writing for publication in journals

7/28/2019 Writing for Publication in Journals

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Writing for publication in journals:things I wish Id known before I got started

Nigel Harwood

[email protected]
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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What questions do you have?

Either ind ividu ally or w ith someone else, please make a

l is t of q uestions and issues that you wish to address

in todays session

Hopefully these questions/issues will be answered/covered

as we go along

We can talk about anything which hasnt been dealt with atthe end of the session, when therell be an opportunity

for extended discussion


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So what should I warn you about?

The chances are youll get some kind of rejection the 1sttime you submit

In fact, youll probably get some sort of rejection even

when youre an experienced writer and youve publisheda number of articles!

However, a rejection might not be a rejection. You oftenget invited by the journal editor to make changes to your

manuscript and resubmit it

You need to be patient because it takes so long to getthe reviewers comments on your paper (two-threemonths at the minimum. Four or five months is about

averageand seven or eight months isnt uncommon!)


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What else should I warn you about?

Many reviewers are very courteous and helpful

You may get comments which you believe to be unfair

Youll need to draft and redraft, and write lots of differentversions of your article

You may have to write two or even three revised

versions of your article before its finally accepted

The whole process of sending the 1st version of yourarticle to the journal and seeing it appear in print maytake two or three years (I had an article accepted in

October 2010 but was told it wont appear untilSeptember2012!!)


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Dont give up yet!

So far its been all bad newsbut dont give up yet

People whove never published before often have anum ber of mistaken ideas about publ ish ing . Oncethese are cleared up, things arent as bad as you

m ight have though t they w ere

Lets look at some of these common misconceptions,and correct them


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Common misconceptions

Misconception

Everyone else writes better than melook howbeautifully written the articles in this journal are

Response No wonder theyre beautifully writtentheyve been

redrafted and rewritten so many times! McKay (2003),a very experienced researcher and former editor ofTESOL Quarterly, begins an article on writing for

publication by saying This is my 23rddraft! (p.91) Foran article to go through 23 drafts is unusualbutexpect it to go through four or five


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Common misconceptions (2)

Misconception

If my article is rejected it means my works no good

Response

It doesnt necessarily mean this at all. The most prestigious

journals have extremely high rejection rates. McKay (2003)reports that only about 10% of manuscripts were eventuallypublished when she was editor ofTESOL Quarterly.

McKay adds, importantly, that almost half of thesubmissions were not at all appropriate for the journal to

begin with (p.99), and she didnt even send them out toreviewers

So if your article is rejected, it may be because youre tryingto publish in the wrong journal. Get your supervisors helpwith choosing the right journal, or an experiencedcolleagues advice


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Misconception

If my articles rejected by one journal, that means no journalwill accept it

Response

Probably everyone whos ever published anything has had anarticle rejected by one journal but accepted by another journal

This doesnt mean that if you get a rejection you shouldautomatically send your article unchanged somewhere else.You should read the reviewers criticisms carefully, perhapsgive your article and the reviewers comments to a trustedcolleague for comment, and then decide whether to changethe article and resubmit it to the 1st journal again.


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Misconception

All western journals are equally hard to get published in

Response

I wouldnt agree with thissome journals are harder toget into than others, and their reviewers and editors aremore demanding

A common method of trying to get an article published isto make a shortlist of suitable journals which publish the

kind of article youve written, and then to draw up apecking order in terms of prestige

You may have no idea about what the pecking order inyour field looks likebut your supervisor will know, soask him/her


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(Partial) Misconception

Im a non-native speakerso itll be even harder for me

to get published than it would be for a native speaker.

Reviewers will see my English isnt perfect, and willreject my article because theyre prejudiced

Response

I dont think this is a total misconception: some reviewers

probably are prejudiced. However, I dont believe youshould be pessimistic if youre not a native speaker,

because there are things you can do to lessen any

potential prejudice.


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Non-native authors and prestigious

journals Top quality journals reject the vast majority of

manuscripts submitted for publication:

several of the editors of mainstream British and northAmerican physics, chemistry, and biology journalsGosden (1992) corresponded with put the rejection

rate at over 70% Swales (1990) claims that the figure is even higher in

the arts and humanities at 80-95%

This helps to explain why the editors in Gosden's (1992)

study admitted they were, in effect, 'looking for reasonsto reject manuscripts', and that 'linguistic grounds [were]as good a reason as any for rejection' (p.129).

However, there are th ings you can do to lessen any

difficulties you may have


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Non-native writers:

publishing strategies

Journals are beginning to offer a proofreading service to

non-native authors. The journal English for Specific

Purposes, for instance, offers to provide Japanese

authors with a list of people who can check and improve

the English of an article before submission

Get a native speaker in your field to proofread your

manuscript (If theyre not in your field, they probably

wont understand the articleand they may make

inappropriate changes)

Consider collaborating with your supervisor/a nativespeaker and co-authoring your paper


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Interpreting editors cover letters

Take a look at the handou t of th ree examp les o f

editors cover letters

Ident i fy w here the edito rs are giv ing th e autho r(s)

encouragement! How is th is done? What language is

used?


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Mixed messages

with their first experiences of submitting papers tointernational journals for publication, students may approachme with their referees reports, explaining that they generallyunderstood the scientific points of discussion, but they werenot quite sure what they were being invited to do, often due to

conflicting signals. For example, one of the papers in thecorpus was described as interesting, carefully studied, andsound enough; but then the referee went on to comment thatthe basic idea underlying the research could hardly beunderstood. Learning to decipher the lines and inferences

between the lines of referees commentsareskills whichrequire considerable practice. (Gosden 2003: 99)

Again, I suggest your supervisor or someone whosexper ienced at publ ishing in y ou r f ield w i l l be the best

person to turn to when trying to interpret these mixed

messages


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The publishing process:

from start to finish

On the handout Ive sketched out what the process ofwri t ing a journal ar t ic le m ight look l ike from your 1s t

draf t al l the way through to pub l icat ion


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Reviewers comments

What cr i ter ia do reviewers use when

evaluating manuscr ip ts?

Take a look at the instru ct ion s to reviewers

prov ided by Jou rnal of Pragmat icsand

Journal of Second Language Writ ing

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Responding to reviewers

comments

Normally editors ask you to carefully record how youve

responded to reviewers comments. I suggest more

rather than less detail is better here (within reason!); and

that you should go through EACH of the reviewers

comments in turn in a separate document to the editor.

Heres an example of how I responded recently to a

reviewers comment


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Responding to reviewers

comments: an example

Reviewer 2s Comment:I found myself wondering, in this section and again later,

why the authors had chosen to focus on the proofreaders

and not the writers themselves (or both).

Authors Response:As the reviewer points out, there are other parties directly

or indirectly involved or affected by proofreading. We point

this out towards the end of our paper, where we discuss

our future research plans which involve these other parties.

However, we have added a footnote to our introductory

section so that the point is made sooner rather than later

that there are other parties involved. We also make clear in

this footnote why we started our research on proofreading

with the proofreaders.


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Writers stories

Hopefully this handout of a few stories of writersexper iences o f the publ ish ing p rocess m ay help

some of the things weve discussed so far make

more sense..


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Final words

If I had to give someone whos new to publishing one

piece of advice, it would be:

Write with someone who has experience of publishing,or at least have someone like this read your work and

the reviewers comments you receive.


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Discussion

Have the quest ion s and issues you no ted down at thestart of todays session been dealt with? If not, lets

discuss them now


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References

Gosden H (1992) Research writing and NNSs: from the editors. Journal ofSecond Language Writing1(2): 123-139.

Gosden H(2003) Why not give us the full story?: functions of refereescomments in peer reviews of scientific research papers. Journal of Englishfor Academic Purposes 2(2): 87-101.

Leki I (2003) Tangled webs: complexities of professional writing. In CP

Casanave & S Vandrick (eds.), Writing for Scholarly Publication: Behind theScenes in Language Education. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,pp.103-112..

McKay SL (2003) Reflections on being a gatekeeper. In CP Casanave & SVandrick (eds.), Writing for Scholarly Publication: Behind the Scenes inLanguage Education. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp.91-102.

Sasaki M (2003) A scholar on the periphery: standing firm, walking slowly. InCP Casanave & S Vandrick (eds.), Writing for Scholarly Publication: Behindthe Scenes in Language Education. Mahwah: Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates, pp.211-21.

Swales JM (1990) Genre Analysis: English in Academic and ResearchSettings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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