October 21, 2009 – 5:08 pm
My colleague Neil McLaughlin has a blog post over at Canada’s Academic Matters that argues that it is unethical to require students to buy your own books, or at least to profit from the sale of those books:
There are, of course, good pedagogical reasons why a professor might want to assign a book they have [...]
September 17, 2009 – 1:54 pm
I’ve been asked to write an article for the Annual Review of Sociology. In fact I was asked to do it last year, but had to postpone because I couldn’t get around to it–which is what’s worrying me this time around too. It’s a daunting task to digest and organize (not to mention find!) all [...]
With all the discussion about journals, submitting, and reviewing, there has been little discussion about the revise-and-resubmit response letter….
What is necessary to include in a response letter to the editors and reviewers? What is overkill? How long have your letters been? Have you written separate letters for each reviewer? How do you explain away changes [...]
A PC user is thinking about making the switch to Mac. Because all the qualitative analysis software, such as Nvivo and Atlas, works only on Windows, this person is planning to use Parallels to run Windows on her Mac. Any insight out there about how well this works, whether there are unforeseen oddities or headaches? [...]
A reader asks:
Given the choice, is it better to have a book published by a publisher who would place the book in a series (edited by scholars from a related discipline, not sociology), or one who would place it in the general sociology list? Assuming the presses are quite comparable in terms of reputation and [...]
When I was in grad school, someone I knew submitted an article to ASR with a cover letter suggesting a few reviewers who might be good for the article. The rejection came back in a snide letter noting that it was reject even though it was sent to some of “your hand-picked reviewers.” It strongly [...]
This question comes from a professional editor who has a PhD in sociology. What do people see as the ethical boundaries for editors particularly with respect to students or people on the job market? At one extreme, there is ghost writing. This is part of the commercial publishing business, but is obviously cheating and unethical [...]
February 25, 2009 – 6:13 pm
A reader asks for help finding a particular sort of survey data:
Specifically, I need datasets that ask respondents whether they have experienced X thing and also ask whether they know someone who has experienced X thing. So, for example: Q1: Have you ever been abducted by aliens? Q2: Do you know anyone who has been [...]
February 17, 2009 – 7:13 am
We all have to do it: meet people we don’t know and spend a small bit of time with them. Whether it’s at a conference reception or at an office party. Or perhaps you really need to beef up your small talk skills in a hurry when you land a job interview. Do the scatterbrains [...]
January 16, 2009 – 8:45 am
Jenn Lena makes a special request:
I am also on the graduate admissions committee, and this is only one of several ethical/moral/professional conflicts I’m facing. Any chance I can commission a “Ask a Scatterbrain” on this topic–hints and guidelines for evaluating graduate admissions files? I’d love to have access to, and contribute to, collective wisdom. More [...]
January 14, 2009 – 10:52 am
So, what do people think when they see that someone has written a textbook? Egad! Has she lost her mind!? What a waste of time! or Wow, a textbook! What a great idea! Something in between, perhaps?
January 12, 2009 – 8:22 pm
I’m posting this for New Soc Prof who raised the question in her own blog. What suggestions or advice do you have about teaching research methods and, in particular, what texts do you like, and why? Have you had good success with particular approaches or syllabi? Do you want to warn people off books or [...]
January 9, 2009 – 1:43 pm
Because inclement weather is a given around these parts during the winter, I’m having to switch up the first day of my social inequality class a bit. Because I’ve found scatterbrains so helpful with course related questions before, I thought it would be a good idea to pose this one here as well.
September 29, 2008 – 6:07 am
In a comment on the job talk thread, I confessed that I struggle to communicate with students what exactly I am looking for when I want them to make explicit their theoretical contribution. My struggle usually comes when students have an interesting case that they want to study and perhaps a field site tied to [...]
