Graduate Journals

The comments are fairly unanimous in response to this question on the merits of publishing in graduate journals - basically, 'don't do it'. Reading the comments, I ended up wondering why graduate journals are published in the first place - that's presumably a fair amount of time and effort going to waste if the comments are correct. It seems like there are at least some potential benefits to publishing in such a forum - peer feedback and experience of the publishing process are two that come to mind. Perhaps these journals would be appreciated slightly more if these aims were stated more clearly? If they are distinguished from 'proper' (I'd prefer 'professional') journals as serving different purposes then I'd hope people would not be held to account for articles published in such a way before their career had even begun. 

New Features on Academia.edu

Academia.edu has had another update - there are several improved features, and now users can have blogs on the site. Check it out here. 

Academic Blogs

Interesting articles in THE about academic blogging here. Seems to me to underestimate the amount of academic blogs...

Leiter on 'The State of the Vocation'

Interesting article from Brian Leiter in The Philosophers' Magazine Online on the state of academic philosophy as a profession and vocation here. 

Brooks' 5 tips for getting published

Thom Brooks has written a very helpful and readable article on publication for early-career academics which can be found here. It develops some of the ideas from his previous advice for graduates on getting published, which can be found here. 

New Philosophy Bookmarking Site: 'Sympoze'

Yet another site to add to the list:

Sympoze is a new social networking and bookmarking site for philosophers. Sympoze will help you stay current on what professional philosophers are reading and enjoying. Sympoze is currently in beta testing. If you would like to join and start submitting and/or voting up content from philosophy blogs, online papers, and philosophy journal articles, then email Andrew Cullison via [lastname] [at] [fredonia] [dot] [edu].

Social bookmarking is a way for social networks to collectively save, rate, and promote online content. At Sympoze users can submit links to philosophy content that they enjoy - from philosophy blog posts, links to unpublished papers, or links to published journal articles they enjoy or think other philosophers will enjoy. Once a user submits a link, the rest of the Sympoze community can "digg" the content. Popular scoops will automatically be promoted to the front page so everyone (including non-users) can get an up to the minute update concerning what's hot in philosophy.

The unique feature about Sympoze is that User accounts are limited to persons with graduate degrees in philosophy or who are enrolled in a philosophy graduate program. This will ensure that the content being voted up and down will reflect the opinions of professional philosophers - however, everyone will be able to view the content that philosophers vote up and down. Philosophers are encouraged to submit links to any philosophy content available online including links to their own material be it a blog post, an online paper, or a link to a philosophy journal article.

Academia.edu New Look

Academia.edu - the popular networking site for academics - has had a makeover. The main change is the addition of a function which allows one to search departments and view the members of particular universities in a 'tree' 

Peer Review

There's an interesting post from Nigel Warburton over at Virtual Philosopher on the peer review process in academia, with an equally interesting reply from Tim Crane - I especially like the idea of getting a grant not to publish!

Academia.edu

Just a quick note about another website useful for academics and graduate students alike - I hadn't come across it previously, but a comment on my previous post highlighted it to me. It's a useful facility where academics can create their own webpage detailing their research interests and the like - very helpful for those of us lacking technical skills! Find it at academic.edu. My (new) page on the site can be found here.