almost no philosophers deserve tenure in PhD-granting philosophy departments. [Book imperativists are compelled to] think philosophers have poor scholarly standards ... all because they don’t require monographs for tenure.

...[T]he monograph-for-tenure standard is not universal in academe. It’s not even universal in the humanities. The idea that monographs and monographs alone can serve as guarantors of scholarly integrity bespeaks a particularly parochial view of the scholarly world.

Personally, I’m not against monographs. I like many of them, and I own lots of ‘em too. Furthermore, the [MLA] Task Force [on the subject, of which Berube was a part] is not calling for all scholars to refrain from emulating books like Mimesis or The Mirror and the Lamp. We’re simply trying to make the case for multiple pathways to tenure and promotion, some — but not all — of which would involve monographs.

Many readers have undoubtedly realized what I am only now coming to appreciate: the balance of [university] reading lists is shifting from scholarly monographs to articles. This is particularly true of syllabi for graduate students, who must be trained in the latest scholarship, which is often in article form. But I suspect it is becoming the case for undergraduate courses as well, especially as we begin to dig into the archive of now classic articles that are often well-suited for that level of study.

...Beyond its value as a means of encountering and thus appreciating scholarship of the past, I would suggest that the scholarly article deserves increased esteem for four additional reasons. First, as I've noted, articles are now both accessible and durable in ways that used to be ascribed to monographs and books. If you want your work to last, to have it read easily by students and colleagues alike, publish it in journals. This all may change, of course, once the Google electronic publishing venture comes to fruition: then books may be as available as journal articles are now. But this project is some time off, and how it will ultimately pan out is anyone's guess. Until then, the article rules.


... [J]ournals remain the best outlet for original research. In the social sciences, this has always been the case. I can certainly understand historians' misgivings about going this route. For one thing, historical argumentation and reconstruction often require the sustained length of a book. But along with the venerable book, there has always been a privileged role for the article, especially when historians want to speak primarily to their peers. Too often we tend to think of articles as second-best, as incidental publications paving the way for the book. In this new environment, perhaps historians — including tenure committees — ought to rethink how we assign professional value to article-length publications.

This leads to my final point. We should consider articles as more than just good vehicles for disseminating specialized research; they are also well-suited for the kind of essay-length historical arguments that can have pathbreaking and paradigm-shifting effects. We all can cite the names of historians who have had their primary impact in our fields through essays. Indeed, some of the most influential historical interpretations have been expressed through the essay form, from Frederick Jackson Turner's "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" to Joan Scott's "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis." It seems to me that now more than ever — when specialization and specialized concerns have made synthetic work very difficult — the historical essay ought to be looked upon as a means of engaging with large questions, presenting bold interpretations, or perhaps thinking out loud about what direction we want our fields to take.