Monday, December 13, 2010
Blog LXIV (64): Another Question
Over the weekend I had a conversation with a friend. He had a manuscript that he was trying to get published. He had originally thought about publishing it as an article, but got an offer to publish it as a chapter in an edited volume. That got the two of us to thinking about what would be better from a professional point of view an article or a chapter? If it were a question between a book and an article there would be no question. The book would win. But, what is better for your career an article or a chapter? I would love to hear the views of those that read this blog.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I've been told that peer-reviewed pieces matter more, so the article would be better than a chapter in an edited volume (because, although edited, it's not peer-reviewed in the same way).
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, although it is as ever a UK perspective, the article would count for more, because those assessing know that chapters may be solicited and that reviewers of multi-author books will usually 'pass' or 'fail' such a book as a whole or not at all, so that weaker contributions may ride through peer review on the tails of better ones. Journal articles don't get the same routes through to print. It should be noted though that the last UK government Research Assessment Exercise (currently being redeveloped in a rebuild started by the last government here) ranked book chapters higher than articles in its scoring, so my perception probably isn't universal.
ReplyDelete