I’ll be participating in a professionalization workshop on publishing and looking for ideas on the types of topics we should cover. When it comes to journal publishing in particular, what kinds of questions would you hope to have answered? This can range anywhere from how to select or approach a potential collaborator to deciding on a journal.
What are related questions you would have for such a panel? What are related issues you wish someone would have discussed with you before you sent off your first paper for review? From the perspective of an editor/reviewer, what are issues you wish more authors would keep in mind?
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I assume that this is for graduate students?
I don’t know what the culture is like where you are, but if there is one thing that I wish that students at my graduate or current institution heard more often, it’s that what we see in journals is an end product and that a paper doesn’t have to look like that to be ready to send out. That said, a course paper will likely have to be reworked before submitting it somewhere, but it would be nice for students to see exactly what gets submitted or how papers look when first sent off. At least in my experience, some students hold on to fabulous - or at least publishable - papers way too long because they’re unfamiliar with what “ready to send out” means or how the review process works. So maybe, to put it in the form of a question, “When is a paper ready to send out for review?”
We recently read a chapter from King et al. (Designing Social Inquiry, 1994) in my research methods class and one of my favorite quotes from it was “…the contribution of even a minor article is greater than that of the ‘great work’ that stays forever in a desk drawer or within the confines of a computer” (9).
I think relatedly, students at top schools often think that what they read in ASR or AJS are the standards and if a paper’s not publishable in one of those places, it’s not worth sending out. This is where your topic of choosing a journal is important.
I like the two points you make: both that people shouldn’t wait forever to send something out, but also that a paper written for a course isn’t necessarily ready for prime time. (I say that as a reviewer of papers that were clearly straight from a course final project.) I’ll definitely incorporate these, thanks!
As someone who will (hopefully) be attending grad school next year and has already written a few papers that I would like to turn into something publishable, here are some things I would be curious to find out at a seminar like this:
What are the politics of publishing? Which journals are professional brass rings? Are there journals that might accept my articles but at the same time are so unrespected that publishing in them is tantamount to admitting I’m a lousy academic?
What are the publishing outlets in my field, briefly describe their readership and the kind of paper.
How do universities and other professionals view mainstream publications? (If your discipline has a mainstream outlet…Psychology Today or Legal Times…for me Foreign Policy or Time).
What kinds of articles are possible and how do you do them? Book reviews (for example) are they invitation only, do they need to be done within a certain time frame before or after publication. Can you respond to another’s book review? Response articles (how do you choose which articles to respond to) How long should they be?
And of course the real standards: How do you choose a co-author, should you co-author, how do you list your co-authors?
Do any of these guys pay?
If I publish a paper in a journal am I still allowed to present that article?
If I decide after publication, either on my own or due to response, that the argument needs to be reworked, how much reworking do I need to do before I can try to publish it again? Or do I just write a new paper?
I probably have more but I can wait until I actually get to go to one of these things.
I wish that someone had told me that papers have a structure. This may seem like a relatively small point (and an obvious one) but I think it’s not made frequently enough to grad students. Academic papers have a structural form that you need to learn.
There is a second, related point, which is that structural form of papers (intro, lit, methods, data, discussion, conclusion) often is deceptive in terms of how research actually gets done. Few of us (I suspect) have a concrete understanding of what our paper will look like until we’ve really worked on data and discussion. The intro is often the last thing we think about. Or again, put differently, the structure of papers often conceals the practice of research by suggesting a process of research that few of us adhere to.
So I’d make two point: (1) papers have structures. A lot of writing papers is signaling to others that you recognize this and can do it. (2) the way a paper is written does not represent how research is done. If you recognize that early on it will make paper writing much easier (as you’re not wasting time pouring over an introduction/lit review) that will only have to change once the data/discussion part is done.
I love these kind of posts and the great comments. They’re really helpful to me! This is also the only blog where I read the comments…
At our uni we don’t get to learn a single bit on publishing. It’s not actively discouraged, but it does come close.
Anyway, I’d like to know if there is some kind of length that the paper must have/must not exceed. We read articles from very varying length, so I’ve got no clue if (some) journals want you to write within a certain margin of space.
Shamus, I’m glad you’re reading this thread, because some of the questions may need to go into a future grad student question post. It would be too lengthy to respond to everything here. Good point about how papers evolve over time.
The question about length is relatively straight forward (depending on the journal). For something of that sort, it’s important to check out the journal’s guidelines. Some are very strict about this, others less so.
Generally speaking, one good way to get a sense for what kinds of material (whether regarding substance, structure, length or whatnot) a journal publishes is to browse several issues of said journal.
Responses to Jim’s various questions will depend on the field and possibly even the institution/department (I’m referring here to things like the value of mainstream publications). Overall, I’d say that peer-reviewed publications are the most important. How places value book chapters also varies widely, which is why the focus here is on journal publications in particular. Of course, mainstream publications can have other benefits, not unlike those of blogging. They can get you more attention, on occasion from people who will actually matter.
Jim raised numerous other good questions. Again, perhaps we could feature some of these at another time.
Other comments are good. Re journals and writing, think audience. You want people to read it. This affects both writing and publishing. These days, I’d say the most important thing about a journal is that it be indexed and available through electronic databases. Publishing in a journal that is unavailable electronically is likely sending your paper into a black hole. Even a lower prestige journal is potentially a good outlet if people who would be interested can find your paper and read it.
I am an advanced grad student (in sociology) and the one thing that I have found to be the most helpful relates to Jessica’s post - reading the drafts of papers by faculty members has been, by far, one of the most helpful things that I have done. I see where there are errors (grammatical and otherwise) and that it doesn’t need to be perfect before going out for review. I have also found it helpful to actually see reviews of papers that are sent out and how faculty members deal with those reviews. I am lucky to be part of a medium-size research group, so probably have had the opportunity to see these things more than my friends and colleagues who work in much more individually-based settings.
The one question that I have is how do you set up the front end of a paper? It is obviously impossible to talk about ALL of the literature on a topic, so how does one go about the process of deciding what to write about? This is where I am currently stuck trying to figure out the intro and background sections to frame the analysis in my paper. While I know that the answer is always going to be “it depends” are there general guides to help make these decisions?
For me, one of the things that would have been useful to learn earlier in grad school would have been how to identify what journal an article fits in. I don’t think that you necessarily need to give a rundown on what journals are out there and their characteristics (that could take you down a LOT of different paths, which you probably don’t have the time for, and would quickly lose the audience). A probably better approach would be a few tips on how they could go out and find the journals their paper is looking for. Included in that is probably a handful of ideas like, the structure of articles that have been published in said journal, approaches included, topics covered, citation patterns, understanding their editorial process, etc.
Thanks for the many helpful suggestions. I hope Shamus will republish some of these questions later.
how to identify what journal an article fits in
One clue is what journals are being cited in the paper. That is, if there are references to several papers that appeared in, say, the Sociology of Education then that may be a good fit.
Once you decide on a journal, it’s a good idea to browse through some issues to see the format/style of the articles to determine how well your piece might fit. Here I am referring to all sorts of aspects from topic to research design.
Finally, it’s advisable to ask your faculty for recommendations, presumably they’d have suggestions.
There is a post over on Crooked Timber that’s not completely on topic, but may be of interest to people here. It’s about how much we should referee. I didn’t put up that post, but it’s something I’ve been meaning to write about and am curious what people here think about the issue.
On the above points, I agree with OW that it’s important that the piece be findable. That’s why I also encourage having a Web site where at least pre-prints are available. This is also why publishing book chapters is so tricky. Unless you put a copy of your paper on your site - and even then - not many people will see it.
And I also agree with the comment that smaller contributions are worth publishing as well. Just because it’s not material for a top journal doesn’t mean it’s not worth putting out there.
I was going to post about this myself. I’ve been getting about 3-4 requests a month to review articles from a large number of different journals. I’ve said yes to 1/3 - 1/2. In some cases I told the editor that I’d consider putting it in the queue, but only behind all the already-overdue work and that it would be at least 6 weeks, and they decided not to use me. I was wondering whether there are a lot of slackers out there doing nothing, or whether I’m just high on everybody’s hit list or what.
Re book chapters, I once posted in a semi-secret site copies of the preprints of all the chapters for a book I was involved with (with author permissions, telling them to send me a copy if they wanted it posted) so that we could tell people how to find our chapters while the book was in press. By semi-secret, I mean that I did not do anything to call attention to the site, and had a low-key ambiguous link to it, so you pretty much had to be told it was there to find it. The editor told me privately that this was the best thing that ever happened to the book, as it greatly increased citations to it, although we did not want to tell the publisher about this. I suspect that the uptick in citations probably also helped rather than hurt sales of the actual book. But I doubt that the publisher would approve of this strategy.
CD: Yep! I’ve noted them and they’re in my queue.
long-time reader, first-time commenter.
i think we need a SOCIOLOGY JOURNALS WIKI where people can post info about their submission experiences - turn-around time, number of reviews, value of the reviews, clarity of the editor’s decision, etc. this might really help others make more informed decisions about where to send their papers. of course, someone (not it!) would need to maintain it so that it didn’t turn into a rant wiki (e.g., “nobody appreciates my brilliance!”).
thanks again, scatterbrains.
i agree re: wiki (of course!), and so i set one up. this is not me volunteering to moderate. i figure it will take care of itself. actually, i think it would be an interesting little experiment to see if it works out without being moderated.
a couple catches:
- the page editor only works in firefox and IE.
- please use a disposable or relatively anonymous email address, because whatever you use will be visible to others who log into the wiki.
all of that being said, have at it. pw: fromscatter
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