Book Chapter for Applications

[IRToni]

Dear all,

I am a current M.A. student at one of the best schools for Political Science/IR in Europe, and am looking at doing a PhD afterwards.

I wrote a senior thesis, that my professor thought was of high enough quality to publish, and I will be presenting at the Swiss Association for Political Science Annual Conference in February.

Now, I was just contacted whether I would want to contribute this peace (in a slightly adapted fashion of course) to an anthology (book) that will be published with Cambridge Scholarly Publishing (notably not Cambridge University Press). The book as such is peer-reviewed, but not by the press (the editors themselves organize this blind peer review). In addition, I've heard mixed things from Cambridge Scholarly Publishing.

Do you think I should still go for it and have it published as a book chapter or should I wait for the conference, then revise it some more and try to get it into a peer-reviewed journal?

Thanks in advance,

Toni

[blackcoffee64]

Wait for conference, make sure you contact the panel reviewer prior and explain to him/her your situation in hopes they would pay extra careful attention to your paper.

[jacib]

1) Ask your adviser what would look best. If he thinks it's good enough to publish, that presumably means good enough to publish somewhere you'll be proud of.

2) Do you have any desire to publish this thing in a peer-reviewed journal? If so, another option is to do that before you apply (and have on your CV: submitted x article to x journal). If so, then you should definitely not publish it in the anthology. If it's not ready for publication in the place you want yet, just wait for the conference. Peer reviewed papers>book chapters.

3) If not, then maybe having an article in press with in a not-so-great anthology (don't put the press on your CV, just title, editors, forthing) would make you a stronger candidate? This is especially the case if you weren't planning on ever doing anything with this again.

[IRToni]

Thanks for your input! I asked one of my professors who told me to go ahead with the publication now, as it will make me a stronger candidate for PhD applications down the road (it probably won't be published in a journal by then). She also recommended that after this publication, I could further it, put a new spin on it and then publish it in a journal, which it is really suited to do.

She also said that I'm in a pretty intensive M.A. program that possibly won't allow me to actually complete a publication in a journal, and that this is a really good opportunity for networking.

I thus decided to go ahead, and am really grateful that you guys took the time to answer.