Publishing your First Journal Article
Prof. Emma Smith, editor of Shakespeare Survey, outlines the process early career scholars should follow to publish their first peer-reviewed journal article.
Step 1 - Talk to your supervisor or mentor:
If you can, talk to more senior colleagues to get advice about the shape and timing of your article. Is your article based on a thesis chapter, or is it an offcut of the thesis? Where might you send it for consideration? When’s the best time for you, given your other professional and personal responsibilities, to work on it for submission? How can it help your profile and skillset, rather than simply piling on another pressure?
Step 2 - Identify your topic:
Often journal articles are too general or too big: they attempt to condense all the work of a dissertation into a single short chapter, and end up discussing abstractly or at a difference from the material. You’re more likely to be able to make a significant contribution with something quite specific, placed within a larger critical, methodological or historical framework. Think about the article as a different kind of genre, with its own affordances and limitations. Don’t try to do everything.
Think about the word limit for the journal/s you’re interested in (see below), and about the material you want to include. It can be useful to sketch out a plan with realistic word limits attached so you can test whether the combination of example/framework can fit graciously into the space allowed. So, for example, if you need 6000 words to establish the terms of your argument, that doesn’t allow very much for explication: likewise, if your example takes 6000 words, you haven’t much space to frame it.
Consider subheadings as part of drafting – they needn’t stay in the final version, but they can help ensure that the different bits of your argument are in proportion. Signpost, more than you think necessary, to help readers identify where you’re heading.
Talking over your work with non-specialists can be helpful, so that you get better at explaining why this particular insight, text, or approach matters (sometimes we focus too much on getting expert feedback which can help with a recondite reference to the obscure 1st edition of such and such, and that’s valuable too, but for shaping an article, a larger sense of why this is important is needed).
‘Talking over your work with non-specialists can be helpful, so that you get better at explaining why this particular insight, text, or approach matters’
Step 3 - Identify your journal:
Look across recent issues of journals in the field to get a sense of what they publish. What are the topics and methodologies flagged up in special issues or in the general run of publication, what might the editor or editorial board reveal about the journal’s priorities, where are the works or scholars you most cite published? Be aware that you can only submit your article to one journal at a time and that the review process can take anything from 6 weeks to 6 months or longer.
Tip: It’s fine to email the journal editor with questions about your submission but make sure the information isn’t already available on their website.
Step 4 - Submitting your article:
Have a look at the instructions for submission, particularly whether the journal requires submissions to be in its house style. The submission portal, if there is one, or your covering email, if there isn’t, might give an opportunity for a couple of sentences on what you’re submitting and why (‘My article offers a new reading of x building on the work of y published in your journal in xxxx’, or ‘I am working in the tradition of x and y’ or ‘I see that after your special issue on this topic in xxxx nothing more has appeared in the journal, so my intervention may be welcome’, or ‘I saw your statement about #BlackLivesMatter and was prompted to submit this article on x to you’). If you send your article as a word document, do anonymise it by removing your name from the text and its metadata (in the Properties menu).
Tip: Try for a really interesting first paragraph (rather than a dutiful survey of the field).
Step 5 - Revise and resubmit
The best outcome from your submission is revise and resubmit: it shows there’s real potential in your article and that you have the chance to improve it based on expert review. Often there will be contradictory advice in the peer reviews, and your editor may help to mediate those and direct you about what to prioritise. If not, take time to read the reviews and reflect on them. Give them to someone you trust to read too: they can help cut through the ego that’s always involved and enable you to treat the reports as information rather than character assassination.
Make a plan – of action, and a timeframe – to address the reports. Try to do it as quickly as is feasible (say, within a month or two), so that you don’t lose momentum. When you resubmit, do, if possible, send a brief and positive paragraph outlining what you have changed in response to the reports (and explaining why, if there is something major that you have not done). Make it easy for the journal to see you’ve done what was asked and that they should now press accept.
Step 6 - Be proud:
All journal editors know that the majority of their submissions and publications come from early career scholars. Most senior academics stop this rigmarole of peer review and revise and resubmit once they have tenure. They proceed to publish monographs, or commissioned chapters in books, or conference proceedings. That’s because it’s tough putting yourself out there, it’s a long process, and it can be bruising. Getting an article ready and submitting it is itself a success: celebrate it.