A young scholar asks:
"How do you know when an article is finished? It's weird to put into words, but when do you get the sense an article is done. Moreover, it may be that established philosophers have a community of fellows to draw from, but there plenty of us who are not as established. So this question is from the author's point of view... When do you know you are done? And the article is ready for journal submission?"Comments and suggestions from readers are very welcome. When I was a PhD student at Chicago this was the kind of thing nobody paid any attention to. So, early in my career (when I was non-tenure-track) I followed the generous advice from my senior colleagues (especially at Wesleyan). Below the fold I share my current approach (for what it is worth).
My strategy is to wait with submitting a paper until I am sick of presenting a paper at workshops and conferences--a practice which allows me to develop and improve the paper over the course of a year or two. (I tend to work on more than one paper at a time. This is not for everybody obviously.) I also have a good (and often evolving) group of intellectual friends with whom I share drafts (and, of course, I use NewAPPS to try out ideas).
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