Junior Scholars Research Articles

A reception study of the articles published in English for Specific Purposes from 1990–1999

EAP practitioners in advanced courses have often focused on assisting junior scholars who are non-native speakers of English with their attempts to publish in English. Today, however, university administrators increasingly rely on post-publication data such as citation records. We therefore suggest that identifying heavily cited and largely uncited papers would be an addition to the advanced writing instructor’s toolkit. In fact, many proposals have been made to account for citational success and failure. Disentangling these variables is complex and typically requires in-depth knowledge of the chosen sub-field. Here we examine the reception histories of a decade’s worth of main articles in the English for Specific Purposes Journal, using the Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science databases. Analysis of the 15 most cited articles indicates that placement in an issue, gender, first language, author status, and provenance are not major determinants. Instead, area of research interest (i.e., discoursal features of academic text) and type of ESP (i.e., EAP) were the main predisposing factors. We then conduct a close analysis of the two top 1990s papers (both, incidentally, written by women whose first language is not English and working in non-Anglophone settings). We conclude with some implications of these findings for EAP practitioners and their “customers”.

Manuscript Makeovers

This study is a rhetorical analysis of revisions made to the introductions of dissertations successfully transformed into monographs. The author compares parallel passages taken from six dissertation–book pairs representing a cross-section of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. He interprets changes from dissertation to book with reference to the body of literature written for aspiring book authors by experienced scholarly editors. The author's objective is to put their editorial advice on an empirical footing by illustrating it with these texts ‘grown in the wild.’ His hope is that junior scholars will find the analysis instructive when they turn a revisionary eye on their own dissertations and that scholarly editors will find it useful when they prepare publishing workshops for junior faculty and graduate students.

Manuscript Makeovers: A Rhetorical Study of Revisions Made to Dissertations Turned into Books

This study is a rhetorical analysis of revisions made to the introductions of dissertations successfully transformed into monographs. The author compares parallel passages taken from six dissertation–book pairs representing a cross-section of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. He interprets changes from dissertation to book with reference to the body of literature written for aspiring book authors by experienced scholarly editors. The author's objective is to put their editorial advice on an empirical footing by illustrating it with these texts 'grown in the wild.' His hope is that junior scholars will find the analysis instructive when they turn a revisionary eye on their own dissertations and that scholarly editors will find it useful when they prepare publishing workshops for junior faculty and graduate students.

The Cold War within the Cold War

The Cold War within the Cold War Lynne Viola (bio) David Engerman, Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts. ix + 459 pp. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN-13 978-0195324860. $34.95. Know Your Enemy was all the talk of the 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) convention. In scenes worthy of Vanity Fair, groups of graduate students and junior scholars huddled around single copies of the book, scanning indexes for names and reading aloud passages about their favorite and less-than-favorite senior colleagues. At the same time, a few more seasoned scholars could be glimpsed sitting quietly in dark corners imbibing the book, alternating facial expressions between the academic smirk and carefully concealed looks of injured vanity. I only received a copy of the book some time after the convention, but if I had purchased the book there, surely I would have carried it into the privacy of my hotel room. Few academic books create the kind of visible stir that Know Your Enemy did at the annual meeting of the AAASS. Although the motivations behind the buzz varied wildly, as one may expect, this is a book worthy of the attention of the field. David C. Engerman should be applauded for stepping voluntarily into the minefield that was Soviet studies. A historian of the United States well known to Russianists, Engerman has produced a fascinating narrative history of the creation and development of Soviet (interchangeably used in his account with Russian) studies. My first paragraph aside, this is not a gossipy or even a chatty book but a balanced and scholarly study of the evolution of our field against the backdrop of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. [End Page 682] Engerman begins his study roughly where he left off in his excellent and very well-received Modernization from the Other Shore.1 That book detailed the fascination that Russia, and later the Soviet Union, held for U.S. intellectuals from the late 19th century to the eve of World War II as they alternated between particularist (Russia as sui generis) and “universalist” (Western, sometimes American) understandings of the Russian path of development. Know Your Enemy continues the story of these alternating views of Russia but focuses more on the development of Soviet studies in the United States during the Cold War and the field’s dual aspirations “to serve both Mars and Minerva” (1), both the state and the world of scholarship, as well as the tensions between area studies and the separate disciplines. Engerman concludes his book with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the accompanying decline in area studies approaches to Russia and the Soviet Union. The marriage of Mars and Minerva in the figurative hall of Soviet studies took place in a world very different from today. World War II had featured the mobilization of intellectuals and academics (on all sides of the conflagration) into the service of the state (and military) as the world faced total war. Moving freely between academia, on the one hand, and government and military service, on the other, academics dedicated themselves to the national cause. Mars and Minerva merged during the war and went on to animate, influence, and ultimately stunt the development of area studies in the United States. This wartime pattern continued into the postwar period as hot war became cold and the Soviet Union replaced Nazi Germany as the national foe. Engerman writes that “Russian studies, the first such area program, was a wartime innovation in teaching and research that set the pattern for postwar universities” (3). Soviet studies were thus born in war and enmity and led by a generation of scholars who saw themselves engaged in a (very American) moral crusade against communism and the Soviet Union. Although there was “no single Cold War party line” (5), nonpartisanship or attempts at “objectivity” would have been viewed as defeatist if not something worse in the first two decades after the war. The founding centers of Soviet studies in the United States were the Russian Research Center at Harvard and the Russian Institute at Columbia...

Research and Capacity Building for Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases: The Need for a Different Approach

Research and Capacity Building for Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases: The Need for a Different Approach

Social Issues in Management Division Dissertation Award Competition for 2010: Acknowledging Exemplary Research Processes and Outcomes in Doctoral Study

This special dissertation forum, the first of its type to be published in this journal, reports the outcome and process for the 2010 annual Dissertation Award Competition for the Social Issues in Management (SIM) Division of the Academy of Management. The special forum comprises this introductory essay by the chair of the award committee and three dissertation abstracts by the award finalists. In addition, each finalist has provided a thoughtful essay reflecting on their experiences of the research process as junior scholars. The dissertation abstracts, with reflection essays, are in alphabetical order by last name of award finalist.

Editor's Column: Intertextualities, Cosmopolitanisms, and Comparative Literature

This issue brings together the best of the SCLA, with contributors representing long standing members and former officers, junior newcomers to the organization, mid-career newcomers to our conferences, students (some as early in their career as masters students), and junior scholars. No less significant, it shows the extent to which the SCLA has fostered a diverse membership--senior scholars whose attendance at our conferences serves to mentor younger scholars, young scholars who travel great distances to participate within a constructive ambiance, and students who come to the SCLA in order to learn how to present a conference paper as well as (at times) bring them to the point of publication. SCLA conferences are enhanced by regional, national, and international scholars; students, independent scholars, and professors. Although I have had considerable experience in both national and international comparative literature associations, I am always astounded by how the SCLA serves such a varied population. I began my publishing career with The Comparatist. The editor at that time, John Burt Foster, carefully nursed my initial work into publishable form. I presented one of my first papers at the SCLA (even though I was based in the North at the time) because it was an environment in which a young scholar could actually receive constructive feedback. It has been a great pleasure to give back to this organization during these last four years. This issue is the last that I will produce as Editor. I wish to take this opportunity to thank the Advisory Board for all the support they have given me during my tenure, and especially for their letters of support for continued funding of this journal during these difficult economic times. It has been a genuine pleasure to work with my book review and managing editors as well as the production team from the University of North Carolina Press. In addition to its book reviews, this issue includes a series of articles dealing with the interrelated themes of intertextuality and cosmopolitanism. Essays span the cross-cultural and inter-arts influences in Cuban, French, Belgian, Turkish, American, British, Spanish, Russian, and German works. The volume also includes two clusters of conference papers. One cluster, dealing specifically with intertextuality, was organized by SCLA members and presented at the 2009 ACLA Conference in New Orleans. The other cluster, in keeping with The Comparatists commitment to publish graduate students and junior scholars, focuses on the international reception of the work on Edgar Allan Poe. This cluster also originated in a panel presented at the ACLA 2009. The organizers of these panels introduce these clusters and their contributors in separate introductions. The issue opens with an article written by Alfred Lopez who examines Jose Marti's reading of Walt Whitman. Lopez brings Marti and Whitman together at Madison Square Theater in 1887, where the Cuban author went to hear the iconic American poet speak on Abraham Lincoln. He juxtaposes the international and interdisciplinary breadth of Marti's learning with the monolingual Whitman as a backdrop for a larger discussion of Marti's posthumous reception as a political and ideological writer, first at the hands of Battista and Castro and later by postcolonial and New American Studies scholars, who tend to view him as anti-nationalist and as a Pan-Caribbean revolutionary--an odd persona, Lopez notes, for Cuba's most famous nationalist revolutionary. Lopez examines the paradox of how Marti admired Whitman, a writer who celebrated what he feared and hated most about America: its status as a rising empire. The author questions whether Marti's praise of Whitman is really the critique of the American poet's imperialistic rhetoric, as many recent scholars claim, or an effort to build a Marti to fit critical agendas. John Pizer investigates the use of Haiti as a trope in German literature from the early eighteenth century to the present day. …

Seeds of Innovation in Accounting Scholarship

Hopwood and other senior scholars have suggested that accounting scholarship has become stagnant and lacks the spirit of innovation that previously motivated the discipline. In this essay I build on these authors’ assertions to address two questions. First, what causal forces account for this state of affairs? Second, given such forces, what can be done to improve matters? I argue that intellectual stagnancy in accounting scholarship is manifested in (1) excessively derivative research, (2) overemphasis on “career management” among junior scholars, (3) limited scholarly discussion and debate, and (4) too much emphasis on accounting standard setters to define our research and teaching agendas. The causal forces driving the evolution of accounting scholarship over the past quarter century include: (1) large real salary increases for assistant professors in accounting, (2) changes in graduate business education that have de-emphasized doctoral education, (3) a relative shift towards financial reporting in accounting research and teaching, and (4) changes in the way research quality is assessed. Changes in accounting scholarship thus have built cumulatively from individual actions that are locally optimal but have been associated with unintended and unforeseeable cumulative consequences for the discipline as a whole. A final section summarizes several suggestions put forth at a May 2011 strategic retreat for what the American Accounting Association (AAA) can do to improve this state of affairs over the long run.

A Conversation with Michael R. Matthews: The Contribution of History and Philosophy of Science to Science Teaching and Research

The following conversation with Michael R. Matthews took place in May and June of 2010 via e-mail after his visit to Istanbul and Ankara for giving seminars on “The Contribution of History and Philosophy of Science to Science Teaching and Research” at Bogazici University and Hacettepe University. Our conversation included topics such as Michael’s educational background, science teacher education in relation to history and philosophy of science, worldviews, nature of science, constructivism, possible future directions for research, and advices for junior scholars and doctoral students. We believe that Michael’s generous answers to our questions will be of interest to all science education researchers around the world.

Latin@ advocacy in the hyphen: faculty identity and commitment in a Hispanic‐serving institution

This study examines our experiences as female junior scholars with multicultural backgrounds teaching at the same Hispanic‐serving institution. As education scholars with mixed‐heritage families, we identify with the commitment to serving Latinos and the number of mixed‐heritage people in the USA. The election of Barack Obama, whose racial background is both black and white, to the US presidency signifies the emergence of mixed‐heritage people as a demographic presence in this country. Our research suggests that more understanding is needed about the experiences of mixed‐heritage faculty in academia, as well as the ways in which faculty from any background may develop multiple affiliations with cultural communities and pursue professional agendas related to communities that they do not neatly fit into. Despite this variation in backgrounds and research agendas, we share our efforts in advancing Latin@ educational attainment.

Teaching Uncomfortable Subjects in the Classics Classroom

We propose a workshop designed to follow up on the very successful roundtable and workshop on teaching rape at the 2008 and 2009 meetings of the APA. We wish to broaden the discussion to encompass a wider range of uncomfortable issues – uncomfortable for teachers or for students or for both. Ancient texts raise a variety of issues - slavery, infanticide, adoption, abortion, abuse, incest and domestic violence as well as rape - that may be difficult to discuss in a classroom where some students will have had personal experiences that might generate distress or make discussion difficult. The emphasis of the session will be on raising awareness of unforeseen difficulties and sharing strategies for dealing withose difficulties. Four brief presentations from classicists teaching in the UK and the US, both senior and junior scholars, men and women, will tackle a range of sensitive issues, as follows.Paper #1: ‘How to Teach Gender and Crime in Ancient Greece’ This is a report from two UK scholars on their experience in teaching an MA level module on ‘Gender and Crime in Ancient Greece’, whose syllabus includes rape, infanticide, domestic violence, and ‘honour’ killings. These scholars are undertaking a funded research project to investigate techniques and strategies employed by teachers of sensitive subjects in other disciplinary areas such as Psychology, Social Anthropology, Education and Criminology. Paper #2: ‘Homophobia, Homoeroticism, and Handling Charged Discussions in the Classroom’In this presentation, a young US scholar will suggest some guidelines for dealing with issues of homophobia, homoeroticism, and pederasty in the classroom.Paper #3: ‘Slavery in the US classroom’A senior US classicist will explore the guilt, denial and anger she has observed when the topic of slavery arises in her classroom. She proposes that a more complex and nuanced understanding of the racializing of slavery in modernity is available through an examination of ancient slavery and its theorization.Paper #4: ‘Teaching Ancient Comedy: Race Matters’In this presentation, another senior US scholar will propose ways of presenting slavery and the torture of slaves when teaching ancient comedy along with strategies for getting students to confront these topics in a productive way. Following the four 15 minute presentations, the two organizers will act as respondents to the presentations and will then stimulate discussion from the audience. We would request a room with a non-hierarchical seating arrangement, ideally a round table, as experience suggests that that maximizes the participation rate. Judging from last year’s experience at the workshop on teaching rape, the audience is just as likely as the presenters to have valuable material to share.

Rezension zu: Christoph Palmert, Suzan Douma, Matthias Meitzler, Johannes Wahl: Devianz als Alltag. Eine wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit Prostitution, Freiern und Stripclubs im Frankfurter Bahnhofsviertel. Norderstedt: Books on Demand 2009.

The volume at hand contains contributions from four junior scholars who have engaged in a scholarly examination of prostitution carried out in the area surrounding the train station in Frankfurt am Main. As the title of the work suggests, they classify their studies under the category of “deviance” analysis. The methodological approach used – fieldwork – seems entirely appropriate for confronting dominant conceptions of the deviant nature of prostitution with empiricism. Unfortunately, the volume fails to link its ethnographic observations with a scientific analysis of the terms “deviance” and “norms” (and their social construction). Moreover, a consideration of the relationship between space, gender, and politics in light of the special case of prostitution in the area around the Frankfurt train station is sorely missed.

Everyday Revolutions: Eighteenth-Century Women Transforming Public and Private (review)

Reviewed by: Everyday Revolutions: Eighteenth-Century Women Transforming Public and Private Kristi L. Krumnow Diane E. Boyd and Marta Kvande , eds. Everyday Revolutions: Eighteenth-Century Women Transforming Public and Private (Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 2008). Pp. 287. $58.50. The goal of the collaborative project by Diane E. Boyd and Marta Kvande is not only to explore further the revolutionary moments that women, both literary and real, have enacted, but to reevaluate prior scholarship on the public/private binary. The collection of nine essays, written primarily by junior scholars, expounds on the grey area between the two spheres, highlighting in depth the complexity of binarisms in several ways. First, this work treats the topic itself; second, it is coedited by two scholars: one younger and the other more seasoned; third, the collection highlights newer readings over older ones; fourth, the collection is intentionally "stepping outside of hierarchy" (back flap) in academic publication. Binaries highly conflated within the collection itself (in title, editorship, and essay authorship) reveal the exactness with which people understand the bifurcated world of public and private. The collection exposes not only revolutionary moments but also periods that endured and helped to encourage social reform where necessary. For example, the essay by Brett C. McInelly focuses on Methodist women who broke through gendered spheres to profess their faith, unashamedly prizing individual faith over societal restrictions. McInelly's essay contributes to the collection as it breaks through the academic binary of political and religious, one that tends in effect to prioritize the political over the religious, which, he argues, proves the "other[ing]" (136) of religious experience within academic circles. Aruna Krishnamurthy exposes how the poet Mary Collier disrupts the standard social conventions of the binary. She argues that the poet deliberately confounds notions of binary division between paid male laborers and unpaid women domestic farm tenders when society institutionalizes "the new competitive spirit between laboring men and women" (71). Allistaire Tallent's reading of French memoir-novel prostitutes as heroines calls into question a public/private divide when the first-person narration is written by male authors. These "hack writers" (119) were, Tallent proves, part of an underground [End Page 282] literary sphere that, in hopes of subversive, clandestine publication, "ventriloquized" (119) women's voices and private experiences. The heroine-prostitute also blurred the rigid binary by conducting business in private spaces and equally provoking private moments in public. Although the previous essays treat religious, social, and poetic themes, the majority in the collection is based and centered on the novel. Emily Smith elucidates the binary of art/nature in eighteenth-century writing when carving words into trees becomes revolutionary vandalism: engraving symbolizes a violent incision into yet another binary, that of the English/Canadian geographical divide. Furthermore, the epistolary genre of the novel destabilizes the geographical divide with the exchange of trans-Atlantic missives that undermine dominant discourses of love, sexuality, and linguistics. The epistolary form reappears in an essay by Marta Kvande in which she discusses the ruses played in both Evelina and Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph that counter the rash delineation of public/private. The letter writers wittingly play both spheres to their advantage, coyly using figures of speech as well as "a serious display of disobedience" (171). Two chapters in the collection cleverly use literal images to deconstruct the paradigm. In Diane E. Boyd's essay, she convincingly proves how the coach as chronotope in Belinda represents a barrier breakdown, as it goes between the public and private, conforming at times to the needs of both. Likewise, Shea Stuart identifies artistic framing of public/private in Mansfield Park to explain how manor houses divided the public from the private by framing natural borders for the private purposes of scenic "emparkment" (209). Mansfield Park becomes its own "liminal space" (207) in relying on itself as private to re-create its own public functions. The first and last articles appropriately "bookended" (24) the collection. Cheryl Nixon's work shows how, despite being legally voiceless, women defied the public/private paradigm in legal matters of the time. Using literature alongside legal archives, the author convincingly demonstrates in which manner real and fictional women of...

What Lies Ahead: Envisioning New Futures for Feminist Philosophy

Thanks in large part to the record of scholarship fostered by Hypatia, feminist philosophers are now positioned not just as critics of the canon, but as innovators advancing uniquely feminist perspectives for theorizing about the world. As relatively junior feminist scholars, the five of us were called upon to provide some reflections on emerging trends in feminist philosophy and to comment on its future. Despite the fact that we come from diverse subfields and philosophical traditions, four common aims emerged in our collaboration as central to the future of feminist philosophies. We seek to: 1) challenge universalist and essentialist frameworks without ceding to relativism; 2) center coloniality and embodiment in our analyses of the intermeshed realities of race and gender by shifting from oppression in the abstract to concrete cosmologies and struggles, particularly those of women of color and women of colonized communities across the globe; 3) elaborate the materialities of thought, being, and community that must succeed atomistic conceptions of persons as disembodied, individually constituted, and autonomous; 4) demonstrate what is distinctive and valuable about feminist philosophy, while fighting persistent marginalization within the discipline. In our joint musings here, we attempt to articulate how future feminist philosophies might advance these aims, as well as some of the challenges we face.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Between Revolutions: Re‐Appraising the Restoration in Britain

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Between Revolutions: Re‐Appraising the Restoration in Britain

Expanding Access Through Doctoral Education: Perspectives from Two Participants of the Sisters of the Academy Research Boot Camp

Expanding Access Through Doctoral Education:Perspectives from Two Participants of the Sisters of the Academy Research Boot Camp Dannielle Joy Davis (bio) and Joanne Sutherland (bio) When pondering the term boot camp, one often envisions the rigorous physical training soldiers endure prior to military service. Boot camps challenge individuals to exceed limits that may never have been tested and develop physical, mental, and emotional stamina to prepare for future arduous tasks. The Sisters of the Academy (SOTA) Research Boot Camp exemplifies such an environment, featuring strict training for the "academic battlegrounds" of doctoral attainment and the professoriate. It seeks to develop the intellectual muscles of women who have enlisted to pursue the doctorate and academic careers, stretch them beyond their zones of familiarity, and validate commitment to their research interests. Black women have made phenomenal strides in their quests for higher education, but have yet to reach demographic parity in the ivory tower (Evans, 2007). As such, the camp trains its participants for active duty in the academy, from the dissertation writing stage, toward tenure, and beyond. Significance of the Program In their work, Exposing the "Culture of Arrogance" in the Academy: A Blueprint for Increasing Faculty Satisfaction in Higher Education, Thompson and Louque (2005) found that the majority of Blacks in academia have experienced the sting of undermining from colleagues and administration (64% and 58%, respectively), marginalization at department meetings (57%), and professional jealousy (70%). Such hostile climates call for a heightened need of Black women to establish and maintain strong support systems (Gregory, 1999). However, chances of developing such connections on most American campuses are challenging due to the low numbers of the population in these settings. Black, non-Hispanic women comprise only 2.7% of all full-time faculty in the United States, compared to White women who are 31.6% of full-time faculty (U.S. Department of Education, 2005, cited in Holmes, Land, & Hinton-Hudson, 2008). The SOTA Boot Camp addresses occupational stressors and underrepresentation by providing mentorship, a key component in the retention and success of minorities in White spaces (Davis, 2008a & 2008b; Owens, 2004), as well as a structured environment to facilitate writing productivity. By fostering mentorship, the camp works to "replac[e] prevailing interpretations of how we [as Black women] are [End Page 606] supposed to view ourselves with oppositional perspectives that not only redefine notions of marginality but reclaim marginal locations as places of . . . intellectual, political, and ethical strength" (Collins, 1998, p. 5). Preparing for Active Duty: An Overview of the Program SOTA is an organization whose mission centers upon facilitating the success of Black women in higher education. The organization's goals include creating networks for Black women to promote success in teaching, scholarly inquiry, and community service and developing programs and relationships to enhance members' professional development. To address the underrepresentation of African and African American women in doctoral study and the professoriate, SOTA sponsors the Research Boot Camp, a week-long workshop geared towards enhancing the research skills, writing productivity, and professional networks of doctoral candidates and junior faculty members of the group. Senior scholars facilitate workshops designed to assist doctoral students in the conceptualization and design of their dissertations. Each student participant is linked with senior and junior scholar mentors to cultivate mentoring relationships. Participants in the 2007 Boot Camp consisted of both doctoral students and junior scholars. The camp catapulted us to the next level as it transcended every aspect our lives by countering myths related to the capabilities of racial minority women. Dispelling myths was demonstrated by the extraordinary senior scholars who availed themselves as mentors on our journeys toward academic careers in various disciplines. Each participant's assignment of a mentor enabled them to receive personalized attention and address the individual challenges we faced at various stages of doctoral proposal, dissertation, or manuscript completion. Each participant strengthened her resolve to accomplish goals during the camp experience, be it completing a dissertation proposal, book chapter, or journal article. This article provides the perspectives of two participants. One was a student who attended the boot camp and the other served as a junior mentor and faculty participant. Their brief stories are the focus of this article...

Great Mentors: Featuring Joseph Cropsey, David Easton, and Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph

The Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession wants to encourage more members of the APSA to participate in the mentoring program. Mentoring is not just for junior scholars; mentoring goes on one's entire professional career. Senior scholars can help in immeasurable ways as a mentee moves through different stages in the profession, becoming a senior scholar, moving through the administrative ranks—department chair, dean, even president of the university of college—or pursues a career outside academia. Mentoring can be part of a formal program and narrowly focused on how to get published, do research, and improve teaching, but it also can be ad hoc, informal, and can include how one assumes a greater role in professional societies or politics in general. It also addresses integration of life choices, touching on the issues that are important to us as people as well as scholars, and how our roles as human beings relate to our identities as scholars and teachers. So the concept of mentoring is broad.

Reality check on career success and weak paradigms: chance still favors the hearty soul

AbstractIn an earlier article, we discussed the effects of dissensus and low paradigm development on the lives and scholarly successes of junior scholars. Our analysis painted a somewhat bleak picture, but our advice for moving forward was simple, actionable, and therefore hopeful. Based on the bleak picture that was painted, one particular aspect of our work, career‐level evaluation reliability, was recently critiqued. We respond to that critique here. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Young scholars in academia often seek to work in collaboration with top researchers in their field in pursuit of a successful career. While success in academia can be defined differently, everyone agrees that training with a well-known researcher can help lead to an efficacious career. This study aims to investigate whether collaborating with established scientists does, in fact, improve junior scholars’ chances of success. If not, what makes young scientists soar in their academic careers? We investigate this question by analyzing the effect of collaboration with a known-star on success of a young scholar. The results suggest that working with leading experts can lead to a successful career, but that it is not the only way. Researchers who were not fortunate enough to start their career with an elite researcher could still succeed through hard work and passion. These findings emerged from analyses of two discrete sets of well-known scholars on the career of newcomers, suggesting their strength and validity.

Women's Neuroethics? Why Sex Matters for Neuroethics

The Neuroethics Affinity Group of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) met for the third time in October 2007 to review progress in the field of neuroethics and consider high-impact priorities for the future. Closely aligned with ASBH's own goals of recruiting junior scholars to bioethics and mentoring them to successful careers, the Neuroethics Affinity Group placed a call for new ideas to be presented at the Group meeting, specifically by junior attendees. One group responded with the idea to probe a new direction for neuroethics focused on the neuroscience of gender differences. In the spirit of full disclosure, two of the authors are a student (Chalfin) and fellow (Murphy) of the program I formerly directed at Stanford University. The third (Karkazis) is junior faculty there. The intellectual ownership of the ideas in the report below, however, are entirely theirs. Like lit torches in a juggling act, there are many directions this project can go. The report is a snapshot of these authors' first iteration of the concept of women's neuroethics. Many thanks are extended to participants of the ASBH Neuroethics Affinity Group meeting whose enthusiasm and feedback was immensely helpful in shaping the concept and moving it ahead. —Judy Illes, Editor AJOB-Neuroscience