Publishing an undergrad paper?

[Danger_Zone]

I have been considering trying to submit one of my undergrad papers to a history journal. I won an award for it and was told by a professor that it was a potentially publishable paper, but it would need a lot of work - this was mentioned a little while after I graduated. I was pretty burnt out from school at the time, so I didn't really work on the paper, but now I'm considering trying to get it to a publishable quality. Should I maybe contact my professor and ask if she could help me with this? I feel like this is a bit of a last minute project, considering I would be starting grad school in a few months, so I don't know if it's worth going to this trouble or if I should just wait until I have a Master's level paper to publish. I've been trying to fix the paper up on my own but I find it really difficult to judge my own work and find others better at pointing out flaws than I am. I'm just wondering if anybody has done this successfully (I am sure this is more common in the sciences but I don't know of many History undergrads publishing papers.)

[smallaxe]

I published a paper I wrote for an equity in education course from undergrad. My professor suggested the journal and it didn't need much work after peer review. A lot of people say you shouldn't rush your first publication, but I don't think there's any harm in publishing a paper in a decent journal. At the very least, fixing it up will get you back in the Groove of school. If you want to get in touch with your prof, perhaps ask which journals they might suggest and you can see where it fits in. Plus, you can always cite yourself in your course papers - like a real academic!

[runjackrun]

I'm definitely no expert on this (nor am I in the history field), but I published a paper that I started in undergrad before grad school. It took about 2.5 years from the time the research was completed to the time it was finally published (mostly because I had courses and a job for one year, then graduated and moved for work, then moved again, you get the point...). Still, it was a really rewarding experience and I felt it was good to get some exposure to the peer review process before I was under the pressure of being a graduate student. 

For me, most of the work took place after the paper was written--finding the best journal, formatting the paper appropriately, making sure to meet the word count, making sure what you wrote two years ago still makes sense and is relevant, collecting any other information the journal wants. Editing is just so much tougher for me than writing something new. Having a professor to guide you through this is invaluable, so I would definitely contact the professor and get their thoughts. They often know the best journals, what reviewers will focus on, and they can provide you a realistic evaluation of your paper, its shot at successful publication, and the work required to get it there. 

[Danger_Zone]

5 hours ago, jamesaly said:

I published a paper I wrote for an equity in education course from undergrad. My professor suggested the journal and it didn't need much work after peer review. A lot of people say you shouldn't rush your first publication, but I don't think there's any harm in publishing a paper in a decent journal. At the very least, fixing it up will get you back in the Groove of school. If you want to get in touch with your prof, perhaps ask which journals they might suggest and you can see where it fits in. Plus, you can always cite yourself in your course papers - like a real academic!

I think I have the perfect journal in mind but its website is a bit messy at the moment so I'm not even sure what the submission dates are. But I know she had a student publish in it for her Master's so I can probably ask her about it. I have been reading over my paper and I'm surprised at how many things I found that I could fix (mostly small grammatical things, but things I never noticed when I was proofreading it last year.) I haven't written much since graduation so it's nice to know I'm still improving, even if only by a little.

[Danger_Zone]

3 hours ago, runjackrun said:

I'm definitely no expert on this (nor am I in the history field), but I published a paper that I started in undergrad before grad school. It took about 2.5 years from the time the research was completed to the time it was finally published (mostly because I had courses and a job for one year, then graduated and moved for work, then moved again, you get the point...). Still, it was a really rewarding experience and I felt it was good to get some exposure to the peer review process before I was under the pressure of being a graduate student. 

For me, most of the work took place after the paper was written--finding the best journal, formatting the paper appropriately, making sure to meet the word count, making sure what you wrote two years ago still makes sense and is relevant, collecting any other information the journal wants. Editing is just so much tougher for me than writing something new. Having a professor to guide you through this is invaluable, so I would definitely contact the professor and get their thoughts. They often know the best journals, what reviewers will focus on, and they can provide you a realistic evaluation of your paper, its shot at successful publication, and the work required to get it there. 

I think I will contact her then, thanks! I know publishing is competitive so I don't expect to immediately have my paper accepted or anything, but this still might help me get exposure to what the process of publishing a paper is like. I recently submitted another paper to an undergrad journal, but that didn't really have many requirements.

[Lisa_McCoy]

Since your professor had mentioned that it is of 'publishable quality', I think that you should get in touch with her and see if she could help you with reworking of your paper. Don't wait for too long as you would just get caught up with other things in life like grad school, job etc and lose interest.    

[Bleep_Bloop]

On 4/26/2016 at 10:12 PM, Danger_Zone said:

I feel like this is a bit of a last minute project, considering I would be starting grad school in a few months, so I don't know if it's worth going to this trouble or if I should just wait until I have a Master's level paper to publish.

Congrats on the paper, that's always a nice compliment to receive from a professor. However, the quote above tells me that you should wait on publishing. There's no need to rush to publish at this stage in the game, and if you feel like you're rushing during the writing/revision process, then the article most definitely will show this. Once a paper is published and out there, it'll follow you around for the rest of your academic career. You don't want to look back a few years later as a PhD student and regret publishing something that needed more work. It's tempting to want to publish very early so that you can have publications in your PhD applications, etc. But to be honest, I think that publishing before the MA (and most often before you've passed comps/quals in a PhD program) is actually more harmful in the long run because your ideas haven't had time to mature, and there's a lot out there that you haven't had time to read and think about. A premature, half-baked article could come back to haunt you and blemish your CV. Take some time, sit on it, think through the ideas, read more, and revise as much as you can. By all means get in touch with the professor for whom you wrote the paper and get feedback. My advice would be to keep this as a side-project until you're more advanced as a student (post-MA). 

[Danger_Zone]

On May 24, 2016 at 0:13 PM, Bleep_Bloop said:

Congrats on the paper, that's always a nice compliment to receive from a professor. However, the quote above tells me that you should wait on publishing. There's no need to rush to publish at this stage in the game, and if you feel like you're rushing during the writing/revision process, then the article most definitely will show this. Once a paper is published and out there, it'll follow you around for the rest of your academic career. You don't want to look back a few years later as a PhD student and regret publishing something that needed more work. It's tempting to want to publish very early so that you can have publications in your PhD applications, etc. But to be honest, I think that publishing before the MA (and most often before you've passed comps/quals in a PhD program) is actually more harmful in the long run because your ideas haven't had time to mature, and there's a lot out there that you haven't had time to read and think about. A premature, half-baked article could come back to haunt you and blemish your CV. Take some time, sit on it, think through the ideas, read more, and revise as much as you can. By all means get in touch with the professor for whom you wrote the paper and get feedback. My advice would be to keep this as a side-project until you're more advanced as a student (post-MA). 

Thanks for the advice! I've decided not to try to publish at this time. I talked to my professor and she said it wouldn't really be realistic to do at this point since my article has been used for a book of hers being published. I guess usually the article comes first so that would have been something to do longer ago. She said I could try to rewrite basically the whole article to be significantly different from the book's content but I really don't have the time for that. Guess I will just focus my energies on getting published during my doctorate. 

[fuzzylogician]

Wait, what do you mean 'has been used for a book of hers'? Is your name on it? Did you agree to this? If so, then yes, I agree, you can't publish the same material twice and if you thought a better venue would have been more appropriate, that was something to figure out before publishing in this book. If your work was used without proper attribution, then there is a much bigger problem here, so I hope that's not the case. 

[Usmivka]

1 hour ago, fuzzylogician said:

...If so, then yes, I agree, you can't publish the same material twice and if you thought a better venue would have been more appropriate, that was something to figure out before publishing in this book.

Agreed, that ship has sailed.