What in everybody's opinion is the value of chapters in edited collections? If you were asked to contribute, would you contribute or not, and why? If its depends, what would it depend on? Since so many things are field specific, can those answering specify what area they work in?
Generally, in my fields (chemical physics, physical chemistry, engineering-related VVUQ), an article is worth considerably more than a chapter unless the chapter is in something prestigious like Annual Review of <topic>. People asked to contribute a chapter to one of those collections are already very busy being at the top of the field. Whether I contribute to one of those strongly depends on my current tasks and how pleasant working with those involved was last time I did it.
Other collections are worth practically nothing because the situation is usually relative newcomers working in somewhat more tangential possibly-up-and-coming areas hoping to get things published that can't go into more prestigious or more visible venues. I likely would not contribute to these unless I already had something in the hopper that I wanted to publish, knew would be a hard sell in better venues, and was a perfect fit for this call.
I'm in psych/neuro. We don't really have edited collections the way I think some none-science fields mean it. We do have edited handbooks and advanced textbooks on various topics, where each chapter is contributed by an (invited) expert on a particular sub-topic and written like an extended review article, and the editors generally write an intro and sometimes a discussion at the end.
I've done a few of those, a couple as the lead (invited) author, and a few during grad school and postdoc with my PIs. There are pros and cons, and I'd accept them when the pros outweigh the cons given the particular constellation of topic, publisher/editor, career stage and time available.
Cons:
1. They are generally a LOT of work. Way more than I naively think at the start of each one (sure, no problem, I've written lots about this before, won't take long to update it. You'd think I'd learn. . .)
2. They are worth a lot less than peer reviewed papers to most P & T committees, hiring committees etc. Not nothing, but a lot less. A possible exception to this is being the invited author on chapters in well-known (e.g., been through multiple editions) go-to handbooks with well-known and respected editors, as those signal something about recognition of your own expertise.
Pros:
1. Can be good for increasing your visibility and reputation as an expert in the topic if the book gets well-distributed. Actually, the book distribution matters less and less, since readers tend to find my chapters through Researchgate and request the PDF from me. I have no compunctions about thwarting the publishers exorbitant prices for these books in this way (I never post publicly though-- that could lead to copyright trouble).
2. Can be good networking, especially if the editors are well-known/connected in your field (e.g., I just presented in a symposium at one of our main conferences which was put together by the editor of a book I contributed a chapter to).
3. Can be a good way of forcing yourself to keep up with the literature on a topic and really work through and synthesize it. Sort of an independent study seminar (even better if you involve grad students as co-authors and use it for training them too).
4. Can be useful for teaching from if there isn't something similar already available (in which case, why are you writing it?).
Humanities.
Standard wisdom I've been told is that a chapter in an edited collection is worth half a journal article for T&P purposes.
The other question--equally important if not more so--is what venue is likelier to have a higher impact and to bring attention to your work.
Quality of edited collections varies widely and wildly. If the collection is not good, being included won't make you look good. But some edited collections are very well done, are widely distributed, and because of their topical nature, may reach people who would not encounter that same work as a journal article. (For example, someone who studies Ugaritic might not normally read journals with contributions from Sanskritists, but might read an edited collection on "Inscribing Underwater Baskets in Antiquity".)
It now seems common for publishers to make individual chapters available digitally, so in some ways, availability can be similar to that of journal articles.
Collections can also be good for networking, particularly if the volume starts with a conference, which gives contributors the opportunity to interact and respond to each others' work. If there is no interaction among contributors, you'd better hope for a very good editor. Contributors' names end up being associated together, even if they never meet each other and never read each others' work until the volume is published.
I've agreed to contribute to an edited collection 3 times. Once was an "invited author for a chapter in a a well-known go-to handbook" and I am thrilled about that, but the other two times I have only regrets. One was such a disaster that I eventually pulled the paper and sent it to a journal, and the other has already been more work than it's worth.
I also co-edited an edited collection and that was a pile of work.
I'm in the humanities, and agree with the general state of what hungry_ghost says.
I don't contribute to many edited collections, but when I do, it tends to be (a) because I like and would like to be further involved with the people who are editing the volume; and/or (b) because the volume itself is very directly in my very specific sub-sub-sub-field of research, has other well-known contributors and looks like it will be published with a respected press. In the latter case, the point is just to attach my name to that tiny sub-field, especially if it's a new or emerging field.
I also tend to treat chapters in edited collections as outlets for a different kind of research than journal articles. I agree they're worth about half as much, so I'm careful to only put about half as much work into them. As a result, I often use book chapters as outlets for interesting research I've done, especially archival research, that I can't quite fashion into a sufficiently showy argument to be publishable in a good journal. My chapters in these collections tend to be more narrative-driven, rather than argument-driven, and tend to lay out information I've found, rather than mounting a substantive theoretical case. I do find them useful as outlets for this otherwise unpublishable kind of work, especially when one of the two above conditions is met.
Social science field.
Edited collections are generally considered equivalent to a lower ranked journal article, unless they are part of a specific highly-respected series in my field. I've contributed a couple of papers that focus on methodology issues in my specialty. These papers aren't appropriate for good journals, but are relatively easy to write and fairly well-cited in excellent journals. I only commit to contribute when I know the editor is highly capable at motivating others to meet deadlines. It's fairly common for edited collections to be delayed a year or more due to missed deadlines.
I'm in the humanities, and I will (almost) never commit to placing an article in an edited collection when it's something that could be published in a decent journal.
I just gave permission for my most recently published article to be included in an edited collection, so now it will have a second life there.
So my advice to folks in my field (especially if they're going up for tenure or promotion) is always journal first, edited collection later... unless it's a super prestigious edited collection for which one could make a compelling argument that it was a tremendous honor to be invited to contribute.
Following up, I find all of these insights very good and wise in terms of strategy. Such good advice on this board!
Quote from: saladdays on June 07, 2019, 06:40:40 PMI agree they're worth about half as much, so I'm careful to only put about half as much work into them. As a result, I often use book chapters as outlets for interesting research I've done, especially archival research, that I can't quite fashion into a sufficiently showy argument to be publishable in a good journal.
Quote from: Systeme_D on June 07, 2019, 10:41:36 PM
I'm in the humanities, and I will (almost) never commit to placing an article in an edited collection when it's something that could be published in a decent journal.
Quote from: Vkw10 on June 07, 2019, 07:39:31 PM
I only commit to contribute when I know the editor is highly capable at motivating others to meet deadlines. It's fairly common for edited collections to be delayed a year or more due to missed deadlines.
I'm in History, and most of what has been said tracks to my field. Book chapters are generally additive in terms of P&T; they don't count against a candidate, but they don't stand in for books or refereed journal articles. They are "extra."
Because book chapters are "extra" work, I usually will write one if a) the outlet, contributors, or general niche of the volume is something I believe in and b) I have already ticked the various boxes for P&T consideration.
One thing to think about, too, is how risky publishing in an edited collection can be. These volumes are notoriously known for publication delays, reversals, and other sorts of publishing bad news. Three years ago I wrote a piece for a volume that was "weeks from finished" (my chapter was a last-moment addition to others mostly compiled, and I was told the whole process would be swift). The contributors/editors were quick workers, but now the press is lagging. Just this week, the publication date was pushed again to late 2020. So that's a lesson.
Quote from: nescafe on June 08, 2019, 10:08:52 AM
One thing to think about, too, is how risky publishing in an edited collection can be. These volumes are notoriously known for publication delays, reversals, and other sorts of publishing bad news.
Yes, I had a bad experience many years ago in which I was invited to contribute to a volume, did so, and then the volume never appeared because the editors reneged on the deal after a couple of years of hounding authors for their contributions. I was able to place the article in a top journal, yet several years later than it would have appeared otherwise. I have had much better experiences with two other edited volumes, in which my work appears alongside top scholars in my field.
I am at a stage in my career where I am less concerned about how things count for my c.v., just that my work is being made available to those who might be interested in it. I am choosy about edited volumes, though, and will only participate in those put together by editors I can trust and which contain contributions from significant scholars. I have two other invited pieces forthcoming in edited volumes that have suffered delays, yet placing them there may have freed up a couple of slots in journals for earlier-stage scholars for whom the journal/volume difference is more significant.
Humanities (but barely). Edited collections vary a lot in my field. Some are super-prestigious, and a chapter in one of those counts for as much as (or more than) an ordinary paper, even in an otherwise top subfield journal. For a few subfields, the top specialist outlet is an edited volume in a serial collection.
I have a couple of collection-pubs. Neither were invited; I wrote and sent the chapter out for review in response to a call for papers. Neither is in one of these hyper-desirable collections (although one is close). They're both on a side topic I occasionally work on, but which isn't really connected to my main research areas. Even though both were peer-reviewed (masked), they were still much easier pubs to get than ordinary journal articles, since I didn't have to compete with hundreds of other people for three or four slots. It was totally worth the time I put in, even if they're counted as half-pubs, because I didn't put in a ton of time. I just saw the call, was interested, dashed off a short paper in a week and sent it in, and then fixed it up when the reports came back. It was an easy way to boost my research productivity for the year.
In a very tiny part of the world of medieval musicological research there are several volumes, including festschrifts, which (for all I know--i.e., I have used the articles and know people involved but was never asked to contribute) are well-done, seem to run on budget and on time and are sometimes the only gathered materials on topics in that field.
I believe the editors and contributors have all worked together for several decades, now, so they know each other and have a working M.O. that functions well. But I can imagine how rare that might be elsewhere, too....
No ideas how they count for tenure. Most of these folks aren't watching that metric at all, I'm guessing.
M.
So looking at this from the perspective of the reader, I am a librarian and I value edited chapters over journal articles for my undergraduate students because there is usually a bit more explanation for the clueless. That's were the more-work-for-you comes in for the author, but my students have no good subject context early on in their academic careers for journal articles. And now that many more of the chapters are electronically available, that's a huge bonus for access and readership that they might not have had in paper form.
Quote from: Any Questions? on June 10, 2019, 12:56:54 PM
And now that many more of the chapters are electronically available, that's a huge bonus for access and readership that they might not have had in paper form.
Do you mean they can access the chapters from the library's electronic copy? I've had bad luck with attempts to access my library's electronic books but haven't tried in a couple years. Maybe things are better now? There were limits on access, print function didn't work well, couldn't easily scan/save high-quality resolution of chapter for future use, etc.
Wish students could purchase individual chapters of edited volumes from publishers. Is that becoming a thing yet?
As researcher and instructor, I find edited volumes extremely useful. However, the utility of chapters in a single volume varies. I often want a class to read just one chapter which I'll scan and load to Blackboard. More chapters is a copyright violation. I avoid requiring a book if students are required to read less than half for class.
Valuable for what?
I have a couple pieces in edited collections. Two were rookie mistakes which I published very early in my career. I call them mistakes because they're good but because their not great presses, they generally don't ever see the light of day. I have another in a peer-reviewed collection by a well-known press that it a much better placement.
All three counted towards my tenure and promotion, but I'm at a teaching-intensive institution without major research expectations. If I were at a research-focused school, they wouldn't help at all except the third one, and even then, I'd have been better off publishing in a higher-profile journal.
I have a reason to contribute to edited collections that others haven't mentioned — but it only works in certain circumstances.
I got to know an Eminent Scholar who cajoled me into contributing to his edited collection, even though I was reluctant. I have a personal practice of always getting things in on time or ahead of time — I figure I can't be the most brilliant, and I can't be unearth startling new discoveries, but I can get the edge on the competition by turning things in on time. And well proofread, and in the required format.
So I turned my piece in ahead of the deadline, well proofread, and in the right format — and it turned out that out of the 15+ contributors, I was the only one to do so. So when Eminent Press asked Eminent Editor who they should ask to head Eminent Project, he recommended me. And so I am now in charge of Eminent Project. Which along the way has involved two all-expense-paid lavish trips to desirable locations, as well as Eminent Publications and so forth.
As part of this, I am editing my own collections, and I see the same thing happening. One of the volumes I'm editing has ten contributors, and only one of the contributions came in on time. It was beautifully written, free of typos, and the only contribution that was fully in the required formatting.
Now other scholars are asking me who I would recommend to be head of such-and-such. The answer is obvious to me — my best contributor. That contributor has gone on to do excellent work, as predicted — also on time and in the right format.
So my recommendation is to agree to contribute to volumes edited by eminent scholars you know to be reliable, sane, and prompt themselves. And in my experience, it is easy to outshine the competition, merely by being reliable, sane, and prompt yourself. There are few ways to make one's sterling reliability clear to the people who run things — this is one of them.
I would only contribute to an edited collection if it counted toward promotion/tenure -- a line on my c.v. The vast majority of multi-authored volumes in my field are long-delayed collections of terribly-written conference papers that no one reads. Far less work and more career payoff to publish in journals.
I think this really depends on where you are in your career. As someone moving toward promotion/tenure you're in a different position than a full professor with a named chair, who doesn't need another CV line, but who wants to bring out new work. People I know in the second category often only publish in collections that are peer reviewed, and to which they've been invited (humanities), as well as publishing books. They sometimes edit collections on their own, to bring together both new and established people in the field.
I'm in the humanities, and because so many of the people in my particular areas are in the UK, edited collections loom quite large, as they seem to have more traction there than they do in many North American universities. One advantage of collections is that the good ones get reviewed, in my field anyway, and so there's some extra exposure for the chapters. I advise my pre-tenure colleagues to focus on journal articles, and only to agree to chapters if they represent a significant opportunity (working with a top-tier press and/ or editor, say). Me, I'm a full professor, so I just make my own decisions based on whether I know the people involved, and whether the project sounds interesting.
Quote from: nescafe on June 08, 2019, 10:08:52 AM
One thing to think about, too, is how risky publishing in an edited collection can be. These volumes are notoriously known for publication delays, reversals, and other sorts of publishing bad news.
Quote from: aside on June 10, 2019, 07:31:32 AM
Yes, I had a bad experience many years ago in which I was invited to contribute to a volume, did so, and then the volume never appeared because the editors reneged on the deal after a couple of years of hounding authors for their contributions. <...>
This has been my experience in two out of the three essays-for-collections/book chapters I've contributed to. I worked hard on my contribution, sent it in well ahead of the deadline...then crickets from the editors.
After my most recent experience with that, I've resolved not to contribute unless I know absolutely (1) that the editor has past experience turning around such projects in a timely way and highly respectable format,
and (2) that there's a publication contract in place with a good publisher.
Quote from: Cheerful on June 12, 2019, 01:35:57 PM
Quote from: Any Questions? on June 10, 2019, 12:56:54 PM
And now that many more of the chapters are electronically available, that's a huge bonus for access and readership that they might not have had in paper form.
Do you mean they can access the chapters from the library's electronic copy? I've had bad luck with attempts to access my library's electronic books but haven't tried in a couple years. Maybe things are better now? There were limits on access, print function didn't work well, couldn't easily scan/save high-quality resolution of chapter for future use, etc.
Library ebooks are slowly improving. I worked with one of our librarians on getting ebooks for my spring courses. She checked restrictions on the ebooks the library already had, then bought a couple of unrestricted ebooks for me. Seven of the 12 books I used were available as unrestricted library ebooks, so I took them off the bookstore list and linked to library copy in syllabus. I also warned students that a few of the others were available as library ebooks, but had use restrictions so they shouldn't rely on getting them at last minute.
Some publishers won't sell ebooks to libraries at all. The ones that sell unrestricted ebooks usually charge more for them. Our library will pay more for unrestricted ebooks if we tell them it's assigned reading, because that saves students money. But the library can't get unrestricted ebooks for every title, because publishers don't sell them.
Humanities here. For T&P chapters and articles are pretty equivalent where I have worked. However, with the rise of digital databases articles are far more visible than are chapters in nearly any book.
Humanities. I have one piece in an edited collection from a strong publisher. It counts for P&T at my institution. But I try to stick with journal articles since they are more respected in my field. If I ever need/want to shift jobs, I would prefer my CV to list more journal articles over edited collections.
(Humanities-R1) I've done this twice: Both times as a favor to a friend (An actual, personal friend); both times with a tippy-top press in a go-to handbook. These chapters counted a lot for me at my previous, low-research university, and probably helped me get the interview at my current institution. But I can't imagine doing this under any other circumstances, primarily because the lag-time drove me up a wall. I met the deadline for both chapters. One of them then appeared . . . six years (sic.) later. (So you might be able to guess which press, if you've ever had the pleasure of working with them.)
Colleagues in my discipline at LAC's publish chapters as a matter of course. It helps them with promotion and raises, and gets their names out there. So I wouldn't advise against it for scholars in that situation. But I would caution a younger faculty member not to count on the book coming out in time for tenure review.
While I can't dispute the practical advice, I must say that I wish the system didn't force us to be so strategic and self-serving in our choices of where to publish. I've edited a collection, and contributed chapters to several more. For me, the experience is always more rewarding than writing a journal article, starting with just the basic knowledge that my scholarship is going to be part of a curated conversation around a very specific topic or theme. In my field, it's common for the editors to ask contributors to read and respond to one another's chapters as part of the revision process. I did this in my collection, and it made for better writing and a better book in the end. It's always more gratifying to get that book and read the whole thing, and see how different chapters fit together and compare/contrast to one another. If every journal issue were an ambitiously and skillfully edited "special issue," that would be one thing. But just as a pure question of form and how it amplifies scholarship and creates scholarly dialogue, a well done anthology beats a run-of-the-mill issue of even the most prestigious journal hands-down, in my opinion. That there's so much incentive for scholars NOT to contribute to edited collections makes me sad, and doesn't necessarily benefit us as scholars, IMHO.
I would write a chapter for an edited collection if the other contributors were solid scholars, or if the editor was a colleague I knew well and trusted to do a good job. I much prefer it to writing for journals. I write on genocide and ethnic conflict.
Master if Revels has me rethinking things a bit. After reading Master's post, I gave some thought to my syllabi this semester. As it turns out, I'm assigning the kiddos more essays from edited volumes than articles form journals. The essays tend to be less recondite, and, frankly, more interesting.
My concern is still lag time. My experience has been bad. But I'm in a book field, and I don't have a lot of knowledge of how long it takes to get a journal article out in most fields. So perhaps it's not much different, in general?
In my humanities field, edited collections are equivalent to journal articles, and I have written a fair amount of book chapters as a result. I would even say that the highest quality edited collections can have more impact than journal articles in shaping the field. Like MasterOfRevels, I view edited collections as an opportunity to participate in a curated conversation about a topic. Generally, I say yes to edited collections when I know the editors and have faith in their ability to shepherd a quality project to completion.
That said, I made one rookie mistake early on in my career--I answered a CFP for an edited collection with editors that I did not know. The project was plagued by delays, and eventually the editors stopped answering my emails altogether. Ten years later, I still have no word on what's happened with the collection (despite having signed a contract with the press eight years ago or so), and I see that the primary editor has left the profession for med school. At this point, I have to assume that the collection will never see the light of day. TL;DR: I would be very wary of edited collections seeking contributions from the general public and overseen by people that you do not personally know.
Quote from: Ancient Fellow on June 07, 2019, 01:51:21 PMWhat in everybody's opinion is the value of chapters in edited collections? If you were asked to contribute, would you contribute or not, and why? If its depends, what would it depend on? Since so many things are field specific, can those answering specify what area they work in?
Just an update –
Edited collection now under contract with Appropriate Moderately-sized University Press. The volume is a critical edition of a text with supplementary chapters by each of us in our relevant specialty area. Elapsed time from submission to the series editors to contract? Four years. Been a long haul, but it's a labor of love for myself and my contributors and will hopefully be out this year. Will likely do one more such volume for another neglected but significant text in the next couple years.
In the interest of cautioning early career researchers, let me just add two other categories –
Chapter in an edited collection based on a conference, supposed to be published by Huge Academic Trade Press. The lovely conference was eight years ago. No updates from publisher. Only sticking with it for the sake of the editors, but quietly wishing I had just submitted it to a journal eight years ago. I've no idea how antiquated it will seem when it finally sees the light of day, so I suppose it's a good thing I'm an ancient historian. Fortunately, I'm not myself terribly ancient, and so my chapter is unlikely to be posthumous.
Two chapters in a proceedings volume series, published by a Moderately-sized Academic Trade Press. The two conferences were great experiences, but being published in this proceedings series means they're less accessible to researchers. For a proceedings series, their reputation is pretty good, but their peer review is single non-blind and frequently done by the series editor rather than a subfield-specific expert. It doesn't particularly bother me, but it would have served me better to publish them in journals.
The lesson, I suppose, is that edited collections take bloody forever, garner less notice, but can be worth it if the project has inherent value to you.
This edited collection sounds like a definitive analysis of the subject, with a nice diversity of interpretations. That scholarship should have a lot of value, and deserves to be known.
What kind of publicity can you do so that it becomes well known in the field? Will we hear you interviewed by Terri Gross? More modestly, are there podcasters who cover the general field? They are always looking for novel content.
Quote from: Hibush on April 23, 2024, 05:28:14 AMThat scholarship should have a lot of value, and deserves to be known.
That's very kind, thanks for your encouragement. I'll consider your suggestion regarding podcasters.