Help

General

Who can use PhilJobs?

Anyone can search for positions on PhilJobs. Anyone can advertise on PhilJobs as long as the ad satisfies the relevance and verification criteria below.

What is your relationship to PhilPapers and the American Philosophical Association?

PhilJobs:JFP is a partnership project between the American Philosophical Association and the PhilPapers Foundation, the organisation that is in charge of PhilPapers.

What is the difference between jobs and listings?

These are the same except that when an employer advertises multiple identical positions at once, there can be multiple jobs per listing.

What happens to expired ads?

Expired ads remain searchable and viewable, but they do not show in search results by default. Expired ads also stop being editable by the owner 48h after expiring.

What does the dagger symbol (†) mean?

The dagger refers to a job at an institution under censure by the AAUP or the APA. You can find a complete list of AAUP censured institutions and APA censured institutions on the APA website. You can also visit the AAUP website for information about specific cases.

What does the double dagger symbol (‡) mean?

The double dagger refers to a job at an institution that the US Department of Education's Office of Civil RIghts has recently found to be non-compliant with Title IX for sexual harassment. You can find more information on specific cases at the OCR website.

Do/will you support online submission of materials?

PhilJobs does not yet support online submission of materials, but we plan to move in that direction in future years.

Can I suggest a new feature?

We are glad to hear suggestions for further useful features, either via our feedback form (under "Contact Us") or at the PhilJobs discussion forum on PhilPapers.

Advertiser questions

What sorts of jobs can one advertise?

Any job that requires some professional expertise in philosophy, from research assistant jobs to full professor jobs.

How much do ads cost?

Please see this page.

Do you screen job ads?

Yes, we make sure that all ads submitted comply with our usage policy, including satisfaction with the APA's nondiscrimination statement.

How can I edit an ad I submitted?

Make sure you are signed in using the same account you used to submit the ad. Then go to the ad's details page and click the 'Edit' button in the top-right corner of the page. In case you forgot what account is associated with the ad you want to edit, see what it says under "submitted by" on the ad's details page.

You can also edit an ad by following the access link that was sent to you when it was approved.

Ads can be edited any time until they expire. Once an ad has expired, you have 48h hours to edit it (to, say, extend the deadline).

How does change notification work?

You have the option of notifying users of changes you make to an ad (only users that have saved the ad will receive the notification). This is achieved by ticking the appropriate option on the update form and entering an update description. Bear in mind that all users who have saved your ad will receive your message (and one might be your future colleague). In many cases, hundreds of users will receive the message.

Does an ad in PhilJobs: Jobs for Philosophers meet the government's advertising requirements for international hires?

The United States Department of Labor has certain requirements for applications for residency for non-US citizens, including that the position must be advertised in a national journal (print or online) for at least 30 days. Similar restrictions may exist in other nations. Because these requirements are not explicitly defined, it is unclear whether PhilJobs: Jobs for Philosophers qualifies; please consult an attorney or the appropriate government agency for more information.

Can I take my ad down temporarily?

Once an ad is posted, it can be seen, searched, bookmarked, and saved by job seekers. Also, if job seekers have set up alerts that match your ad, they will receive an email with a link to your ad. Because of this, ads can only be temporarily removed in unusual circumstances. Rather than take the ad down completely, we suggest that you edit your ad to let job seekers know what is happening or what to expect. If there is reason to remove the ad permanently, such as elimination or filling of the position, then you can expire your ad. Once an ad is expired, it cannot be made live again.

When should I submit my ad?

We accept ads year-around. However, it is preferable for the community if departments follow certain conventions. For tenure-track/continuing positions advertised in the second half of the calendar year, we recommend an application deadline of November 1 or later. It is further recommended that postings be submitted at least 30 days prior to the application deadline to ensure that candidates have ample time to apply.

Job seeker questions

Do you have a policy regarding discrimination?

Yes: we require all advertisers to abide by the APA's nondiscrimination policy.

How does searching by AOS/AOC work?

AOS/AOC areas include the most common areas listed in philosophy job advertisements, listed in four groups for convenience. Job advertisers have been asked to classify AOS and AOC by these areas as well as providing an explicit text version (which is sometimes more informative). The starred areas (e.g. ethics) are "clusters" which include further areas (e.g. metaethics) in turn. Searching on a cluster also returns jobs in any area within the cluster and vice versa. Every search returns open jobs. If you specify both AOS and AOC, each AOS is also included as an AOC.

How does searching by multiple factors work?

Searching is conjunctive across factors (e.g. job type, AOS) and disjunctive within a factor. So if you search by both job type and AOS, only jobs that match your criteria on all factors will be returned. If you check multiple options under job type, jobs that match any of these options will be deemed to match your criteria on that factor.

What are 'Save' and 'My Jobs'?

'My Jobs' is a user-specific list of jobs in which you are particularly interested, perhaps because you plan to apply to the job. To use the feature you must be logged in using your PhilPapers account. You can then save any job to your 'My Jobs' list by clicking 'Save' under any listing of the job. Jobs on this list can then be marked as 'Applied' once you have applied to them. Saving ads has the added benefit that you will be notified if an important change is made to an ad.

New Appointments in Philosophy

What is the purpose of this service?

The New Appointments in Philosophy service was set up jointly by the American Philosophical Association and the PhilPapers Foundation in order to (i) facilitate the availability of information about appointments throughout the philosophical community, and (ii) systematically gather demographic data about appointments in order to build a more accurate picture of the profession of philosophy and to help with issues of diversity and inclusiveness.

What appointment listings do you accept?

We accept listings of any appointment of faculty in departments of philosophy, as well as appointments of philosophy PhDs to other academic positions or other positions where they are functioning as a philosopher.

Do you accept listings for temporary appointments?

Yes, we accept listings for visiting positions, adjunct positions, post-docs and other fellowships, and so on. We do not accept listings for graduate students in temporary teaching positions.

What about appointments outside the US?

Listings for appointments anywhere in the world are welcome. We are aiming for fairly complete coverage at least in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

Who can submit an appointment?

Anyone can submit an appointment, but all appointments must be approved by the appointee and/or the employer before they are posted publicly. We especially encourage appointees, employers, and placement directors to submit appointments.

When should listings be submitted?

Listings should be submitted as soon as the appointment is finalized. We accept listings year-round.

What is the approval process?

Submissions must include institutional email addresses for the appointee and the employer. Both will be contacted for approval. We post an appointment when it has been approved by both the appointee and the employer, or when, after a reasonable period (usually 1-3 days) has passed, one party has approved it and the other has not responded. Both employer and appointee can make changes to the listing. We also ask the appointee to supply demographic data (which is kept confidential and used only for statistical purposes).

How can I correct a listing?

Employers and appointees are given the opportunity to correct listings as part of the approval process. To suggest corrections after an appointment has been posted or as someone other than the appointee or employer, please email [email protected].

In what ways can the database be accessed?

The main page displays all listings in reverse chronological order. Subsidiary pages (linked at the top) provide listings for four subcategories (senior/tenured, junior/tenure-track, fellowships, and other). RSS feeds for all five of these pages can be obtained from the right-hand column on each page.

There is also a simple search engine that can search for entries that contain certain expressions (including quoted multi-word expressions). Once the database is a bigger, we will provide a more powerful search engine that can query the database in more systematic ways. Every year or so we will also provide summaries of demographic and other data.

Where have you obtained your data?

In addition to data from submitters, we have also used listings from Brian Leiter's website Leiter Reports and from another service by Carolyn Dicey Jennings. We are grateful to Leiter and Dicey Jennings for their permission to use these listings and for the services they have provided.