There was a useful exchange at Prawfsblawg a while back – here and here – about when to post to SSRN. Having recently had an article accepted for publication, with a couple of smaller symposium pieces in various stages of disarray, I am nonetheless again confronted with the question of when exactly to post my papers to SSRN. Although Bernie Black had some useful thoughts on when, in an ideal world, it might be best to post, don’t different rules apply to us untenured folk? I have on occasion been advised as a junior faculty member not to present anything to the outside world, via workshop, SSRN, or otherwise until it is basically in as perfect a form as it is likely to see. On the other hand, obviously, it is usually at the earlier stages of writing that the possible comments one might get from posting the paper will be most useful. (Though I must add I have yet to receive any comments from someone who simply came across my paper on SSRN.) My own decisionmaking about this has been somewhat random.
So, dear untenured readers, when do you post?
Posted by Jessie Hill on May 8, 2009 at 10:09 AM
Comments
Perhaps I am just lucky, or maybe because IP is a small community, but people in my field do send me comments because they happened to run across my article on SSRN.
Posted by: TJ | May 8, 2009 11:13:56 PM
Mary, if the advice had been as reasonable as yours, I wouldn’t have posted a comment at all. It barely swings the pendulum, even if it tends to the “prudent” side.
It was this sentence of the advice Jessie had heard that caused my reaction: “I have on occasion been advised as a junior faculty member not to present anything to the outside world, via workshop, SSRN, or otherwise until it is basically in as perfect a form as it is likely to see.” That’s a helluva standard.
Posted by: Jeff Lipshaw | May 8, 2009 6:15:07 PM
While I might agree with Jeff that the pendulum is too far in one direction, and with other comments that a paper should be posted at a time when feedback will be useful, I must disagree with Jeff’s comment that “the one thing that it ought not depend on is its impact on a tenure decision.” It is not realistic to assume that circulating a paper when it is too weak and undeveloped won’t have a negative impact on a new scholar’s reputation.
An untenured scholar is developing a scholarly identity for the first time, and is figuring out how to present arguments in a scholarly format for the first time. You do have to think about how to present yourself to the world. New writers are not always in the best position to know what is in solid shape (though still a draft) and what remains problematic, and so needs to be worked out before it is distributed widely. Sometimes a very smart, promising scholar will have a piece that has half-baked arguments or methodological errors. It is better to hear about such problems in a more discreet setting. Some readers, encountering an initial piece with clear errors, may give you a second look later on. But everyone is busy and there is too much to read. They might think of you as a sloppy scholar and overlook later works.
I would find a trusted senior colleague (at your own school or another school) who can advise you about when a paper is ready to post. Even though I’ve been in the biz for a long time, I usually don’t post a new paper until I have workshopped it at least once, or I’ve received comments from folks who would notice serious missteps.
One of the keys is to figure out how to get the feedback you need. I’m very troubled by the argument sometimes made around the blogosphere that untenured faculty shouldn’t do workshops, which strikes me as completely wrong. But if you feel that you can’t workshop a paper at your own law school, then you should create a workshop on your own, perhaps inviting scholars from around town to a dinner at your home, at which you present a paper. Or send your paper to your law school buddies, and organize a workshop by conference call. (Then send them all a box of chocolates.) Anything to get good feedback.
Posted by: Mary Dudziak | May 8, 2009 4:37:32 PM
I’m wondering, why are junior faculty so scared, so often? The answer to the question posed seems obvious to me: put it up when you think you would benefit from feedback, not when it’s perfect. Do you guys really think that giving a presentation on a less than stellar paper or posting something not finished would cause people to put you in the little black book of baddies — something which all senior faculty members keep? And even if they do keep such a book, why should you care if you’re in it?
Posted by: Vladimir | May 8, 2009 2:56:27 PM
In 1993 or so, I was the general counsel to a business that was a division of a very large corporation. The way large corporations often work is that the senior management (CEO and assorted C-level executives, like the CFO, CLO, CIO, etc.) swoop into town and conduct a “business review” in which the divisional executives tell a story about the business, usually with an mind-numbing stack of too-dense Power Point slides. Even though this exercise is about 85% show-and-tell or worse, once in a while the senior management asks really good searching “cut to the chase” kinds of questions that require courageous answers. I was sitting on the divisional side of the table, and the CEO asked the divisional managers (addressing us as a group) one of those questions that required some cojones to give a honest answer (in part because it involved – “we don’t really know, but we are taking a big chance….”). There was stone silence and uncomfortable looks around the table. That is careerism at work – losing sight of why one is doing what one is doing in favor of not rocking the boat of one’s career path.
Or at the point of a crisis, somebody (perhaps a lawyer) needs to buck the groupthink of a meeting and say something nobody’s said before, taking the chance it will sound foolish (which it rarely does). (Does that sound familiar? Enron? SEC staff on Madoff? Etc.)
It seems to me the appropriate time to post something to SSRN is when YOU think you are ready to say something. That may mean that you’ve vetted it or workshopped it, or it may not, but the one thing that it ought not depend on is its impact on a tenure decision. Taken to its extreme, you don’t workshop until something is complete, or until you think what you’ve written is perfect? Does that mean that if a faculty member stops you in the hallway and says “tell me what you’ve working on” and it’s still kind of half-baked, you don’t say anything? Seems to me that’s also a likely formula for NOT getting three articles written in six years.
Every time you open your mouth in an organizational setting, it’s about taking risk. The irony is that I’ve been in three different kinds of organizations, big law firm, big corporation, and law faculty, and I can’t see that there is any difference at all in terms of the tendency to careerism. There is an organizational model called a “learning organization” in which the leaders and those who are led engage all the time (because there’s no good single answer) with the polarities of careerist conservatism (with its source in not wanting to do something dumb) and random dilettantism (with its source in precisely the “why we write” inclinations of the preceding post). I’ve been amazed to hear associate deans of research take the very conservative pole; when I was a GC, I wanted people working with me who had the ability to discern among great ideas, great brainstorming snippets (advertised as such), and just wasting time (or being a constant pain in the ass), and the courage to stand behind their own ability to do so.
What concerns me about law school is that we should be teaching and modeling precisely the judgment we want our students to make: when to take the risk to speak and when not. That ought not to depend on whether one is tenured or untenured, partner or associate.
Sorry for the rant – I think the pendulum is way over on the conservative side.
Posted by: Jeff Lipshaw | May 8, 2009 12:29:36 PM
I post on SSRN after acceptance, and after the first round of edits in response to peer review. At this point is is more polished than the original, but can be changed in response to comments from SSRN-downloads. Thoughts?
Posted by: untenured prof | May 8, 2009 11:05:57 AM