original R1 professor
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Post by original R1 professor on Jan 5, 2012 12:56:17 GMT -5
Which R1 is this that doesn't care if candidates ever present at conferences? ASA is a very expensive venture for most grad students, and there really is not a greatly higher standard for presenting there than elsewhere, but we want our candidates to show evidence of academic activity, and this includes conference presentations at even just the regional level. When we evaluate tenure cases, we want to know about dissemination of research by way of moving manuscripts through the publication pipeline (what has been sent out for review, what has been published, where articles have landed), but we also expect our faculty members to present at conferences. Given that this is an expectation, I don't know why it would be deemed irrelevant that candidates have experience doing this. Another R1 prof here. We just completed a couple searches in different fields, and I can guarantee that conference presentations amounted to approximately zero percent of the hiring decision other than glancing at that section and saying "yep, they've presented something somewhere". If you have NO pubs, then a presentation or two might show you're doing something, but frankly if you're banking on conference presentations to boost your candidacy, you're not going to get the job. It comes down to cold hard pubs. You apparently misunderstand me; we don't place value on presenting here vs. presenting there (there is really no great achievement in presenting at ASA, after all), but it makes little sense that someone can submit a CV that references presentations not at all and yet be on equal footing with people who have. Of course, the goal is to publish, but conference presentations also give us a sense of both what is in the pipeline (basically, are any of the "works in progress" advanced enough to be subjected to peer observation) and how efficiently this candidate converts presentations into publications. If I see that somebody presented a paper at a regional conference in 2007 and it is in R&R stage in 2011, I wonder why the slow progress on this project and what makes this person likely to produce an average of two pubs per year.
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rrr
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Post by rrr on Jan 5, 2012 13:13:13 GMT -5
^ Are you really in sociology? You do know that not everyone has the nice position of being 2nd author on their advisor's papers, with the advisor guiding them through the process.
If shooting at top journals, it is entirely plausible that a sole-authored paper might need to 2-3 years before getting an R&R. Let's say you take 2 months after the regional conference to submit to a journal like ASR. The journal take 6 months (not uncommon) to return a rejection with good comments. The person takes 3 months to make the revisions and reformat to send to another journal, let's say a subfield journal, where the chances are better. That second journal takes 6 months to get back a conditional R&R, but with substantial comments, the author takes 4 months to make those corrections, but the paper goes to a second round of R&R with one different reviewer, which takes 3 months (optimistically). The author turns that around in a month.
That is an entirely possible scenario, and that is 2 years before the thing is even in press.
Luckily, we can become more efficient about this process, but let's be realistic, those first few papers are blood, sweat and tears.
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original R1 professor
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Post by original R1 professor on Jan 5, 2012 13:41:15 GMT -5
^ Are you really in sociology? You do know that not everyone has the nice position of being 2nd author on their advisor's papers, with the advisor guiding them through the process. If shooting at top journals, it is entirely plausible that a sole-authored paper might need to 2-3 years before getting an R&R. Let's say you take 2 months after the regional conference to submit to a journal like ASR. The journal take 6 months (not uncommon) to return a rejection with good comments. The person takes 3 months to make the revisions and reformat to send to another journal, let's say a subfield journal, where the chances are better. That second journal takes 6 months to get back a conditional R&R, but with substantial comments, the author takes 4 months to make those corrections, but the paper goes to a second round of R&R with one different reviewer, which takes 3 months (optimistically). The author turns that around in a month. That is an entirely possible scenario, and that is 2 years before the thing is even in press. Luckily, we can become more efficient about this process, but let's be realistic, those first few papers are blood, sweat and tears. In my grad program, many grad students were placing their master's theses in print within about 2 years of defending them, so it certainly should not take so many years from presentation to print. (This negates your point about tagging along with one's advisor.) Yes, we even had a solo ASR from a grad student, and that took about the same amount of time, so it isn't about prestige of the journal. When I last published in a top specialty journal, the article was in print maybe 6 months after acceptance. With digital submission and review nowadays, the old expectations about time to publication no longer apply. Seriously, look at the CVs of successful assistant professors at any Top 20/30 department and cite the examples of their work taking 4 years to go from presentation to print. What you typically see is something being presented in 2007 and a pub date of 2009 or something like that. My degree is from one such department, and trust me, they look at that when candidates submit CVs for open positions.
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another R1 asst prof
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Post by another R1 asst prof on Jan 5, 2012 16:04:19 GMT -5
All of my papers have taken roughly 3-4 years to go from presentation to published paper. Also, I know for a fact that I got at least two interviews based on a search committee member having seen one of my asa presentations when I was on the market. So there! Not every academic works in the intellectual equivalent of a puppy mill
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Post by arf arf on Jan 5, 2012 16:34:50 GMT -5
Yes, we even had a solo ASR from a grad student, and that took about the same amount of time, so it isn't about prestige of the journal. Yes, because all ASR submissions by grad students are accepted. Snort.
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Post by bad dog on Jan 5, 2012 16:48:12 GMT -5
Yes, we even had a solo ASR from a grad student, and that took about the same amount of time, so it isn't about prestige of the journal. Yes, because all ASR submissions by grad students are accepted. Snort. ^Missing the point entirely The point is the turnaround time at a prestigious journal isn't necessarily longer than a less prestigious journal, and if you don't get an R&R at ASR, then you'd out what, like 4-6 months, maybe? Hardly the 3-4 year time period being brandied about. The 3-4 year estimate might be reasonable for the time to getting in a print issue, or maybe even time from initial start of research to initial acceptance, but with online first articles all over the place, and assuming fairly reasonable journal turnaround times (3-4 months for initial reviews, a few months to revise, a few months for final decision after R&R), you're looking at *maybe* 1-2 years following a presentation, assuming you actually have something drafted that you're presenting on. If you're averaging 4 years turnaround *after* giving a presentation on something, I can only assuming that means 5-6 years of work per publications. If that's the case, then how will much, if any, of the research that you start after being hired as an asst prof be published/accepted by the time you go up for tenure?
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rrr
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Post by rrr on Jan 5, 2012 17:05:06 GMT -5
Actually, I find that top journals usually have better review times than lower journals.
But the time to publication for those first few papers will be longer because you are a crap writer when starting out. It gets easier as you keep writing, and that's just how it goes. Maybe our bad dog above is an awesome perfect writer who knows the perfect theoretical framing and perfect methods for each paper, but for the rest of us, it takes a while to link up theory and methods.
That's OK, because the way that normal people have enough ready for tenure is that they get faster as they go, and they work on multiple projects, so you can get a good year where 2 or 3 papers hit. In other words, writing productivity is on an escalating function over time, if comparing grad school to the pre-tenure years. Or it doesn't, in which case you might get encouraged to find a job for which you are "a better fit" by not making tenure review.
At any rate, I call trolling, or at the least, quantitative sausage grinding.
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Post by bad dog on Jan 5, 2012 18:02:54 GMT -5
Actually, I find that top journals usually have better review times than lower journals. But the time to publication for those first few papers will be longer because you are a crap writer when starting out. It gets easier as you keep writing, and that's just how it goes. Maybe our bad dog above is an awesome perfect writer who knows the perfect theoretical framing and perfect methods for each paper, but for the rest of us, it takes a while to link up theory and methods. That's OK, because the way that normal people have enough ready for tenure is that they get faster as they go, and they work on multiple projects, so you can get a good year where 2 or 3 papers hit. In other words, writing productivity is on an escalating function over time, if comparing grad school to the pre-tenure years. Or it doesn't, in which case you might get encouraged to find a job for which you are "a better fit" by not making tenure review. At any rate, I call trolling, or at the least, quantitative sausage grinding. You can call trolling all you want, but if you don't have the pubs, it's unlikely you'll get the job (as an ABD, at least). It's great that you think you'll get faster at writing, and I'm sure you will, but if you take 4-5 years to do this, you'll be at your mid-tenure review with a weak record. FWIW I consider myself a decent writer, but the first year or so was definitely rough. Good mentoring (not slapping myself on as second/third/fourth author on a paper, but actual mentoring and subsequent co and sole authored pubs) helped. Still, being faster 'in the future' isn't going to help you when you go on the market with no/few pubs but tons of presentations. Look at the list of recent hires floating around this site and check out their CVs -- I guarantee the conference presentations aren't what got them the job, or likely gave them any kind of edge over the other short-listed candidates (though the networking from the conference *might* have given them an in for an interview/short list spot, but this is completely different than the value of the extra presentation line on the CV).
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Post by SC member on Jan 5, 2012 18:22:59 GMT -5
I am the original poster who said my dept. does not "give a crap" about presentations. I was being a bit crass, perhaps, but I stand behind it. This is my second job at at top 15 program and I have been involved at searches at both. I could not even fathom an SC member at either place looking up presentations and them mapping them to the publications section to see how long their average time from presentation to publication is. If the person is an ABD and has 3+ publications, for instance, we see that as evidence that the student should be able to produce enough for tenure. We ASSUME that all our applicants present. But I have not seen it make a difference. Even between 2 candidates who both published in similar places the same amount of times, we never started counting presentations as a way to see who we should hire. No way.
I don't want to name names because it could seem insulting, but a number of top-tier applicants to my institution--the ones who got interviews--the past couple years either had only 2-3 presentations or did not even list their presentations on their CV. They kept the CV short and sweet and put the publications up front followed by grants/fellowships.
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Post by of course on Jan 5, 2012 23:09:09 GMT -5
I am the original poster who said my dept. does not "give a crap" about presentations. I was being a bit crass, perhaps, but I stand behind it. This is my second job at at top 15 program and I have been involved at searches at both. I could not even fathom an SC member at either place looking up presentations and them mapping them to the publications section to see how long their average time from presentation to publication is. If the person is an ABD and has 3+ publications, for instance, we see that as evidence that the student should be able to produce enough for tenure. We ASSUME that all our applicants present. But I have not seen it make a difference. Even between 2 candidates who both published in similar places the same amount of times, we never started counting presentations as a way to see who we should hire. No way. I don't want to name names because it could seem insulting, but a number of top-tier applicants to my institution--the ones who got interviews--the past couple years either had only 2-3 presentations or did not even list their presentations on their CV. They kept the CV short and sweet and put the publications up front followed by grants/fellowships. Of course, if an ABD has 2 or 3 publications, then you get the sense that he or she knows how to get it done and can do so in a reasonably efficient amount of time. Ultimately, we care about publications and we care about the ability to bring in external funds, so if somebody is doing those things well in grad school, nothing else needs to be said. I am not impressed if somebody has a long string of presentations and no pubs, and this might even tell me that this person has trouble bringing a research project to completion. Having said this, I want to see a presentation section and a couple of items there, although I don't really care where. On the matter of time from presentation to publication, I find it unlikely that it would take somebody 4 years to get research published and yet he or she would be retained after tenure review. Even if, as someone said, an assistant professor enjoys a flurry of publications in one year, publishing 3 in the 4th year and 3 in the 5th year isn't gonna produce a good tenure case at places that expect an average of 2 per year. I am not a big fan of counting lines on the vita myself, but if that is the order of the day, then the dissertation has to turn into pubs by maybe the second year and anything started in year one has to start hitting by the 3rd year or early in the 4th, at best. This is especially important because some institutions look poorly upon someone who only produces when some deadline is near.
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