Publication Pointers for Fledgling
Academic Authors
The following advice comes courtesy of Dr.
Joel Levin, professor of Educational Psychology at the University of
Arizona. Dr. Levin is a former editor of the prestigious Journal
of Educational Psychology (1990-1995), during which time he earned
a reputation for mentoring and guiding promising new authors. While
this material is particularly salient to students and faculty in educational
psychology, it is also generally relevant for any individual looking
to publish in academic journals.
Three Themes for Success in Publishing:
- You have to start with some kind of basic skill
or ability (which can be acquired through education and experience).
Only when you have this knowledge base will you be able to make the
best use of the other advice outlined here. Nothing else compensates
for this.
- Build upon your experience
with patience and practice. It takes time to become an expert; the
more research and writing you do, the better you will become at both. How
can you develop such expertise?
- Learn to develop perseverance,
but without being so persistent that you become annoying to an editor. Part
of that delicate balance involves having a realistic understanding
of the publishing process:
- There typically are five different kinds of letters you can receive
from editors:
- An outright rejection
- Very doubtful: you are asked to do a complete overhaul
of the paper
- Revise and resubmit
- Provisional acceptance: very few changes are called
for
- Full acceptance: no changes required (a very low
probability, depending on the journal!)
- Read articles like Watson and Robinson's (1995) study on how
long the process is likely to take from inception of an idea
to acceptance of your article (see References).
- When you send your article to an editor, expect it NOT to be
initially accepted (see preceding editorial decision "e" and
the following section on Responding to Rejection).
Responding to Rejection – six
tips to help you stay calm and confident:
- When you receive a letter from an editor,
don’t overreact.
Scan it quickly and then, if it’s not the response you had hoped
for, put it to one side for a couple of days and read it when you are
calmer. Things never seem as bad when you’re less emotional.
- Focus not on the negative but what you can
learn from this experience – including
how to set your ego to one side and accept that you may have to fix
certain things in order for your article to be accepted.
- Unless the letter is an outright rejection
remember that the door is being held open for you to resubmit. Yes,
it’s disappointing
not to have been invited in fully but you need to learn to “suck
it up” and do everything that the editor and reviewers tell you
to do - or make a case for not adhering to certain of their suggestions.
- Don’t get angry and decide to take
your article elsewhere. Remember -- that puts you back on the other
side of a closed door. Reflect on the time and effort required to
make the suggested revisions and commit to that as an investment.
- Sometimes reviewers appear to have conflicting
opinions on how you should revise your work. If the editor has not
clarified what you need to do in the covering letter, it’s
OK to respectfully email or call him/her to ask for guidance.
- Get into the habit of reading the acceptance rates
for your journal of choice,, which will give you a better feel for
your publishing chances in that journal.
The Seven Cs of Publishing Success
(that are also darned good tips for preparing the perfect study in
the first place!):
- Conceptually sound – Ask yourself: Does what
you are doing make sense? Remember, you are presenting an argument, a
logical progression from intuition, knowledge, or theory, to results. One
way to ensure that you make the best possible submission is, once you
have completed your manuscript, put it aside for a week then pick it
up pretending it’s not your work. Imagine you’ve been sent
it for review by the journal editor. Be ruthless in your perspective
as a reviewer; look for every bad thing and make a list of them. That
way you will have made some obvious revisions before you submit.
+
- Complete package – The goal is for your readers
to learn something they did not know before they started. In order
to achieve this, everything needs to fit together. Begin by asking yourself
two questions:
- if the results come out the way I want them to, what will we
have learned?
- if the results come out another way, what will we have learned
then?
Remember that in many academic domains, for every set of findings there
is an equal and opposite set of plausible findings.
+
- Creative – Is yours a
new idea? Take chances, go for the low likelihood outcomes rather
than a study with a high probability that the results will come out
as expected. That way if your study does work out you will have come
up with something really exciting.
+
- Confidently presented – This
means having a firm handle on the technical aspects of writing and
how to craft a manuscript. Grammatical mistakes and other errors are
a big turnoff to editors and they will have a negative view of your
article at the get-go. Make sure your work is well organized in addition
to demonstrating originality of thought. Before submitting it to an
editor have several people critique it and ask questions about it – as
well as do some serious proof-reading!
=COHERENCE
- Clean methodologically – Your
argument will rise or fall on how well you have designed your study,
including what you did, how you collected the data, how the participants
were assigned to the different conditions, how you handled attrition,
and how you accounted for confounding variables. All of these issues
enter into the convincingness of your argument.
+
- Computationally correct – This
means that the analysis is appropriate for your research questions
and that your conclusions are believable in light of the operations
of the study.
= CREDIBILITY
- Connected to practice
in some way – What
is the practical (not just the statistical) significance of what
you have done? What are the implications of your study?
= CREDITABILITY
Generally Speaking:
Some other things to think about:
- It’s also relevant where your name is on the list of authors. A
good mix includes articles where you are the sole author, the first
author, and second or third author. Ideally by the time you graduate
you will have a mix of 4-5 articles and conference papers that you
can put on your vita.
- You want your publication record to demonstrate
a program of research that you can say is yours. Look to develop
an established record of published articles and research that adheres
to a recognizable theme.
- Be generous in thanking people who helped you
with ideas, have read your manuscripts, made suggestions about
analyzing data, or assisted with data collection. Not only is that
common courtesy, but then they might be willing to help when you approach
them again!
References:
The following are some useful articles to help you get a better handle
on the publishing process:
Levin, J.R. (1992). Tips for publishing and professional
writing. Mid-Western Educational Researcher, 5,
12-14.
Lounds, J., Oakar, M., Knecht, K., Moran, M.,
Gibney, M., & Pressley,
M. (2002). Journal editors’ views on the criteria
a paper must meet to be publishable. Contemporary Educational
Psychology, 27, 338-347.
Maxwell, S.E., & Cole, D.A. (1995). Tips
for writing (and reading) methodological articles. Psychological
Bulletin, 118, 193-198.
Sternberg, R.J. (1988). The psychologist’s
companion: A guide to scientific writing for students and
researchers. Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press.
Watson, T.S., & Robinson, D.H. (1995).
Authors of recent journal articles and beginning Ph.D. students’ estimates
of time invested in writing for publication. School Psychologist,
50, 17-18.
