Publishing

For every article you submit, it’s always a good idea to have a prioritized list of journals you want to submit it to. If your optimal preference rejects your article, in many cases it makes sense simply to turn around and send the article to the next journal on your list. This strategy is wise especially in cases where you don’t plan to revise the argument further because you have other things to do, or the reviewers’ comments aren’t helpful.

The article you spent countless hours writing, revising, and altering has been under review for five or more months at a good journal. You’ve been waiting anxiously for a response, imagining how pretty that journal would look as a publication line on your CV. You’re proud of this article and can’t think of any reason why it would warrant less than a revise/resubmit. Finally, one day, you see the subject heading in your inbox: “Your Submission.” The journal has finally gotten back to you!  With a jolt of nerves you cross your fingers and click on the message . . . and then go numb. “We regret to inform you that your article has not been accepted for submission.”

If you’re unfamiliar with this experience then you’re not working hard enough to get published.

Dr. Art Carden (@artcarden) shares some motivational advice on overcoming one of the most difficult barriers to publishing, submitting it.

One of the barriers to publishing scholarly articles is the conviction that a paper has to be perfect before you can submit it to a journal. It’s a vice of my own: I have far too many papers in various stages of completion that are waiting for another round of revision before they’re ready to go to a journal. Nonetheless, I’ve been able to overcome this barrier for enough papers to have a decent publication record.

You will need to be published in mainstream journals within your discipline if your goal is a tenure-track professorship. Journals specializing in classical liberal topics are typically seen as marginal by mainstream scholars and, frankly, the articles in these outlets tend not be very good. A CV that mostly has publication lines indicating such journals might be seen as worse than a CV with no publication lines at all.

Professor Art Carden has several posts up on LifeHack on how to write well and write often. The site is a little ad heavy, but the content is stellar:

Improve Your Writing With Word Limits

Writing Research Papers

Hunt, Gather, and Build: A Review of "Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method"

Deirdre McCloskey on Writing

Just Keep Writing!

By signing up for “Contents Alerts” from journal distributors you can select journals that you like to follow and receive an emailed table-of-contents when each new issue comes out.  This shortcut will help you keep abreast of research in your own field or related interdisciplinary areas.   Often e-journals are available even before the hard copies are mailed out.  Anyone can register and get the free table of contents.