Today we present part 1 of the second RGS-IBG Postgraduate Forum Annual Conference Training Symposium (PGF-ACTS) follow up pieces. In this post Professor Klaus Dodds looks at getting published in academic journals. Klaus is Professor of Geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London. Klaus is also Editor of the Geographical Journal.

For the vast majority of people undertaking a doctorate, getting their work published either during the research period or in the aftermath of the defence is a priority. The focus on journal publication is, more often than not, shaped by a number of factors; journal publications are highly regarded when it comes to future employment in academic and academic-related circles, journal articles are more manageable in the short-term compared to a potential monograph, articles are more likely to get read by non-academic audiences, and importantly publication whether in a journal or not fulfils a general desire to witness one’s scholarly work published online/print.

We target journals, therefore, for a variety of reasons including to secure that first academic post, after graduation. My comments reflect very much my own experience in the discipline of geography alongside publishing elsewhere in historical, political science, policy orientated and regional studies journals. I am also the editor of The Geographical Journal, and serve on the editorial boards of six other journals. Finally, multiple conversations with doctoral students I supervised in the past, and increasingly in the present, were sources of inspiration. Read more

Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pumpkincat210/with/3416918382/

Continuing to gather responses to the Guardian article by George Monbiot on the broken model of academic publishing, we asked Ken Wissoker, Editorial Director at Duke University Press, to wade into the debate. Here’s what he had to say:

I thought Monbiot’s article was very valuable for getting the word out about how the big publishers – especially Elsevier – but also Taylor and Francis and Wiley-Blackwell have extracted as much money as possible from university libraries. Elsevier pioneered this, coming up with big packages of journals that universities needed and pricing them as high as possible.  Universities with researchers in those areas (mostly science and medicine) had to pay or they weren’t supporting their professors. Since every journal was unique intellectual property, there was no competition and no market. If a library wanted to cancel a journal, Elsevier didn’t lower the price of the collection. This really was wealth extraction in a frightening and damaging form. So the article’s account of all that was a good wake-up call for those, including many academics, who were not aware of these changes over the last ten or fifteen years.  He is totally right about the infuriating way these arrangements cut out anyone without access to a university library. Read more

In his Guardian article, George Monbiot makes an excellent case against the existing academic publishing industry. Knowing that Martin Paul Eve would have much to say, we asked if he’d like to address Monbiot’s points in advance of his talk at the UKSG next year.

George Monbiot builds a good case against the corporate publishing machine that dominates the academic world and his article has had portions of the Twittersphere buzzing. I am due to speak in the opening plenary of the UK Scholarly Group conference next year – the biggest gathering of librarians and academic publishers – to make a similar argument: we don’t need academic publishers. While I won’t reiterate every aspect of Monbiot’s piece, there are several aspects, here, that are worth unpicking, especially where I diverge from Monbiot’s stance.

Firstly, Monbiot approaches, but never directly engages with, the driver of prestige in academia. He mentions the necessity of publishing with high impact factor journals and states that we can “start reading” new OA journals, but can’t “stop reading the closed ones”. Actually, we can, but only if people stop publishing therein. This will not happen in the UK because of the Research Excellence Framework and its insistence that the higher “impact” band a journal, the more weight a piece will have. This is a delegation of the critical task of the researcher into the arms of a commercial entity. While peer review serves as a useful filter, merely trusting this, based on journals which achieve their prestige based on rejection rates, is a foolish move, driven by the equally foolish baseline of a research assessment dependent on corporations. The REF, alongside competition for academic jobs, drives this system.

Secondly, publishers are able to use institutional libraries as a shield to hide a researcher’s autosubversive behaviour. Consider that, by publishing in a closed, proprietary journal, a researcher actually limits his or her own access to material by constricting his or her own institution’s library budget. This is not how it appears to the researcher, though, because the spend is at one remove. Researchers publish for prestige and it is the library’s fault if material is not forthcoming. Open Access supported by commercial entities does make a researcher aware of the problems, because in this case they will be asked to pay up front. However, most reactions from researchers to this tend to be: “I don’t want to pay, let us revert to the model where I didn’t pay”. In this way, publishers have built a “command and control” system for an entity that functions, in its obfuscation, distribution and resilience, in a mode most akin to a piece of computer malware. Libraries must educate researchers of their own complicity in this web. Read more

Over the last few months we have looked at writing and publishing journal articles from a variety of different perspectives but mainly in the social sciences so here is a post for the natural and clinical scientists amongst our readers. Todays post comes from Dr Jigar Jogia. Jigar completed his PhD in the field of Psychiatry and Cognitive Neuroscience at the Institute of Psychiatry, (King’s College London, KCL) in 2010. He is currently a Postdoctoral researcher in the section of neurobiology of psychosis (Institute of Psychiatry, KCL). He also lectures and delivers training to staff and students for the Graduate School Researcher Development Unit at KCL. Jigar recently won the Samuel Gershon Award for Bipolar Disorder Research, in this post he reflects on the importance of journal selection. 

Recently I have published some original data in a peer reviewed Journal Molecular Psychiatry which is the highest ranked psychiatric journal at present with an impact factor of 15.470. The impact factor is a measure of the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals. It is commonly used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field; with journals with higher impact factors deemed to be more important. My advice to young postdocs in any field wanting to publish their research is to be realistic about the strengths and weaknesses of your studies and select the right journal, it is one of the most crucial parts of the publication process but the importance of this step is underestimated by many. Selecting a journal whereby your research can reach your target audience and have a real impact in your field is vital for furthering your career as a postdoctoral researcher. Publishing in a good journal will add indirect credibility to your work and also introduce you as a new researcher in the field. Read more

The final post this week comes from Eva Lantsoght you can visit her blog here and follow her on twitter. In this post Eva discusses her practical experience of dealing with reviewers comments. 

From last Thursday to Monday, I’ve been completely immersed into replying reviewers’ comments to a paper which will be published as a special publication after a conference in October. Previously, I did receive some comments from reviewers for other conference papers, but the effort they required to reply was typically negligible.

Wednesday evening, however, I received 3 pages of commentary on my paper, 19 sections with comments in total. I was both terrified (it looked like a lot of work) and enthusiastic (the reviewers really analyzed my paper and provided valuable input) at the same time. It did look like a lot of work, and I also was questioning my ability to deal with it. When quickly glancing over the comments, I could immediately point out a few remarks for which I thought I would need the input of my supervisors.

I took a deep breath, and decided I’d better first finish the (also urgent) report I was working on.

Thursday afternoon I finally started working on the comments. I started by printing out the comments, and reading through them to get a general idea of what I was supposed to do, and to check if everything is clear and not contradictory from the different reviewers’ perspectives. Read more

Today is the first response to Jess Drake’s question on how to deal with conflicting reviews. I approached Prof. Chris Hamnett and Prof. Matthew Paterson who have previously contributed to the body of advice and information on journal articles particularly revision and rejection. Their previous posts can be seen here (Chris Hamnett) and here (Matthew Paterson). The post below is a synthesis of their advice. 

“Conflicting referee’s comments are not unusual. It would be surprising if everyone thought exactly the same. In general journals will go with the majority view from referees which is why many use three referees unless the minority view is so strong and convincing that they are willing to discount, to some extent, the views of the other two. Where one referee thinks the paper is good, but others see areas of weakness, you generally need to deal with these.

The big problem is where referees give contradictory suggestions, for example, one says shrink the theoretical section and expand the empirical section, and the other suggests the opposite. In these cases you need to make a reasoned decision on the basis of a close reading of the referee’s comments as to which, if either, is appropriate. If in real difficulty you could ask the editor for advice pointing to the contradiction. What is always important when you resubmit is to send an accompanying letter to the editor outlining the changes you have made and which referees criticisms they relate to and saying ‘I have addressed points A, B. and C of referee 1 but not point D, as this seems to contradict the recommendation of referee 2’. it is entirely legitimate to say that ‘I have not addressed point E as I believe that this is incorrect’ though you should always try to insert a sentence or two in the paper to explain why you have stuck to your original analysis or point. What editors want to see is a systematic and reasoned response to the main referee’s comments. They do not necessarily expect you to address all of them in the same depth or to agree with all of them. And if one referee recommends cutting X and the other says you should expand X, they cannot both be right” (Chris Hamnett). Read more

Over the last few months we have covered a range of issues related to the publication of journal articles. A couple of weeks ago we received a question via twitter from Jess Drake aka @soilduck relating to how to deal with conflicting reviewers comments. Jess is a PhD researcher at The Fenner School, Australian National University. During the day, she dabbles in understanding the environment of post-mining landscapes. At night, she writes for her own blog, contributes to online communities, ponders science communication and open science/review, cooks, bakes and brews. In today’s post Jess outlines her concerns then tomorrow and Thursday we shall look at providing some answers. You can read more about Jess and her work here

When reading comments from reviewers, there is that odd occasion that reminds me of being a kid stuck between parents with opposing views. Your Mum tells you to clean your room before dinner. Your Dad tells you it is ok to do it after, but you must do it before you can watch TV.

This creates a lot of confusion for a kid: Who do you listen to? Which one is right? Are they both right? What do you do? Learning how to deal with paper reviews can be the same. Read more

Weekly Wisdom #45 Learn to accept rejection and move on!

This weeks post comes from Prof Matthew Paterson, University of Ottawa. He is co-editor of the journal Global Environmental Politics. His latest books are “Climate capitalism: global warming and the transformation of the global economy” (with Peter Newell) and “Cultural Political Economy” (edited, with Jacqueline Best). Here he looks at strategies for getting published from a journal editors perspective.

Getting published is one of the big sources of stress for many young scholars in the early stages of an academic career. It poses generalised anxiety as it is often determinant of getting a job, but it is one of the situations where you are forced to submit yourself to the vagaries of the review process.

After 4 years of co-editing a major Political Science journal (Global Environmental Politics, ranked 24th overall according to the Web of Science, if you like such figures), two things about the review and editing process seem to me really useful to think through as you work through the choices involved in preparing an article.

Revise and Resubmit (R&R) is your friend. It is your point of entry into the publishing process.

You may be used to getting As all the time and feel it is a failure. So you sit on an article until you feel it is so solid, whereas it could be out there in the review process. Read more

This week’s guest post comes from Carly Tetley PhD student and graduate Teaching Assistant at Salford University. Continuing with our series on getting published in journal articles Carly talks about her own journal selection strategy. (You can follow Carly on twitter here)

During our very first meeting, before I had even started my PhD, my supervisor set me a target: to write and publish a review paper before the end of my first year. This exercise has helped me to focus my reading and the resulting paper will be very useful as a base for a chapter of my future thesis. I would definitely recommend this as a worthwhile exercise for new PhD students. Six months on, the paper has been written and my supervisor and I are making a few final adjustments and corrections before we submit it for peer review. So the next question is: which journal should we submit to? Read more

Today we present a guest post from Jo VanEvery. I invited Jo to create a post giving her take / feedback / ideas about our series of posts on publishing in academic journals.  Jo is an academic career coach you can read more about her here and you can follow her on twitter @jovanevery

The biggest barrier to publishing is fear.

• Fear of rejection.
• Fear of criticism.
• Fear that you really don’t have anything to contribute.

As you progressed in your education you were consistently among the best in your
cohort. That’s what got you into your PhD program in the first place. Read more

Following on from our series examining issues relating to pulishing in academic journals. Here Katie Faulkner talks about the potential of publishing in postgraduate journals. Katie is the editor of immediations, the postgraduate research journal of the Courtauld Institute of Art, where she is also working towards a PhD in late Victorian sculpture and dress.

As PhD students we are constantly being told how important it is to have one or two publications under our belt when entering the job market. But sending off a manuscript you’ve endlessly agonized over and tweaked to an editorial board made up of, let’s face it, basically your academic heroes, can be an intimidating and nerve-wracking experience. Not to mention the wait of a year or more to see your words in shiny print. Postgraduate research journals, while they might not carry the same cachet as big name journals, can be a good way into getting published. After all, who’s going to be more sympathetic to your position than your fellow PhD students? Read more

This is the third and final part of a series of posts giving advice on how to get published in academic journals. This week Professor Chris Hamnett from the Geography Department at King’s College London offers advice on dealing with rejection and resubmission.

One of the toughest things young researchers have to deal with is the letter from the editor of the journal they submitted to saying ‘thanks, but no thanks’. The first thing to understand is that while total rejection letters are always tough to deal with, letters saying ‘no thanks’ but suggesting they are willing to consider resubmission are very common, perhaps even normal, and they are by no means confined to young researchers. If my experience is anything to go on (and it may not be), most researchers, however experienced and well known, have a nice file of ‘reject but resubmit’ letters. In fact, if I remember correctly, in the introduction to one of his classic early books, David Harvey recounted that he had a drawer full of rejections at the start of his career. It happens to everyone.

Read more

This weeks guest post comes from Dr Inger Mewburn who is a Research Fellow at RMIT University in Australia.  Inger does research on research education and writes about it.  Follow her on twitter and don’t forget to visit her blog The Thesis Whisperer.

I’ve been working in the research education field for some six years and continue to be surprised by the passive attitude of many students to publishing. Some seem actively scared of the process, or set their sights on lower ranked journals and conferences, perhaps because they are afraid of rejection. I think part of the problem is that students are not coached on developing a publishing strategy. A clear publishing strategy will help you get the most out of your study time and kick start your post doctoral career.
There’s three main reasons that you should publish while you are doing your research degree. All of these reasons will inform the outline of your publishing strategy

1) One of the ways in which examiners determine the quality of PhD is the extent to which it is publishable. If parts of the PhD have already been published this will give you some confidence about the outcome of the examination process.

Read more

Right, so my thesis has been completed and examined and I passed subject to minor corrections, which were dutifully done within 3 months, so now what? Well, according to my examiners the first step in my post-doc life should be publishing a paper in to a good academic journal. This seems to make perfect sense however, at the same time it raises three important questions;

1.       What parts of my thesis would make good journal articles?

2.       What constitutes a good journal and how do I choose?

3.       What do I do if  my paper gets rejected?

Over the next three weeks we will consider all these issues with guest posts from Dr Inger Mewburn who writes about Journal selection and Professor Chris Hamnett who offers advice on dealing with rejections and resubmissions. In this post I will consider the first of these questions – what parts of my thesis would make good journal articles? Read more