Publishing - Strategies, resources, etc.

[Duns Eith]

Publishing is a necessary goal as people go onto the market. Ideally, one will come from a well-reputed program with a publication in-hand, and have 1 or 2 in the works.

So, let's talk publishing strategies?

I spoke with someone from Kent State a while ago that his strategy is to get a paper or two in constant rotation, just keep hitting journals until you're accepted. This is a brute force tactic, and seems a little sketchy.

I spoke with someone from University of South Florida, and the idea is send a paper to the top journal according to fit/tribe of the highest quality, then if rejected immediately correct the paper according to feedback given, and then send it to the next-level down. Keep hitting until you hit the lowest tier. This makes more sense.

I am thinking a combination of the two is ideal.

But perhaps you have another idea? Maybe you should just ask your advisor and see what they say: is this a good paper, enough that I should submit it? If so, where should I submit it?

Resources
APA and BPA did a survey of various journals for their acceptance rates and demographics

• http://www.apaonline.org/?page=journalsurveys

Any other resources you lean on for considering publication?

I think this may be helpful, though it is for the other APA (american psychological association): "Preparing Manuscripts for Publication in Psychology Journals: A Guide for New Authors "

https://www.apa.org/pubs/authors/new-author-guide.pdf

[necessarily possible]

2 hours ago, Duns Eith said:

I spoke with someone from University of South Florida, and the idea is send a paper to the top journal according to fit/tribe of the highest quality, then if rejected immediately correct the paper according to feedback given, and then send it to the next-level down. Keep hitting until you hit the lowest tier. This makes more sense.

Two reasons to be a bit skeptical about this method is that (1) it might take very long to get rejected, and (2) you might not even get feedback. For instance, according to the APA statistics you linked to, in The Philosophical Review the average time for a manuscript under review is 5 months, and only 15% of manuscripts get referee feedback (link).

I think it makes more sense to assess the quality of your paper (perhaps asking your advisor/colleagues) and then decide where it's realistic to get accepted, much like applying to grad school.

[MentalEngineer]

Option C (warning, cynical): Send it to the journal your adviser tells you to send it to - their former student/grad school roommate/spouse is the editor, and at least you won't get desk rejected.

Option D (warning, depressing if you like good philosophy): Find a narrower subfield that nobody cares about to decrease the quantity and quality of your competition.

I'm having one of those days, OK?

Edited April 17, 2017 by MentalEngineer

[Duns Eith]

On 4/17/2017 at 0:43 PM, necessarily possible said:

Two reasons to be a bit skeptical about this method is that (1) it might take very long to get rejected, and (2) you might not even get feedback. For instance, according to the APA statistics you linked to, in The Philosophical Review the average time for a manuscript under review is 5 months, and only 15% of manuscripts get referee feedback (link).

I think it makes more sense to assess the quality of your paper (perhaps asking your advisor/colleagues) and then decide where it's realistic to get accepted, much like applying to grad school.

Wow, that's a really, really low rate of feedback.

Yeah. The fact that a paper might be held up for 5 months is the impetus for having one being held up while you're working on another to send out; basically the idea is that you've always got a paper in process of review and a paper that is in process of revision. Irons in the fire, lines in the water, whatever analogy we want. It just takes a long time and there's no way to shorten it.

On 4/17/2017 at 1:23 PM, MentalEngineer said:

Option C (warning, cynical): Send it to the journal your adviser tells you to send it to - their former student/grad school roommate/spouse is the editor, and at least you won't get desk rejected.

Option D (warning, depressing if you like good philosophy): Find a narrower subfield that nobody cares about to decrease the quantity and quality of your competition.

I'm having one of those days, OK?

Hah.

c) Network, network, network. Check.

d) There is a way to avoid thinking that is depressing, by convincing yourself that you're on the cutting edge! Honestly, this may be a good idea, except perhaps someone would pigeonhole you into "Oh! He's the philosophy of anatomy guy" or "She's the Inuit philosophy gal!"

[maxhgns]

You might want to have a gander at Thom Brooks's publishing advice for graduate students. It's quite a good resource. 

 

Some thoughts drawn from my own experience and mixed success:

• Strategies A and B are mutually compatible, and collectively, they're the strategy you have to adopt. You need to have several papers in constant rotation, and for each paper you need to be a few moves ahead. Assume rejection, and think a few moves ahead: what journal will you try next? And after that?
• Rejection rates are high (like, 90%+). A rejection doesn't reflect poorly on you or even on your paper; it's just par for the course. You're aiming for an R&R, not an outright acceptance. Acceptance rates for R&Rs are much, much higher (like, 50%+). And what you need for an R&R is a sympathetic reviewer--in other words, luck.
• A lot of R&Red papers are not ready for publication in their present form. But if a reviewer believes in your project enough to R&R it, then don't be shy: make major revisions. No matter what, the paper will be a better one. Plus, it'll probably be accepted (or R&Red with much more minor revisions)--all you need is a sympathetic reviewer. Besides, sympathetic reviewers give better comments.
• Some reviewers will be callous, mean, or stupid (these days, I like to think of them as Kellyanne Conway. Choose your own scarecrow!). Don't let them get to you. Just sit on their comments for a week and then revisit them. Change what you can to pre-empt future misunderstandings, and move on.
• Familiarize yourself with the main generalist and specialist journals. You need to have a good idea (without having to check) of where your work is welcome, of what kinds of papers are published where, of what the typical paper length is, and of what the turnaround time is like at various journals. And you need to have a rough sense of the journal hierarchy, both generally and in your subfield.
• Conferencing is good, though maybe not for the reasons you think. IMO, it has two main advantages (with respect to publishing; networking is a different matter): (1) you generate a new paper for the conference, and (2) to present your paper you're forced to think about how to condense its argument. Thinking about your paper that way can really help you to improve its argumentative structure. But don't expect too much from conference feedback. Yeah, it's feedback, but nobody's actually read your paper, so they're totally dependent on your presentation. So the feedback generally isn't great, although it can help you to identify some of the more glaring trouble spots. Don't rely on conferences for feedback. The feedback is often inadequate, and conferences are temporally too far apart. That makes it all too easy to fall into the "I don't think it's good enough yet" trap. Trust me, I spent years making this mistake. Don't worry about rejection, it's inevitable; just send your paper out already! Nothing compares to the feedback you get (when you get it) from reviewers.
• I start my process by writing conference papers, and then develop them into longer papers for publication. It's easy that way because conference papers are short (like, 3K words), and then you have an idea to work with for the published version. And, in the meantime, you're networking. What I do is I bracket off a week every month (for a few months) and write a new paper in each of those weeks. I send those off to conferences, and then once I've got a few papers in hand I spend some time (a week a month for a few months) trying to buff them up for publication.I generated a lot of dead ends this way, especially early on in my graduate career, but it's a system that works pretty well for me. Your mileage may vary, of course, but it's a place to start.
• Keep an excel spreadsheet detailing which papers you sent where, when you sent them, when you received your verdict (and what it was), your submission number, and where you want to send it next.
• Keep a running document of paper ideas, and jot those ideas down as they come. When you're stuck for something to write, just refer back to that list and pick something that sounds promising.
• Remember that publishing takes time. Years, in fact, if you're counting from when you first started developing your idea to its final appearance in print. Most papers you read began their lives two or more years before their publication date. So don't sweat the small stuff, and just make sure you're plugging away at things steadily rather than haphazardly. The haphazard approach will add months and years to your total. (Actually, that goes for the dissertation too: writing a little every day is a lot better than writing a lot on some days.)

[dgswaim]

Something to consider, just as regards time investment, is to stick mainly to more specialized journals. I don't know what your area is, but in philosophy of science, for instance, the top philosophy of science journals (e.g. Philosophy of Science, BJPS, Studies A, Synthese, etc.) are much faster than the top "generalist" journals. I have a paper under review right now that started out at Phil Sci. It was 3 weeks from editors desk, to peer review, back to editor, to rejection ("bad fit" ). But that quick turnaround is nice, especially as a grad student with limited time resources. It's back out for review at European Journal of Philosophy of Science, which should also be relatively quick.

[Duns Eith]

Thanks for all the advice. I think there's more to be had. I think we should keep this thread going as people run into different problems.

 

Edited October 2, 2017 by Duns Eith
Said too much

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

Thanks for bumping this! One of the problems I see with the "fix and submit to lower tier" technique (that I don't think has been mentioned yet) is:

If a publisher (of any kind) is giving you feedback on what needs to be improved for acceptance, it's not really a rejection. They are taking the time to tell you what they need to see in order to publish you so fix it and resubmit to that publisher. I speak a lot with published writers (in a variety of contexts-comic books, games, fiction, nonfiction, etc) and have attended many writers/publisher panels and this is one of the pieces of advice I've heard time and time again. Stop thinking of rejection as rejection (unless they tell you no or don't say anything at all). If they take the time to give you feedback (outside of "consider this publication instead") they are interested in publishing you. Your work just isn't there yet.

[maxhgns]

6 hours ago, GreenEyedTrombonist said:

Thanks for bumping this! One of the problems I see with the "fix and submit to lower tier" technique (that I don't think has been mentioned yet) is:

If a publisher (of any kind) is giving you feedback on what needs to be improved for acceptance, it's not really a rejection. They are taking the time to tell you what they need to see in order to publish you so fix it and resubmit to that publisher. I speak a lot with published writers (in a variety of contexts-comic books, games, fiction, nonfiction, etc) and have attended many writers/publisher panels and this is one of the pieces of advice I've heard time and time again. Stop thinking of rejection as rejection (unless they tell you no or don't say anything at all). If they take the time to give you feedback (outside of "consider this publication instead") they are interested in publishing you. Your work just isn't there yet.

Disciplinary norms may differ, but in philosophy, a rejection is a rejection. Some rejections come with comments. Others don't. But you absolutely can't resubmit rejected work. What you can do is resubmit work that garnered a verdict of 'revise and resubmit'.

That said, I think your advice of not thinking of rejections as rejections or verdicts on your ability is sound. It's too depressing to do that!

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

@maxhgns That's an interesting difference! Thanks for pointing it out.  I wonder if there are other differences between journal publication across disciplines and between academic and professional publication. 

[DataCrusader]

A reject is a reject. Even some R&Rs are rejects. But all of them allow you the chance to tweak something to improve your paper.

At the very least, you should cite something from the journal you're submitting to - if you can't, your paper doesn't fit.  That means you'll be changing your paper at least a little bit every submission.

[Duns Eith]

9 hours ago, DataCrusader said:

A reject is a reject. Even some R&Rs are rejects. But all of them allow you the chance to tweak something to improve your paper.

At the very least, you should cite something from the journal you're submitting to - if you can't, your paper doesn't fit.  That means you'll be changing your paper at least a little bit every submission.

Can anyone else speak to this? I mean, maybe, but that sounds like a weird criterion.

[Eigen]

26 minutes ago, Duns Eith said:

Can anyone else speak to this? I mean, maybe, but that sounds like a weird criterion.

Seems pretty legit to me. If there isn't any work that matches your paper in the journal at all that you would cite... Why are you submitting there and not somewhere that's s better topical fit?

[Swann]

just out of curiosity, does any one know anything about publishing in edited collections, in contrast to journals

is having a paper included as a chapter in an edited volume more or less challenging? 

does either have more "prestige" than the other?

how does the revision process work with papers used as chapters in an edited book?

...or, does publishing in the field primarily occur in journals and edited books are special cases in which the conditions vary?

[DataCrusader]

3 hours ago, Swann said:

just out of curiosity, does any one know anything about publishing in edited collections, in contrast to journals

is having a paper included as a chapter in an edited volume more or less challenging? 

does either have more "prestige" than the other?

how does the revision process work with papers used as chapters in an edited book?

...or, does publishing in the field primarily occur in journals and edited books are special cases in which the conditions vary?

Refereed journal articles are the most important publications of that length.  Book chapter is better than nothing, but it is "worth" less and can take longer to be published.  

And from the editing side, Karen Kelsey has a good blog post discussing edited collections here:

http://theprofessorisin.com/2012/07/24/should-i-do-an-edited-collection/

[DataCrusader]

7 hours ago, Duns Eith said:

Can anyone else speak to this? I mean, maybe, but that sounds like a weird criterion.

It isn't an official criterion and I've published articles that cite the journal and others where I didn't cite the journal.  But citing the journal can help you get past the desk reject, because the editor sees that you fit into the scholarly discussions that are happening in the pages of that journal.

There's also a pragmatic point where the journal editor could very well send a new submission to the most recent author to publish in the journal on that topic. If that reviewer sees that you cited their work, they have a vested interest in your work getting published because that's a citation for them.

[be.]

8 hours ago, Swann said:

just out of curiosity, does any one know anything about publishing in edited collections, in contrast to journals

is having a paper included as a chapter in an edited volume more or less challenging? 

does either have more "prestige" than the other?

how does the revision process work with papers used as chapters in an edited book?

...or, does publishing in the field primarily occur in journals and edited books are special cases in which the conditions vary?

I believe that most papers published in edited volumes are invited. So, unless you already have a strong reputation (or helpful connections) in your field, chances are you won't have the option to publish in an edited collection.

That said, one nice aspect of publishing in edited collections is that, in general, your chances of acceptance are quite high, should you receive that initial invite. 

Edited October 7, 2017 by be.

[maxhgns]

14 hours ago, Duns Eith said:

Can anyone else speak to this? I mean, maybe, but that sounds like a weird criterion.

It's not necessary by any stretch (especially where smaller, less well-represented subfields and topics are concerned), but it's a good idea nonetheless. Some journals ask for a cover letter (not many any more, but still some), and pointing to the fact that the journal has published work on the topic in the past is an important touchstone for those. And as DataCrusader says, you can expect that one of your referees will come from the pool of people who've recently published on the topic in that journal.

 

10 hours ago, Swann said:

just out of curiosity, does any one know anything about publishing in edited collections, in contrast to journals

is having a paper included as a chapter in an edited volume more or less challenging? 

does either have more "prestige" than the other?

how does the revision process work with papers used as chapters in an edited book?

...or, does publishing in the field primarily occur in journals and edited books are special cases in which the conditions vary?

DataCrusader and Be. are right. Journal articles are the gold standard in philosophy. And journal articles in the top "generalist" journals and top subfield journals are the gold standard of journal articles.

Edited collections--at least in philosophy--are largely composed of papers solicited by the editors. While that's not a guarantee of publication, it does mean that the odds are strongly in your favour, so long as you produce something decent. A few edited volumes openly call for papers, but for the most part these things are made up of people in the editor's professional network, or of people suggested by those people. Your best chance for inclusion in one as a graduate student is if your supervisor is one of the editors, or if she declines and suggests to the editor(s) that they contact you instead. Alternately, if you're well known on the conference circuit and are more or less an authority on some niche topic, the editors are more likely to extend you an invitation. The revision process can vary pretty widely depending on who's organizing the volume, but often the main reviewers are just those in charge of the collection. Sometimes these things go out for blind peer review, but not always.

As far as prestige is concerned, journal articles are the gold standard. Chapters in edited volumes certainly count, but unsolicited work that's passed peer review is more desirable. For comparison, the unofficial internet advice for those on the TT at R1s is to aim for two articles a year, two smaller things (book reviews, proceedings, chapters in edited volumes) a year, plus a book every four years or so (every two years for book fields, but philosophy isn't really a book field).