Dual Authorship - Literature paper

[Hige]

I am currently in the process of applying for graduate programs in East Asian Studies in the U.S. and as such I wrote a new writing sample for my application (on a Japanese short story). Also, I am currently a student at a Japanese university. One of my letter writers reviewed the sample and gave some good remarks about it.

 

Last night, I met with him and he asked if I had considered trying to get the writing sample published. I had not even considered this, but he said that if I was interested in having it published in Japan he was pretty certain that it could happen. He said there were two places that I could decide to have it published, one is the University's bulletin and as he is a member of the faculty/review committee he was certain it would get published. The other was a peer-reviewed cultural studies journal in Japan. 

 

I was rather excited by the notion, but there was a catch - I would have to share authorship on the paper with him. The reason is that for for the university bulletin, only faculty can publish in it. For the peer-reviewed journal, you have to be a member of the association and it would cost like $700 to publish in it (though he said he would use his research funds from the school to cover all this). This peer-reviewed journal is the one I was more interested in.

 

Thus, regardless of which publication I would choose to go with, both our names would be attached to the article. I would of course be first author. 

My question is: is dual authorship something you see in the humanities or it is to be avoided? I know with STEM stuff it is common, but I don't recall seeing it before in my research. I like the idea of having something published before I enter school and it seems pretty much guaranteed it would happen. However, I wonder if having the article published as such would be a benefit or not. 

 

I am still very new to the grad school game, so I don't want to make any silly mistakes right out the gate, I'd appreciate any thoughts. 

[dr. t]

Dual authorship is something the humanities is really struggling over.

 

If you're applying for graduate programs, though, I'd say go for it. It's early enough in the game that it certainly won't hurt, and it seems like a choice between publishing and not.

[AdjunctOverload]

If you do decide to share your publication for the sake of getting it published, make sure that you are listed in the first author position.

 

Also, if you do publish it as a dual author paper, realize that you cannot use it as a writing sample submission for your grad applications -- they require single author writing samples (almost always) because on dual author papers, they have no way of telling what you wrote, what are your ideas, what you collaborated on, etc.

[Karajan]

You should go for it.  I'd say that the peer-reviewed journal would be the better option. 

[Hige]

Thanks for your advice everyone. Sounds like this can be a good thing. 

 

I think I am going to go with the peer-reviewed journal. It won't be submitted until April-ish, so I should already have my decisions from my schools. While I did submit it as my writing sample for this application cycle. The next time I submit a writing sample for PhD programs, I reckon I will have some newer and better to submit. 

 

Thanks again.