, one *can* read him that way. But he’s clearly not suggesting it. By parity, he isn’t suggesting it about his wife, his children, or anything else he mentioned. He doesn’t need to go out of his way to (distractingly, given the point of the piece) praise these things, not least because it’s already obvious that he values them.

Re: What Chair?

Okay, I’m seriously stopping after this per David Wallace’s advice.

If you read what was written, it is pretty clearly not a question of what the original author values or not, nor whether he is personally sexist as others have misinterpreted. There is a conjunction of things going on: the unique mention and what goes unsaid. When combined in a particular context, these produce a particular effect in a particular audience. You disagree that this effect is reasonable, I think it is reasonable given the presumed audience and some relevant contextual information. I would feel fairly confident wagering that it seems plenty reasonable to others in possession of what they likewise take to be the relevant contextual information. So maybe what you disagree about is just what counts as the relevant contextual information. As someone else said earlier, albeit with some really poor taste personal assumptions and criticisms which I in no way endorse, if you do not understand that some of what I take to be relevant contextual information is reasonable, then I (probably?) can’t help you (but I’ve tried).

Whether rightly or wrongly, like I said, I’m a humean about these things, this is (a rough approximation of) what I hear when the author refers to his religious and other commitments as he does:

If you don’t have some comparable quantity or quality of commitments as I do, then you probably have more time than me (I’ll come back to this conditional, but this is almost verbatim, so, at the very least we can agree that it is reasonable for me to hear it).

If you probably have more time than me, then you should be capable of publishing your work (granted, but because I simply take the consequent to be true; also not unreasonable for me to hear)

If you don’t have some comparable quantity or quality of commitments as I do, then you should be capable of publishing your work (same as above, but simply because I take the consequent to be true; also not unreasonable to hear in light of the above)

If you should be capable of publishing your work but you do not, then you might be (probably? I’m not so sure about the modal strength with which I hear this) relying on some (combination) of the excuses I list here (obviously false, however, whether or not it is unreasonable for me to hear this is an open question; at least it doesn’t seem prima facie unreasonable given that the author provides a list of excuses and tips for being more productive)

And then there seems to be some further conditional of the form:

If you rely on some (combination) of the excuses I list here, then you’re doing something wrong, (or as others have put it: maybe you don’t belong in philosophy, etc.). (I also think this is false; again, open question as to whether or not it is reasonable for me to hear this, but like I said: humean)

If you put it all together you get something like:

If you don’t have comparable commitments and you’re not publishing, you’re doing something wrong. (yeah….no; call me foolish but some of the weird moralising tone in this piece would seem to explain why I hear this)

So let’s go back to that first conditional because that’s the one I’m focused on. I’m saying, let’s investigate that conditional a little more and see about how those commitments figure into productivity, for which available time is simply one relevant factor.

All the author does is list those commitments as a way to talk about how little time he has, despite which he manages to be very productive. Good on ya, bro. He could think they’re the most valuable commitments in the world, great, good for him. That’s not what I’m on about.

I’m saying, hey, you know that thing you list as a commitment that takes up some of your time, and even if you value it most highly? The one for which you use a decidedly gendered term? Maybe that commitment doesn’t actually leave you with less time for writing and being productive. Maybe it actually generates more time and productivity. And if that’s true, might that not be worth mentioning in a piece that is putatively about productivity insofar as it is connected to publishing? So why not mention it in a piece that is supposedly about giving advice about productivity/publishing? It never occured to you? Odd that it never occurred to you, why might that be?

I leave it to the audience to fill in the space of reasons in light of what has already been said.

All mistakes are my own.

This awful practice of focusing on a single phrase, giving it the *worst possible* interpretation, and then getting up in arms about it (as sexist or biased in some other way) is just awful. It bizarre, mean, and petty. How about: he’s listing commitments he has. Pick a reasonable, more innocuous interpretation. You are choosing to get angry.

However, that phrase did make me wince a little, and here’s why—I had flashbacks to graduate school where discussions of “work-life balance” focused on things like “my wife wants me home for dinner and won’t let me work on weekends” and “she needs a break when I get home at dinnertime, so my evenings are stressful”. I remember feeling utterly defeated, like how can I possibly compete? This has less to do with PH and more to do with my experience, but I have been annoyed at how these kinds of discussions tend to presume either that one can afford full-time childcare, or one’s partner stays at home. That’s true for a lot of people—but for many others, it’s not. Again, this is no reason to think PH is sexist (he’s clearly just talking about his own commitments!), but it would be nice to focus the discussion in different ways.

Re: What Chair?

Precisely. Or, at least either one of us performing that task will take far more work than is worth investing further in the comments section of DN. All the best to you too.

I think when starting out as a grad student, a few mid-tier publications are nice to get oneself going. But, as my former adviser once put it: the goal should be to produce better and better work (e.g. better journals, deeper thoughts, more compelling execution).

Publication is the ticket to academic jobs, and isn’t that the goal of most people getting technical training in this field? Mr. Hendricks has an impressive publication record and shares advice based on his personal experience. And he is criticized as sexist for having a wife and ableist for assuming other philosophers might speak English? This is a competitive field folks…developing good habits and some thick skin is a requirement. The rage machine producing these uncharitable comments then accuses Hendricks of creating a toxic environment in philosophy because he shares some tips for other grad students? Some folks here might benefit from a little introspection.