Academic authors most often disseminate the results of their research through journals. In some fields, particularly in the natural and physical sciences, book writing is rare. A biochemist may publish dozens of journal articles and never think of writing a book. Journals are also the least professionalized of the publishing media. In the humanities and social sciences, journals are often edited by academics with regular teaching and research assignments and without professional staff.Footnote ¹ (This is far less common in the physical and natural sciences.) The advent of digital media has led to the creation of numerous small, specialized journals run out of faculty offices, and journals that are “printed” only after they reach subscribers’ computers are plentiful.

The growth of specialized journals has expanded opportunities for publication. At the same time, the stabilization or even shrinkage of faculty hiring has decreased the number of submissions received by many journals. This adds up to improved possibilities for getting good articles published, even if they are on very specialized topics. It also means that mediocre work can be published in less prestigious journals that need to fill their pages. Pressure on faculty members to publish has also given rise to “predatory” journals, which charge authors a fee for publishing their articles. They do not provide peer review or editing and will publish just about anything. (I have received invitations to contribute to, and even edit, journals in fields that I have not studied since high school.)Footnote ² These phenomena, in turn, have generated efforts by research councils in Europe and Australia to rank journals, allowing these agencies to quantify the accomplishments of faculty members, departments, and institutions. Some US universities attempt such rankings less formally.

Publishing in journals is key to advancing an academic career, so it is important to understand what you must do to be listed as an author, especially if you are in a field where multiple authorship is the norm. As a student, being a member of a research team provides an opportunity to learn the way a journal article is conceived, developed, written, and submitted. While you are focused on the research itself, you should take some time to observe and participate in the writing, as well as the decision about when and where to submit. Begin by understanding the role you should play to be considered an author.

Who Is an Author?

Faculty members and independent scholars working in the humanities have no problem identifying themselves as authors: they have done the research and writing, and while they will acknowledge the advice and assistance of mentors, colleagues, and others, no one else is an author of their work. A graduate student in the same field may have to share authorship with a mentor if the mentor is the principal researcher and writer and the student has played a secondary role. Otherwise, the student should acknowledge the mentor’s assistance but need not share authorship. Most universities have clear policies on this question. For example, Yale University’s policy on academic integrity states that “senior faculty members should be named as co-authors on work independently generated by their junior colleagues only if they have made substantial intellectual contributions to the experimental design, interpretation of findings and manuscript preparation.”Footnote ³

Questions of authorship are more complicated in fields where research is done by teams. It was once common for the head of a laboratory to be included as an author of all articles that came out of the group. That is no longer the case at most institutions. Again, Yale’s policy makes this clear:

Because authorship practices vary from one institution to another, journal editors have developed their own principles. The editors of Nature Research journals have a very clear policy:

These principles are concerned with excluding those who have not made significant contributions rather than including those whose contributions may be overlooked. Junior members of a research team – graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, untenured faculty, and nonfaculty researchers – should learn at the outset their teams’ expectations for inclusion as an author.

Writing Well

Take the time needed to produce a significant, cogently argued, and clearly written manuscript. Pressure to publish sometimes tempts scholars to rush their work into print before it is ready. They may take a conference paper that they have not thought through completely, give it a quick rewrite, and start submitting it to journals. Given the range of journals out there, they may well get an acceptance letter. This is really not a good idea. Publication is a form of self-presentation. It will often be the first time a colleague at another university learns about your work, and it is something that hiring and promotion committees will read. Publishing immature or sloppy work is akin to showing up for a job interview in dirty clothes. Everything you publish should enhance your reputation, not merely add a line to your curriculum vitae.

Nor is it wise to rush portions of a research project into print before you are sure of final results. True, your curriculum vitae will have a longer list of publications, but these articles will end up in lower-tier journals and will be cited infrequently. Even worse, they may turn out in the end to be invalid. When you write the article that ties your work together, it will seem less original and important if bits and pieces have already appeared in print. Take the time to make sure your submissions are your best work, and try to place them in the best possible journals.

Many fields have formal conventions about article writing: All articles are organized in the same way, with subsections covering specified topics (e.g., title, abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion, references). Because disciplines vary, you should learn the conventions of the field in which you are publishing. If this is the field in which you have done most of your research, you probably have absorbed such conventions subliminally. You will have to make a special effort, though, if you are writing in an area outside your usual territory (e.g., a historian venturing into a medical journal or a lawyer writing for a psychology journal). The bibliography of this book includes the official style manuals for a variety of disciplines. If your discipline has a generally accepted style manual, you should use the current edition. Many journals provide details about style preferences on their websites. The bibliography also includes several general guides to writing, guides to writing for specific fields, and dictionaries.

Good academic writing is clear and succinct. Strunk and White remind us to “omit needless words,” and the fiction writer George Saunders hears that message repeated by his “inner nun.” Clarity and brevity are vital. Intelligent readers are impressed by ideas and clear expression, not by elaborate constructions and excess words. If your writing is obscure, vague, and verbose, readers will translate what you have written into plain English and wonder why you did not write it that way in the first place. Neither of the following possible answers is flattering. First, perhaps you did not know how. More damning, perhaps you realized that reduced to plain English your idea did not make sense or was so obvious that it wasn’t worth saying. Good writing saves the reader’s time and your reputation.

You can easily avoid errors common in academic writing. Don’t use jargon. In many disciplines, words have specialized meanings, but it is rarely necessary to use a word that is not in the dictionary. Specialized language is appropriate when a technical term expresses an idea most economically and will be understood by your readers. However, even fellow researchers may be put off by jargon. A 2021 study found “a significant negative relationship between the proportion of jargon words in the title and abstract and the number of citations a paper receives.” The more inclusive your vocabulary, the larger your readership. As the authors note, jargon “illustrates complex concepts only in the minds of those sharing a common background while precluding everyone else from understanding.”Footnote ⁶ To determine whether you are using technical expressions appropriately or are simply resorting to jargon, ask yourself whether you are using the plainest word that will say precisely what you mean, rather than merely trying to impress. It sometimes can be helpful to define terms precisely, within your article, to ensure that you are using them properly and that your readers will understand exactly what you mean.

Bureaucratic language easily creeps into our writing and provokes the special ire of editors and careful readers. Do not use finalize for finish, this point in time for now, or debrief for question or interview. Also avoid trendy language, which rapidly becomes overused and then dated. There should be no more perfect storms, for example, and no more deep dives. “At the end of the day” will soon come to an end. Trendy language also tends to be imprecise: few things are truly iconic.

Avoid cleverness or cuteness, especially in titles. Titles should be brief and should tell the reader what an article is about. Occasionally a title can be used to attract attention but usually not in a scholarly journal. If a title is not clear, your article may be indexed incorrectly and will not turn up in computer searches, so that it may languish unread and uncited.

Limit your use of qualifying adverbs and abstract nouns. Rather, quite, and somewhat can usually be omitted without sacrificing meaning. Similarly, you should rewrite sentences to avoid using such phrases as friendly by nature, in terms of, on a weekly basis, generous in character, and for the purpose of. Replace terms like a few, some, and most with more precise descriptions: an actual number or percentage. Qualifying terms are necessary, however, to distinguish among levels of confidence: think carefully about whether you mean certainly, probably, or possibly; always, usually, occasionally, or rarely.

Be accurate. Text summaries of data in tables or graphs should match. For example, if the text says that most or a majority of results were positive, the corresponding table should show more than 50 percent positive. Check and recheck all formulas and quotations. Make sure the citations in your notes and bibliography are accurate and complete, and that they conform to the format of the relevant style manual. Some journals and a few book publishers routinely check citations, but you should not rely on this. The reader who cannot find an article using your citation has good reason to doubt your reliability. If you are including links in an online publication, check to see that they work. (You will need to do this again when you read the proofs.)

If you find that advice about writing creates anxiety and makes it difficult for you to get your thoughts onto paper, think of it instead as advice about rewriting and revising. First drafts are rarely well written, and you should always assume that you will have to revise once or twice before submitting your work. Write in the way that makes it easiest to get your ideas into words. Only then do you need to go back through your work with Strunk and White, your inner nun, and me looking over your shoulder.

You may want to ask one or two colleagues to read your manuscript before you send it off. You probably know who is likely to give helpful suggestions on content, organization, and writing. Someone who knows the technical aspect of your work can provide a different kind of criticism than someone in a different subfield who is known as a good writer. Be prepared for criticism, accept advice graciously, and use your judgment about how much of it to follow. Colleagues may also offer suggestions about appropriate journals.

Having written an article that is clear, direct, precise, and accurate – and that has something important to say – you will be on your way to publication in a reputable journal. But which one?

Selecting a Journal

You can submit an article to only one journal at a time, so this is an important decision. Start by looking through the journals you read regularly, whose interests most likely coincide with your own, and at the journals cited in your work. From these, compile a list of journals that cover the subject of your manuscript, and visit their websites to learn more about them. The websites may state usual time for review, preferred style, percentage of submissions accepted, and time between acceptance and publication. (Such information is usually based on the editors’ self-reporting and may not be entirely accurate or up to date.) You may also want to look at the subject-specific guides to journals in the bibliography. Some journals have maximum lengths for articles, or do not publish illustrations. You are wasting your time and that of the editor if your article does not meet such mechanical requirements. As you pay close attention to the journal as a whole, rather than to the content of the articles you find interesting, you may notice some flaws. Does the journal seem to be sloppily produced or edited? Is the current issue of a recent date, or is the journal behind schedule?

You need to look beyond these formalities, though. Spend some time with recent issues of the journal to see whether you can detect any editorial preferences or biases. Some journals are more interested in traditional work than in innovation, for example, or in certain subfields. Some editors like to publish work that provokes discussion or even controversy, while others steer clear of all but the most traditional approaches. Especially in the social sciences, a journal may have an ideological or theoretical bias that makes it unsuitable for your work. Try to see whether your work would fit comfortably in each journal’s pages. Unlike book publishers, most journals do not welcome query letters, so you will have to make your own judgments about these matters.

Before deciding where to submit, you may want to think about whether to choose a less prestigious journal that you think will probably accept your article and publish it quickly or to begin by trying for one of the big names. This decision will depend on your own impression of how administrators evaluate publications, on how rushed you are, and of course on how much you yourself value publication in a major journal. Do not assume that a lesser journal represents your best bet. Journals are quirky, and you may find your work rejected in the minor leagues and accepted in the majors. One colleague had an article rejected by a respectable but specialized journal and then accepted by the flagship journal of the profession. (Another rejection story to keep in mind.) Remember, though, that more prestigious journals may take longer to get your work into print because of a backlog of accepted articles. They may also demand extensive revisions. Always, though, choose a refereed journal – that is, a journal whose submissions are reviewed by outside readers in addition to the editor. Most universities distinguish between articles in refereed and nonrefereed journals when awarding tenure and raises, but many do not distinguish among refereed journals. Some, however, take into account citation rates, impact factors, or other measures of status. Your colleagues and department chair can tell you how your work will be evaluated. Equally important, peer reviewers anticipate the criticisms that would otherwise come from readers of your published work. They may even point out errors that you can easily correct. It is always better to discover and solve problems before publication than after.

Colleagues are a good source of information on how prompt a journal is about refereeing, how quickly articles are put into print or online, and how well promises are kept. You should take much of this information with a grain or two of salt, because horror stories abound. (The classic fictional account of how bad things can get appears in Kingsley Amis’s novel Lucky Jim.) Consistent accounts of mistreatment by a journal should put it low on your list.

Colleagues can also warn you away from journals whose quality or reputation is questionable. Having your work published in the journal of last resort may lengthen your publications list, but it will not enhance your reputation. If your work is rejected by several journals, especially if a number of referees point out substantive problems, you should consider radical revisions before continuing to submit it. If your only remaining hope is a journal with a reputation for publishing almost anything, you need to decide whether publication will help or hurt your career. And never resort to a predatory journal.

The quality of a journal does not depend on whether it appears in print or only online. If it is peer reviewed, well edited, and well regarded, its medium is irrelevant. Online publication saves time by eliminating mailing, reduces the time required for typesetting and proofreading, and eliminates printing and binding. The whole idea of an “issue” can be dispensed with: Articles can be published as soon as they are accepted, edited, and proofread – without waiting for enough articles to accumulate to put together an issue or for the next month or quarter to come along. Because space is not a consideration, there is no such thing as a backlog of articles in a purely electronic journal. This makes online journals especially attractive in fields in which practitioners such as doctors need timely information on new treatments. When deciding whether to submit to an online journal, you should consider the same factors as for a print journal: quality, reputation, appropriateness, and speed of decision making.

You will also have to decide whether to make your article freely available through open access. The main advantage to open-access publishing is that your work is likely to be seen and cited by more people if it is free than if it costs something to read it. Your decision may be dictated by your funding agency or by your home institution, or you may decide independently to publish in an open-access journal.

Your first step is to understand any official policies that affect you. If you have received funding from a source outside your institution, your decision will be governed by the funder’s policy. Government agencies use the term public access rather than the more general open access. The policy of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is typical: “The NIH public access policy requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to PubMed Central immediately upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication.” If you receive government funding, your grant documents will include such a provision. Some private foundations have broader open-access requirements. Recipients of funds from the Ford Foundation, for example, both grantees and consultants, “will be required to make foundation-funded materials subject to a Creative Commons license allowing others, free of charge and without requesting permission, the ability to copy, redistribute, and adapt existing materials, provided they give appropriate credit to the original author.” Such a policy removes much of the authors’ control over use of their research by others.Footnote ⁷

Your institution may require, or more commonly recommend, deposit of your work in an open-access archive. These archives are typically maintained by the university library, whose staff will provide assistance in complying with the policy. Many journals, including the most prestigious, are not open access, but publishing in them is nevertheless compatible with institutional policies. If you are publishing in a journal that is not open access, the university will usually negotiate with the publisher so that the article can be deposited but not made available until an agreed-upon date. The waiting period is referred to as an embargo. It is your responsibility to understand and comply with your institution’s policies.

Another option is to publish in an open-access journal – one that does not charge for subscriptions and makes all materials available free online. The Directory of Open Access Journals (doaj.org) provides a list of peer-reviewed open-access journals. In journal publishing, as in life, there is no free lunch. Because open-access journals receive no revenue from subscribers, they meet their costs (peer review, editing, archiving, posting, and promotion) by charging publication fees to authors, after their articles have been peer reviewed and accepted. (Note that many traditional journals in the sciences also charge publication fees.) Universities that encourage open access often make funds available to authors to meet these costs, but you may want to make sure that is the case before choosing an open-access journal.

Some Things to Avoid

Some authors achieve lengthy publication lists by recycling their research. Changing the emphasis slightly, altering the length, rephrasing, adding a section or two can transform a single article into two or three. This practice wastes valuable space in journals, and the time of peer reviewers, editors, and readers. A recycled article may slip by editors and peer reviewers occasionally, but eventually word gets out. We all read more than one journal, and if a study sounds familiar we can easily figure out where we have seen it before. In the medical sciences, this practice can have serious consequences for patients. A researcher doing a meta-analysis (a synthesis of several studies on, for example, nonsurgical treatment of a specific cancer) may unknowingly be counting the results of a single study more than once if its authors have published them more than once. This duplication will alter the statistical results and may mislead practitioners into thinking that a treatment is more (or less) effective than it really is.

On the rare occasion when republication of material is appropriate – for example, if the first appearance was a brief note in a journal with very limited circulation, or in another language – you should nevertheless tell the editor the circumstances of the first publication. Enclosing a copy of the original article or manuscript will enable the editor to verify the differences and make an informed decision. It is also acceptable to rewrite the same material for a different audience. The first version might be addressed to other researchers and the second to high school teachers, for example. Each would appear in an appropriate journal and reach different readers.

A variant on duplicate publication is “salami publishing,” in which each bit of research is divided into the thinnest possible slices (sometimes referred to as “LPUs,” for “least publishable units”), with each slice submitted as a separate article. This is marginally more ethical than duplicate submission, but it is equally wasteful. Nor is it clear that it does the slicer much good. In any serious review of a scholar’s work (for tenure, promotion, a new job, or major grants), reviewers look at all the applicant’s work as a body. If there is only one ounce of salami there, slicing it thin doesn’t make it any weightier. One significant article in a major journal almost always benefits a researcher’s career more than four or five trivial pieces scattered in lesser publications.

Both duplicate publication and salami publishing are easily detected in an online literature search. Some journals use software designed to detect plagiarism by comparing submitted manuscripts to a database of published material. This software will also detect duplicate publication, which is sometimes called self-plagiarism. Editors will reject such manuscripts and, in some cases, put the author on a list of potential contributors to be viewed with caution, or even rejected automatically.

Submitting Your Manuscript

Although most journals require electronic submission, a few still want hard copy, and some want both. Some want manuscripts submitted as email attachments, while others have set up submission portals. Some are flexible about software; others are rigid. The place to begin is the journal’s website, which will explain how to submit articles and spell out requirements for software, formatting, length, illustrations, and other details. Most journals do not ask for a cover letter, but some do. Usually, these are used to provide contact information. Sometimes they ask for confirmation that the manuscript is not under consideration elsewhere, that all authors have approved it, and that you have adhered to the relevant ethical guidelines, such as those of your institution’s human subjects review board. You should follow the instructions on the website: They are the admission ticket for consideration.

Some journals impose submission fees, though this is rare. The American Sociological Review, for example, requires payment of a $25 nonrefundable manuscript processing fee. The American Economic Review charges members of the American Economic Association $200 and nonmembers $300; half the fee is returned if the manuscript is rejected without review. Usually no payment is requested for submission, although – as I will explain shortly – a fee may be imposed for publication.

The most detailed websites provide information about maximum length, font and size, page size, footnote style, specifications for illustrations, and formats for tables. Some provide templates. If you have a journal in mind before you begin writing, it’s a good idea to follow its preferences at the outset. This is especially important if you are using images that you have acquired from outside sources rather than creating them yourself. You need to ensure that the resolution is adequate, and that you can acquire the kind of permission the journal requires (see Chapter 10 on illustrations and permissions). The website may also refer you to a specialized style guide that provides more detail about reference style and rules about headings, capitalization, lists, and other matters. You may find that creating a manuscript that looks like a finished article provides a psychological boost.

Pay close attention to the journals’ instructions for “blinding” manuscripts. To make the peer-review process as objective as possible, most journals do not disclose the author’s name or affiliation to the referees. They will ask you to send a separate cover sheet and not to include your name on the pages of the article itself. Beyond that, be sure to avoid any first-person pronouns. For example, if you refer to other articles you have written, say “Smith has reported” rather than “I have previously noted.” Do not include anything else that might disclose your identity, such as names of individuals or institutions in acknowledgments.

Peer Review

Most submissions to peer-reviewed journals are read first by an editor who determines whether they are appropriate for the journal and good enough to be sent to a referee. “Good enough” may mean sufficiently original and interesting, adequately researched and documented, clearly written, or all of these. The editor may also consider factors extraneous to the quality of the manuscript. For example, the journal may have several articles on the same subject set to appear in forthcoming issues, and no more are needed; they may have received several manuscripts from your institution, and they want to publish work from more diverse sources; or they may have many articles that feature the same theoretical approach as yours and they want to present research with a different orientation. If an editor rejects your manuscript without sending it out for review, that does not necessarily mean that it won’t find a home somewhere else.

Journals that use peer review invite experts to review submissions, while nonrefereed journals allow the editor, the editorial staff, or an editorial board to make decisions independently. Editors of nonrefereed journals can make faster decisions, but publication in their journals does not offer the prestige or the assistance that the peer-review system provides. Referees can save an author from mistakes of fact, poor logic, missing sources, and other embarrassments. Their purpose is not merely to screen out unsuitable articles but also to recognize promising ones and to help move submissions from the unacceptable category into the acceptable one. You should not expect referees to correct minor details (although they often do) or rewrite bad prose (though they may point out examples). More often, they will give general advice on further sources or weaknesses in your argument whose correction would make your work publishable. Much criticism is, in fact, constructive.

Peer reviewers may be members of the journal’s editorial board or specialists unaffiliated with the journal except as occasional reviewers. The editor may ask referees specific questions about the article or ask them to fill out a form; some ask for a letter grade in addition to comments and recommendations. Whatever the format, the referee is asked whether the article should be published in the journal and why or why not. Major scientific and medical journals have a more elaborate refereeing process that may include review by a statistician or other technical experts in addition to review by outside referees.

You are likely to be a peer reviewer as well as an author, so it’s worth thinking about the responsibilities of each role in this process. Referees have great influence, and only those who are willing to take the job seriously should agree to review a submission. A referee must be competent in the field (and that includes being familiar with current research), free of conflicts of interest, able to judge other people’s work objectively, willing to spend the time it takes to evaluate the article and make useful suggestions, and committed to doing all of this under a deadline. This means asking questions like: Is the topic worth investigating? Is the author’s research sound? Have the relevant sources been tapped? Is the thesis clearly and convincingly argued? Does the evidence support the thesis? Is the article adequately documented? Is the writing clear and succinct? Did I learn anything from reading this? The late historian Bernard Bailyn always asked one final question of his students: “So what?” Why does this matter? Why is this worth knowing? Asking yourself all these questions about your own work before submitting is a good way to anticipate – and avoid – criticism.

Referees should not ask: Is this the way I would have written the article? The least fair, least useful reviews result from asking this question. One reason research is fun and exciting is that no two people approach a question in the same way. Perhaps you would have done it differently, and perhaps your way would have been better, but that is not the issue. You have been asked to evaluate an article as written, on its own terms. Any other kind of evaluation is of little use to the author or the journal editor.

A good peer review is focused, relevant, and impersonal. As the American University Presses’ Best Practices for Peer Review notes, “Reports that do not engage with the content of a work, that offer insufficient support for a reviewer’s criticisms, or that evince animus toward authors or their ideas do not provide useful guidance to acquiring editors, authors, or faculty boards.”Footnote ⁸

Peer reviewers also have a responsibility to keep the content – and even the existence – of a submission confidential. It is a privileged communication. You may not cite it or use it in any way until it is published. You may not show it to others or discuss its contents. If you feel that a colleague or a graduate student might be a better referee, ask the editor’s permission before passing the manuscript on. Do not try to guess who the authors are or communicate with them. It is possible – and in some fields even probable – that a second journal will send an article to the same referee that the first journal used. If you are asked to referee an article that you have previously advised be rejected, you should behave in a civilized, ethical manner. It is not acceptable to blight anonymously and eternally another person’s career. The solution least prejudicial to the author, yet helpful to the editor, is to decline without giving a reason and suggest another referee. There is an exception to this rule: an article that you felt was inappropriate for journal A but all right for journal B. It is of course reasonable to referee an article for journal B that you recommended for publication to journal A but that its editor nevertheless declined. (Do not be outraged if this happens. The journal editor or another referee may have disagreed, or perhaps the author declined to make changes required by the editor.)

Most journals now use a system of double-blind review: Neither author nor peer reviewer knows the identity of the other. The reasoning behind concealing the author’s name is that the reviewer should focus on the quality of the work and not be influenced by irrelevant facts like the author’s affiliation, gender, or ethnicity. The Institute of Physics, for example, has moved from single-blind reviews, with the author’s name revealed to reviewers, to double-blind review for all its journals to reduce bias. They are also trying to find a way to mask the author’s name before the editor sees the manuscript. Unaffiliated scholars, those at institutions other than research universities, people of color, people with disabilities, and members of any underrepresented group need this protection. Masking the referee’s identity is thought to make it more likely that the editor will get an honest, frank assessment. Some argue that a system of open refereeing – with both author’s and referees’ names known to all – is more productive, and some journals give referees the option of having their names disclosed to the author. I believe that as long as we live in a society that is not completely free of prejudice, double-blind review is needed.

While your manuscript is being reviewed, you need to plan for any possible outcome. In case of rejection, you should have a second journal in mind. More important, you need to be moving your research agenda along, working on your next project. But you need to keep an eye on the submitted manuscript. If the journal has told you when to expect a response, mark that date on your calendar. If not, mark a date about three months after submission. At that point you can send the journal a polite email asking when you might expect to hear from them. If necessary, repeat the query three or four weeks later. Do not let the process drag on forever; call if necessary. In the unlikely event that your queries are ignored, withdraw your article from consideration (a letter as well as email in this instance), and send it elsewhere. For articles in the sciences, or in any case where timely publication is vital because of the article’s subject, this timetable should be speeded up considerably.

Good News and Bad

An acceptance is always good news, even though it will usually come with a request for revisions. Make sure you understand exactly what the editor wants you to do. For example, if the article is to be shortened, by how much? Sometimes reviewers offer contradictory advice, and you need to know which the editor would like you to follow. And, of course, you must be sure that you agree with any major revision. Unless the changes are minimal and mechanical, it’s a good idea to send an email to the editor spelling out your understanding of what you are to do, ending with a request that the editor approves what you propose. Find out, too, when the revised manuscript is due and make it your first priority. You also need to ensure that the article will definitely be published if you make the revisions. Sometimes an editor hedges, and you may not want to revise extensively to someone’s specifications if the article may still be rejected despite your additional efforts.

Moderately good news comes in the form of a “revise and resubmit” decision. This means that, after you have revised your manuscript, it will be subject to further review. Find out exactly what the editor has in mind. If the plan is for the editor to reread the article to ensure that the revisions are adequate, that is not problematic. But it may mean that the revised article will be sent back to the reviewers for their comments. This alternative, too, will probably result in acceptance. In some cases, however, the editor will send the revised manuscript to new peer reviewers. If this is the plan, you run the risk of being asked for extensive further revision, or even being given advice contrary to that of the initial reviewers. You may prefer to revise the article in line with suggestions that you find helpful and send it on to another journal.

Rejection, of course, is bad news, but it is not catastrophic. If it comes quickly, it probably means that your manuscript was not sent to reviewers. As I said before, the rejection may be for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of your work. If it has been rejected after peer review, wait a day, and then read the reviewers’ comments as objectively as possible. (If you do not receive at least a summary of the reviewers’ comments, you can ask for them.) Take advantage of whatever good advice you have received, revise accordingly, and send it to the next journal on your list. Be sure to bring the article up to date with any information or publications that appeared while your work was under consideration.

Some journal editors make a special effort to help authors whose work is rejected. They will send referees’ comments and their own suggestions and sometimes even recommend other journals that might be more appropriate. Unfortunately, most editors do not have the time to do this. When you are given such generous help, thank the editor. Perhaps your next encounter with the journal will be more successful.

After acceptance, you have some additional work to do. If you have quoted extensively from other people’s work or if you are reprinting tables or illustrations from other sources, you must get written permission from the copyright holder. Do this as soon as the article is accepted. Chapter 10 provides information on acquiring permission.

You may be asked to review a copy editor’s work on your article, or you may merely receive proofs to be read (see Chapter 10 for instructions). Read carefully. It is easier to proofread accurately from printed pages than on a computer screen. If you receive an edited manuscript, you may still make changes and ask for clarification of editorial changes you do not like or understand. If you receive proofs, you can make only changes that are absolutely necessary unless the editor tells you otherwise. Always return the manuscript and proofs on time.

Revising Oral Presentations

Many journal articles begin as papers presented at professional meetings. Not every oral presentation can become an article. For example, a report on a work in progress is not ready for publication, and a paper that is part of a panel may not survive out of context. Many conference papers, however, can be revised for publication. There may even be a journal editor in the audience who finds your talk interesting enough to approach you about it.

Before spending time on revision, check with the conference sponsors. Some groups publish proceedings of their meetings, and they may want to include your paper. Others ask that you give their own journal the right of first refusal. You should, of course, honor those expectations.

Oral and written presentations differ in many ways. If you have ever sat through someone’s reading of an article, usually without looking up from the pages, you have some clues to the differences viewed from that angle: The talk was probably too long, too dense to follow easily, and devoid of enlivening spontaneous remarks. Reading an article instead of presenting a paper is a mistake. But submitting an unrevised talk to a journal is also a mistake. Shifting from oral to written presentation takes some work.

The most important consideration when revising is the audience for the article. The audience for your oral presentation may have been only a handful of specialists; perhaps it was a roomful of amateur enthusiasts. In any case, it is not the same group as the one your article will reach. Revise with your readers in mind and alter the level of detail, the context provided, the tone, the tables and illustrations, and the documentation accordingly.

Sometimes revision requires substantive alteration. It is always wise to incorporate changes based on the reactions of the audience at your talk. Any doubts, misunderstandings, or questions your hearers raised will occur to readers as well, so you can anticipate them. If your talk was a brief summary of your work, you will probably want to flesh it out with examples and details when you prepare it for publication. The article may also offer opportunities to review background and earlier work, to discuss possible limitations or qualifications of your conclusions, and to expand on opportunities for further research. If, however, your talk was discursive and chatty, you will have to tighten it up.

A speech usually contains references to the occasion of its presentation. In an article, an initial note can tell the reader where and when the material was first presented; references within the text should be eliminated. The obvious ones are easy to omit (“It is a pleasure to be here in Punxsutawney on Groundhog Day”), but be on the lookout for subtler references, such as those that refer to the nature of the audience, the interests of the group, or an earlier paper or other event at the conference. These, too, must be omitted or altered. Similarly, references to time should be adjusted.

Any visual aids used in your talk must be adapted for publication. This is not simply a matter of printing out your PowerPoint slides. Readers of journal articles have more time to study tables or graphs and to relate them to the text. Speakers who have selected or compiled their tables somewhat hastily must make up for those lapses as they revise. Make sure that the table actually says what you have claimed, that it is accurate and succinct, and that you have documented the sources. If you have simply copied a table, graph, or drawing from someone else’s work, you will have to get permission for publication. Also make sure that the illustrations are really needed. Speakers often use images to liven things up and to keep the audience’s attention. In an article, however, illustrations should be kept only if they are vital to the argument.

An article requires more rigorous documentation than a speech, which does not come with footnotes. In a speech you may get away with something like “As Lobachevsky has pointed out … . ” In an article you must include first name, article title, journal name, date, volume, and page number in your notes. You must also check to ensure that you have quoted accurately. Speakers occasionally indulge in such statements as “Someone once claimed that” or “At a conference I attended a few years ago, a speaker argued that … .” Some of these quotations, I suspect, are fictional – useful rhetorical shortcuts. In any case, they must be omitted or documented when revising for publication.

The tone of an article is generally more formal than that of a talk. You may wish to shift from the first or second person to the third, in addition to removing or formalizing jokes, anecdotes, and other casual features. You may have to find an appropriate punctuation mark or phrase to substitute for the raised eyebrow, hard stare, long pause, or eloquent gesture that you relied on when speaking.

As you revise, you may want to provide more structure for your argument, and the medium of print allows you to use headings and subheadings. If you displayed or circulated outlines of your talk, these can often be transformed into headings.

Although some speakers expend as much effort on an oral presentation as on a written one, they are the exceptions. Most academics regard such presentations as trial runs. Journal editors have learned this, and they do not look favorably on unrevised speeches. On the other hand, a speech that has been presented to a critical audience and then properly revised can be a valuable contribution.

Money

Scholarly journals rarely pay contributors or referees. At most, authors receive a few extra copies of a print journal or some offprints. A few journals charge submission fees that you must pay before they will consider your article. These fees are meant to defray the cost of refereeing and to discourage frivolous submissions. They range from token amounts to hundreds of dollars. The website of the journal or of the publisher will list these fees. Such charges should not be confused with the fees charged by predatory journals, which are higher and which guarantee publication without peer review.

In the physical and life sciences it is accepted (though not universal) practice to bill authors a “page charge” for publishing their work. It is imposed only after an article is accepted on its merits, after peer review. Authors must pay a certain amount, usually $50–$80 per page for a certain number of pages, with a higher rate for additional pages and sometimes for pages with color illustrations. Even journals that do not usually impose page charges may do so for color illustrations, not to discourage their use when they are needed but to cover the additional cost of preparing and reproducing them. Many journals will waive page charges, but only for a limited number of articles per issue, so receiving a waiver may result in delayed publication.

It costs money to publish a journal. Staff must be paid, and their travel to conferences must be funded. Journals are housed in buildings that charge rent, and they use utilities that charge fees. Computers, telephones, software, and copying machines cost money. Print journals must pay for printing, paper, and postage; electronic journals must pay for web domains, servers, and software, and for people to maintain the site, format material, notify readers of new articles, and deal with technical glitches. Both must maintain subscription lists and market the publication.

These costs must come from some combination of five main sources: subscriptions, advertising fees, page charges, offprint charges, and contributions from a university or a professional association (e.g., cash, release time for an editor, or subsidized rent). Subscriptions and advertising fees go hand in hand: The more subscriptions you have, the more advertising you can get and the more you can charge for it. This is why popular magazines can charge fairly low subscription rates and still pay their contributors: More readers mean more advertisers paying more money, so even if the charge per subscription is not particularly high, the magazine is profitable. A specialized journal cannot do much to increase the number of subscribers or to increase subsidies from a university or an association. Although some journals could attract more advertising than they do, there are definite limits on what they can charge. Some journals, for ethical reasons, limit the sorts of advertising they accept or accept none at all; some have too few subscribers to appeal to advertisers. The only advertising you generally see in poetry journals, for example, is ads for other poetry journals, which they exchange for greater visibility but no income. So that leaves only three sources of money to meet rising costs: subscriptions, offprint fees (for print journals), and page charges. Page charges cover between a quarter and three-quarters of the costs of journals that impose them. A journal without page charges must ask readers to pay higher subscription rates and must charge contributors more for offprints. If you belong to a professional organization that publishes a journal or if you subscribe to a journal, your dues or subscription help to underwrite publication. Paying a page charge is just another form of subsidy.

Open-access journals operate on a different business model. They charge nothing for subscriptions and depend entirely on fees, ranging from $500 to $5,000, paid (in theory) by authors for all expenses not covered by society or university subsidies. I said “in theory” because authors rarely pay these fees themselves. Society-sponsored journals may waive the fees for members. Like page charges, open-access fees are generally subsidized by funding agencies or by the author’s institution. To make sure funds are available, you should include page charges and open-access charges in grant budgets. You should also talk to your university librarian, department chair, or dean about the availability of funds for projects without outside funding.

The economics of journal publishing is contentious, partly because there is so much free labor involved. Neither authors nor peer reviewers are paid, because their work is thought to be part of their regular jobs. Except in the sciences and for the flagship journals in the humanities and social sciences, editors are not paid either, though they typically receive travel funds, course reductions, and graduate student assistance. Journals sponsored by scholarly societies keep subscription prices relatively low because the costs are subsidized by members’ dues. The for-profit publishers of scientific journals, however, charge higher prices, use marketing practices that strain library budgets, and are extremely profitable. This is one reason why open access has gained so much traction.

Book Reviews

Reviewing books is a way to keep up with the current literature. A free book is the only remuneration, but reviewing is a relatively quick and painless way to publish. Book reviews do not count for much with tenure committees, but they offer an opportunity to voice your opinion on work in your field, and being chosen as a reviewer is recognition that your judgment is valued.

If you want to review books for a journal, write to the editor or to the book review editor. State your interest in reviewing, the fields in which you wish to review, and your qualifications. Many journals are eager to expand their stable of reviewers. Do not, however, submit unsolicited reviews. The editor has probably already assigned the book to another reviewer, and yours will not be published.

Sometimes you should decline to review a book. If you have written a book that competes with the volume to be reviewed, you are undoubtedly well versed in the subject, but you are unlikely to be objective. Nor should you review a book that you evaluated for the publisher or author before publication, or that you are reviewing for another publication. Close personal or professional ties to the author (especially if you are mentioned in the acknowledgments) are another reason to decline the assignment. If, after receiving a book for review, you feel that it is not worth reviewing, or that you are not an appropriate reviewer, let the editor know. You will be asked to return the book so that it can be sent to another reviewer.

Because a book review is supposed to help readers decide whether to invest their time and money, the review should be primarily an evaluation, rather than a summary or abstract. Telling what the book is about is only the beginning. Your evaluation may mention similar books when appropriate, but lengthy comparisons should be reserved for review essays whose purpose is to discuss several current works on a subject. Similarly, although your opinion of the book is the heart of the review, you should reserve lengthy expositions of your own ideas for essays of the sort found in The New York Review of Books. The readers of scholarly journals generally expect a review focused on the volume in question. Most journals have strict word limits for book reviews, so be sure to follow them; otherwise the editor will do the cutting in a way that you might not like.

You may find it useful to think about how a book review compares with a referee’s report. An obvious difference is that a review is signed. A more important difference is the audience. When you are a peer reviewer, you are writing for the editor, who must decide whether to publish, and for the author, to whom you are offering suggestions. When you review, you are writing for potential readers who want to know what the book is about, whether it presents information and ideas not available elsewhere, and whether it is well written and accurate. When you referee a work in progress, your comments on grammar and usage or suggestions that another document be consulted are useful. When you review a bound book that will not be altered, your reader will be interested in minor flaws only if they are so numerous that they detract from the work. Nitpicking is neither useful nor appreciated. Finally, a referee’s report is informal, whereas a review is written for publication. You will want to take more pains with your writing.

Refereeing and reviewing do share some important features. Both require that you meet deadlines. If you cannot review a book on time, decline. Both also require that you be objective. You should not attempt to review a book whose author you dislike or whose approach you reject. Your review would not be credible and would be a disservice to yourself and the reader. If you find that in all fairness you cannot recommend a book, express your opinion in a matter-of-fact way. As in refereeing, vitriol and personal attacks are out of order.