Tag: Academia

Peer-review: on what basis should we reject papers?


When you peer-review a paper, you can make one of a few basic recommendations to the editor. One option is this: do not publish the paper.

So what criteria should you use to make such a recommendation? In this post, I argue that some criteria are better than others.

1. Is the paper convincing?

A friend of mine mentioned this criterion the other day: “…[philosophy] papers ought to be convincing.” Call this the Convince Me standard or CM.

Maybe you think that CM sounds like a reasonable standard for peer-review. I don’t.  Continue reading Peer-review: on what basis should we reject papers?

Podcasts …for research?


In a recent APA blog post historian of philosophy and pun-loving podcaster, Peter Adamson, floated the idea of using podcasts for teaching. Sounds like a good idea, sure. In this post, I’d like to focus on the idea of using podcasts for research. As I see it, podcasts could be AMAZING for research! Yeah, like, all-caps amazing! Continue reading Podcasts …for research?

Productivity, Overworking, & Incentives

University faculty might face a dilemma. On the one hand, productivity is required for faculty to keep their job, be promoted, and — for tenure track faculty — secure tenure. And one way to survive in the competitive academic market is to outshine the competition in terms of productivity. And one way to be more productive than the competition is to overwork yourself. After all, overworking is associated with greater productivity (Jacobs and Winslow 2004; see also Seals and Rodriguez 2006 and Thomas 1992). However, overworking is also associated with lower job dissatisfaction (ibid). So, overworking

Continue reading Productivity, Overworking, & Incentives