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flotsam
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« Reply #4 on: February 04, 2012, 09:03:29 PM » |
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It also depends on what you want to get from this publication or piece. As the others have said, if this is to be a meaningful part of your tenure/promotion materials, then make absolutely certain that your department and college will accept it for that purpose. Even so, if you had hoped to revise this presentation and place it in a more prestigious journal or book or whatever, then you may not wish to "give it away" to the first comers. If this is something else, a side-bar project that you don't see yourself returning to anytime soon, AND if it doesn't really matter for tenure/promotion (either because you have plenty of other stuff or you know your department will credit this publication), then go ahead and publish here. It is, as they say, a line on the CV!
Others may reasonably differ, and a lot will depend on your field, your department, and your university, as well as upon your own goals and values, but I do think that in many cases simple quantities of publications go a long way. I certainly don't mean to say that quantity trumps quality, but for so many people -- even in your department, if they work in different fields, but definitely those from other departments (during tenure review, for instance) -- the quality of your work or of the publisher will be a matter of good faith. Let's say a Shakespeare scholar is reviewing the tenure/promotion materials of someone who published a piece in "The Journal of Partially Submerged Basketweaving"; the Shakespeare scholar is more likely to take the word of a member of the Dept. of Basketweaving, regarding a professor of Underwater Basketweaving, than trust one's own judgment about whether that journal is a good venue. Yes, "impact factor" or other criteria, if available (notoriously not helpful in nearly all the humanities, by the way), can help, but that won't necessarily be reliable and certainly not definitive. So, most likely, numbers start to matter more. "Oh, that was just one of twelve peer-reviewed articles, published in nine different journals, so even if it is not such a hot journal, THIS scholar must be doing good work."
Part of my sense here -- and I do apologize to the OP for going off-topic a bit -- comes from the recognition that many of my colleagues in my own department don't know what's going on in this or that subfield. I suppose we all can have blinders on with respect to our own fields, and even the most ecumenical will not be able to know all, but in my early days I was frequently amazed that some (very smart and productive) colleagues had never heard of scholars I considered big shots, and journals I considered top notch. When I had an article published in what is a top journal in my field, most had never heard of it, but thought "good for you" ... about the same "good for you" I'd get with any publication, even in a student newspaper, e.g. The message to me was clear enough: we will likely count the number of lines on the CV, since we cannot really determine the quality of this or that line.
By the way, what you describe really is "one line" on the CV. If the same piece first appeared in a journal, then as a book-chapter, you really shouldn't count it twice (that's padding the resume); rather list it once, and add "reprinted in ... [book]" (or, if you prefer the book chapter's listing: "previously published in [journal info].)
Congratulations on the publication opportunity, in any case.
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