1/ How to grow a nice juicy CV. Advice for folks at the beginning of the career (with a focus on #sociology).
2/ Before I get into it, a disclaimer: my advice is not relevant for people not focused on publishing, who work in a handful of elite programs, and subfields/methods where there is an emphasis on a few high impact pubs. I will get to these at the end of the thread.
3/ Still, this thread applies to folks teaching in most PhD programs, MA programs, or teaching intensive school that want a balance of research and teaching at time of promotion.
4/ Step 1: Assume that you will *ALWAYS* have 3-4 pieces under review. The rule of thumb among old timers is that if you want one decent hit, you need to have at least a few under review. There is simply too much chaos in the journal system to rely on 1 submission.
5/ Step 2: Assume that your dissertation will definitely produce at least 1-2 strong articles. These should be under review during your PhD, or very soon there after. Thus, "3 paper" dissertations are the default (but not a hard rule).
6/ Step 3: Get friends/advisors to help you co-author. You can join an existing teams or start you own. They idea is to expand your "pipeline."
7/ Step 4: Learn the procedure of writing 25-30 page articles. This is the "unit" of most social science and you can usually produce 1-2 per year.
8/ Step 5: Submit and resubmit. This is the secret sauce. After speaking to big publishers for decades, one theme jumps out - to be successful, you just need to keep submitting ... a lot.
9/ Once you get these basic publishing basics internalized, there are some more subtle pieces of advice.
10/ Target newer journals: Few submissions, not so rigid in terms of what they want.
11/ Edited volume/ encyclopedia entries: If you already know the topic and requires little work aside from just busting out the text, a few of these are helpful. Once in a while they hit big. You can also use them to publish less popular arguments.
12/ Special issues: *Sometimes* these will be a little easier to get into than the regular issue of the journal. Check it out if it fits.
13/ Open access: Soc Science, PLoS One, and Socius - and others. A few pubs in here help as well.
14/ Disclaimer #1: Elite departments - the top 10-15 programs often obsess a few journals. If you mindlessly follow my advice, you're actually worse off. So stick to the "special journal list" and you will have a shorter but more acceptable CV.
15/ Disclaimer #2: Subfields - a few subfields (e.g., ethnography) are built around people getting few pubs but higher impact ones or they dump it into the book. So don't follow this advice if you are in such a field!
16/ Disclaimer #3: Super teaching intensive - if this is your career goal, take this advice carefully. Still, if you are trying to hit a fixed number of pubs so you can switch to full time teaching, this might work.
17/ Bottom line: It may look mysterious when you start, but building a solid portfolio of work can be done in a predictable and systematic way.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
