Resources for Publishing

Polish your article. Have several mentors/colleagues in your network read it. Consider getting it copyedited by a friend or colleague, or seek assistance from your university – many offer copyediting services to junior scholars. Never send a paper to an editor without soliciting feedback from others first – it is not an editor’s job to give you feedback. They may do so, but it’s likely to be by way of rejection, which is something you want to avoid. Once your paper is rejected, there is rarely an avenue for resubmission of the same paper to the same journal.

It is true that a paper that reads well, will go further. Some journals have the resources for extensive copyediting, some do not. A good copyeditor can make a huge difference. See if your university offers a copyediting service. If not, ask those in your networks, or see the Writing in Solidary Collective, compiled by Rahul Ranjan (University of Oslo) which is a crowdsourced copyediting and academic advisory project.

Have a clear argument, not just lots of impressive data/fieldwork. Make sure your article situates its topic within the literature and demonstrates where you depart from the literature. And have a strong, attention-grabbing, informative title that indicates your contribution. (Check the link)

The abstract must be succinct, brief and effective: it should state the argument, the contribution and the methodology. Do not simply repeat the first paragraph (or any other) of the paper as the abstract. Write one for the purpose of grabbing your readers’ attention. (Check the link)

Don’t criticise existing literature harshly for its shortcomings; the field is naturally full of ‘gaps’ and it is tiring to read of authors chiding the entire field for this or that ‘gap’. Rather, claim to ‘extend’ it. Be aware that you are making interventions into long established scholarly conversations. Write respectfully, be constructive. Chances are that your external reviewers are the authors of the literature you are building on.

Submit to the right journal. This is critical. Make sure your article fits the journal you are targeting. Browse through the journal; look at what it has recently published. Read editorials and browse websites of journals to get a sense of what the journal’s editors are interested in. Which journals are you citing? These are the journals you are effectively in conversation with – consider submitting to them. There is a list of journals in South Asian Studies, but you can also consider disciplinary journals and area studies journals.

Work out who the editor is and address them appropriately in your approach. Be aware that no journal will publish your article ‘in the next issue’ – highly regarded journals have waiting lists that can take up to two years, sometimes more.

Your strategy to publishing will depend on your career goals and institutional pressures to publish in particular journals in particular timeframes. Speak to mentors about this. If you are publishing to build a strong CV, then it may be worth investing the time into waiting for better journals. If your field is moving really fast, then it’s worth publishing to get it out there.

If your paper is accepted, you should ask when that will be. If it is going to take 1-2 years to publish, you can manage this in several ways: ask the editor for an acceptance letter for any job applications; and you can upload an Author’s Original Manuscript (ie a pdf of the word file accepted paper) to a scholarly sharing site with the text: “This article has been accepted for publication in [JOURNAL TITLE, forthcoming in Vol x issue y].”

Be aware of predatory publishing. These are publishers who write to you saying that they heard of this great paper at this conference that you gave and they want to publish it. They will, at the end of the publishing process, send you an enormous bill for thousands of dollars.

A good CV will have a range of journals on it. Do not publish repeatedly in the same journal – a panel member may assume you are either unable to publish elsewhere, are publishing only where your connections lie, or lack the imagination to think outside the journal of x. Aim for a range of disciplinary and area studies journals on your CV, and aim to never publish in the same journal twice.

Understand how peer review works. Look at the journal’s editorial board. Journals tend to use their boards to preview material. Has the editor or a board member published in the area you are working in? Do they know the field you are engaging in? You cannot, for journals that practice double-blind peer review, suggest reviewers as that corrupts the process. However, if you have good reason to suspect bias from a potential reviewer, you can request that the paper is not sent to them. Different editors may have different takes on this.

Be aware of scholarly conventions around submission and guidelines. Journal editors expect that your paper is unpublished in its entirety, including on the web. Consult the journal’s style guide and adhere to it, especially the word limit. Don’t send your unrevised thesis chapter out to review. There is a lot of difference between a thesis chapter and a journal article, and submissions that are crafted accordingly are likely to be more successful.

You should not, and cannot, submit to more than one outlet at a time: journals will ask you to state, or tick a box at the time of submission, that this is the only journal you have submitted to. Double submission can be discovered via software that many publishers use, or in the process of review, when a reviewer is sent both papers to review – this happens disappointingly often and results in rejection, by both journals. Nor can there be any overlap in terms of text or argument between two separate papers under submission. This is considered unethical – each submission generates a lot of work for editors, editorial teams and reviewers, and a journal will generally ask you to state that the paper is not under consideration elsewhere (this includes as part of a book). The paper can’t be published twice, in two different outlets, as copyright doesn’t allow for that. Journals invest resources in your paper under the understanding that the paper you submit to them can be exclusively published by them, after peer review.

You can, with the journal’s permission (which most readily give), republish an article as a chapter in a later monograph. Some journals may charge a fee to do this, but generally they cannot do so unless it is an exact (word for word) reproduction. Most authors revise their work in the time between journal and book publication as the field and their thoughts have developed somewhat, which additionally evades this problem.

Republishing your own published material without acknowledgement, even short fragments, is ‘self-plagiarism’. It is often discovered during the review process, and if it’s discovered after publication, one version has to be retracted. This does real reputational damage to you and journals are unlikely to consider your material again.

Waiting at the time of submission, it’s reasonable to ask how long the process will take. Once it’s a month overdue, write for an update. Good journals take time and are thorough. If it’s taking too long (over six months) and you’re getting no response from the editorial team, you can formally withdraw the paper. Needless to say, the pandemic is creating unprecedented delays.

There is nothing more tedious than an author who wants their work to be reviewed and published, but won’t do the work of reviewing because they are ‘too busy’. Reviewing is an essential part of academia and academic citizenship. Yes, it is true that commercial publishing companies profit from this free labour; it is also true that publishing in commercial journals furthers the field, supports emerging scholars and scholarly debate. Given the contraction of many university presses, the field and scholars still rely on commercial publishing. Be willing to review for journals, and be aware of how to do it well and constructively. 

Post-publication: tell people about your work; you now need to help drive downloads, citations and drive impact. Some publishers have well-oiled marketing departments, which they will explain when your paper is accepted; use them. Send out imprints or eprints to Professor x, whom you cite, telling them that their work was inspiring; most people respond positively to feedback. Write your article into an entry on Wikipedia. 

Set up a profile on Google Scholar. It will alert you to citations. You can make the profile private or public. Also set up a Google Alert for your name and keywords – you will be alerted to any use of your work on the web, including citation (and any misquoting that you might wish to correct) in news media outlets.

Use social media to promote your work. Join Academia.edu, LinkedIn, get onto Twitter, Facebook, etc. Academia.edu is valuable and allows you to establish and manage a profile, and gives you feedback when someone googles you (what search terms they used, what they downloaded, etc). “SEO factors” are increasingly being used in applications and promotion material. There are of course pitfalls in academic use of social media (See Report “Feeling Better Connected”)

Think about how your work might be used in teaching. Write a brief teaching module (even if based around one class) around your article, inviting students to contrast it with earlier research, or a different methodology. PDF it and put it on your Academia.edu/LinkedIn site, or blog about it.

Kama Maclean