Thread by @BucarLiz

I’ve been involved in mentoring a lot of TT folks, so here is thread about being strategic with PUBLISHING in case it is helpful:

I’m tenured and promoted to full. I’ve written ltrs for colleague’s dossiers for our depart, served on my college’s P&T committee & as an outside reviewer for tenure cases.

Norms will differ by discipline. I think my experience will mostly resonant with humanities folks.

1/ You NEVER know how long you will be at an institution, so be sure to produce work that is legible elsewhere. Great if your current home base is like “three outputs before tenure, any form or forum” but just know that if you follow that it will be harder to move.

2/ Related, don’t just think about “pleasing” your department, dean and provost. Publish with the external reviewer in mind. R1’s like to ask tenured scholars from peer-plus institutions to review dossiers. In cases I’ve seen gone bad, it was bc of a luke-warm/bad external ltr.

3/ I LOVE public scholarship (duh @Sacred_Writes), but for tenure & promotion there is a hierarchy of pubs in the humanities: 1) sole authored books published by university press, 2) peer-reviewed articles in top-academic journals. You could do JUST THOSE and likely be fine.

@Sacred_Writes 4/ Chapters in bks don’t count as much. THEY DON'T. At some institutions and for many outside reviewers an edited volume will be seen as service. Unfair. But it is reality. And I think bk reviews are a waste of time and can get you in trouble before tenure.

@Sacred_Writes 5/ Side-bar: If you are in a TT job, public scholarship has to be in addition to, never instead of, bks and peer-reviewed articles before tenure. PS will increase the impact of your work, for sure, but you got to do that careful discipline specific research and writing as well.

@Sacred_Writes 6/ You should definitely give talks at your annual professional conference for lots of reasons bc these are “beans” that will be counted AND means your outside reviewers are more likely to have heard of you b/c visibility at these conferences = important networking.

@Sacred_Writes 7/ If you don’t know what top-tier journals are in your field, ask around. Consider how they would be legible to an outside reviewer of your dossier. In my case I was careful to publish in top RS journals, Islamic studies ones, AND religious ethics ones.

@Sacred_Writes 8/ There is NO MAGIC # of how many bks & articles. If you want to be super safe I’d say a sole-authored bk at a university press every 5-7 years (definitely one out before tenure), & 1-2 articles in peer reviewed journals each year. I had 11 peer reviewed articles before tenure.

@Sacred_Writes 9/ A lot, right? So be smart. Don’t give that piece to your friend’s edited volume. As a chapter it will count A LOT less than as a peer-reviewed journal. You've got to be a little selfish.

@Sacred_Writes 10/ I’m a big advocate of “double-dipping.” There are pieces of research/data that can be the basis for one than one journal article (making different arguments for different audiences).

@Sacred_Writes 11/ And for pete’s sake, take that theory chapter you agonized over in your dissertation and submit it to a peer-reviewed journal. Your book will be better w/o and other scholars are more likely to read and engage with it in a journal.

@Sacred_Writes 12/ Not a bad idea to ask a senior colleague in your field OUTSIDE your institution to take a look at your CV, asking them what concerns it might raise for tenure or promotion for the grumpiest faculty/dean/provost they know.

@Sacred_Writes 13/ Tenure and promotion, like so much in the academy, has a bunch of unspoken norms. And some of them are biased/unfair/trash. But the more you know them, the more likely you are to succeed.

YOU GOT THIS!