Should I contribute to an edited collection?

(This is the second in a series of blog posts for newer academic writers. Last week, I wrote about how to pick a journal for your first academic article.)

 As I mentioned in last week’s post, I recently visited my department’s proseminar to talk about academic writing and publishing. In addition to giving advice about selecting a reasonable target journal, I also gave a warning about publishing scholarly work in an edited collection.

Later in the week, I got news about the film theory collection in which I have a new essay.

Hypocrisy? Not eating my own cooking? Not quite.

While some advisors or senior colleagues will advise that younger scholars should never publish in an edited collection, I obviously don’t think that’s quite true. However, there are many good reasons that this rule of thumb exists:

1.     The peer-reviewed journal article is still the coin of the realm. In some fields this is always so; in some humanities and social science fields this is so until the scholar produces the single-authored monograph. (If you feel like you don’t know the coin of your realm, you should ask trusted advisors). The edited collection is neither of these things.

On hiring and tenure and promotion committees, publications appearing in edited collections are often seen as a nice-to-have or sprinkles on the sundae. But the ice cream needs to be the journal article and/or monograph. As a quick example, when I applied for my current position, a weed-out question on the application asked if I had published a journal article in the hiring area. Candidates who checked “no” on this box were eliminated from the pool.

For graduate students, postdocs, VAPS, or new tenure-track faculty, you may only have so many pieces that are ready to send out. If you publish them in an edited collection, that’s one good piece of your work that won’t be weighted as heavily.  For better or worse (often worse!) there’s a lot of counting and weighing that happens on academic committees.  

2.     Some edited collections are not peer reviewed. This is a big problem given the kind of metrics above. Even when edited collections are peer reviewed, the attention given to any one essay in a collection of twenty chapters by the peer reviewers will necessarily be less than the attention given to an article or to a monograph of 4-5 chapters.

3.     The status of an edited collection may be hard for a newer scholar to judge. I have seen graduate students excited to have their work accepted into a collection by the book’s editor; however, this does not always mean that the book itself has or will receive a contract from a university press.

4.     As can the significance. As I’ll discuss below, some edited collections can define a field, form a coterie, and become important pedagogical tools. However, a collection of essays about a theme in an already well-discussed area are unlikely to be that. But if you are newer, it can be hard to judge things like novelty and significance at a field level. The problem may not be with your individual essay, which could perhaps thrive as a journal article, but if the collection doesn’t make a splash, it may mean your good thoughts go under read. 

So, does this mean you should never publish in an edited collection? Absolutely not. Edited collections are great resources. I often use them for teaching or familiarizing myself with a new scholarly area. Graduate students working on comprehensive exams or the dissertation prospectus also find them quite valuable for getting the lay of the land. And, essays in well-regarded collections can end up among the most widely cited in a given field.

 My sense is that senior academics steer newer members of the profession away from the edited collection because making a good publishing decision here requires a level of discernment that often comes through years of experience. If you are thinking about doing this kind of publishing, here are some questions to ask in order to evaluate whether this is a good fit for you:

 1.     Will this be my first/only publication? If so, think long and hard about this.

2.     What is the target press for this manuscript? What assurances do the editors have from the press? For example, some presses have a history of putting out field-defining collections. Some will offer an advanced contract based on the strength of a proposal, the editors, and the other contributors attached to the collection. If this feels very unclear, be careful! Your work can end up stuck in limbo for a long time.

3.     Who are the editors and other authors affiliated with the book? This is my second favorite reason to publish in an edited collection. While there’s potentially a gross, prestige-hungry side to this, which is not immaterial (the presence of a famous scholar may help with publication and circulation), it’s also a way of showing the intellectual company you want to keep. For me, that’s increasingly feminist scholars taking creative approaches to their objects of study. Joining an edited collection can feel companionable, especially when you have good editors.

4.     Does this book help me become part of a conversation? This is my favorite reason. Often, new fields get their start with edited collections. If you are at the cutting-edge, especially of interdisciplinary work, you know how important these books can be. If this is the case for your work, it is again worth having a conversation with evaluators such as your department chair or dean to make sure they understand the breakthrough significance of this work.

I hope this post indicates the importance of having conversations around your publishing decisions. If you are a graduate student, your dissertation director should be able to help you make some of these assessments. If you are a VAP or Postdoc, you might reach out to your department chair or a more senior colleague. Folks on the TT should be having these conversations early and often so they can learn about expectations for tenure and shape the way their package will be evaluated later on.

If you are an academic writer who could use help organizing your writing goals, consider reaching out for a coaching package.