A Pocket Guide to Academic Publishing.pdf

A Pocket Guide to Academic Publishing by Nikolas Sellheim Polar Cooperation Research Centre Kobe University, Japan & Scott Polar Research Institute University of Cambridge, UK © Nikolas Sellheim 2017 Rovaniemi: University of the Arctic Cover design by Jarkko Rintee, Tampere, Finland When statesmen, heroes, kings, in dust repose, Whose sons shall blush their fathers were thy foes, Shall then this verse to future age pretend Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend! Alexander Pope, The Poet’s Friend Acknowledgements ------------------------------------------------------ i Preface ----------------------------------------------------------------------iv Chapter 1 Introduction ------------------------------------------------------1 Chapter 2 The Idea ------------------------------------------------------------6 2.1. Seminar Paper vs Research Paper .................................. 6 2.2. The Research Question................................................... 9 2.3. Writing your Research Paper........................................ 12 Chapter 3 The Journal -----------------------------------------------------21 3.1. The Instructions for Contributors ................................. 25 3.2. Publication Fees, Open Access..................................... 28 3.3. Impact Factor, Ranking and Citation Indexes .............. 33 3.4. Dubious, Pseudo, Predatory Journals & Publishers ..... 40 Chapter 4 Submission -----------------------------------------------------47 4.1. Means of Submission ................................................... 47 4.2. Double, Triple, Multiple Submission? ........................ 51 4.3. The Cover Letter........................................................... 53 4.4. Disclosure of Funders................................................... 54 4.5. The Checklist................................................................ 57 4.6. Peer-review................................................................... 61 Chapter 5 Rejection, Revision, Acceptance ------------------------67 5.1. Rejection....................................................................... 67 5.2. Revision........................................................................ 73 5.3. Acceptance.................................................................... 76 Chapter 6 The Production and Publication Process -------------77 6.1. Copy-editing ................................................................. 77 Table of Contents 6.2. Type-setting .................................................................. 79 6.3. Proof-reading................................................................ 81 6.4. Copyright Transfer ....................................................... 83 6.5. Publication.................................................................... 84 Chapter 7 The Doctoral Thesis ------------------------------------------88 7.1. The Monograph ............................................................ 89 7.2. The Article-based Dissertation ..................................... 93 Chapter 8 Online Publishing, Conference Reports & Book Reviews --------------------------------------------------------------99 Chapter 9 A Few Final Words ------------------------------------------106 Literature Cited & ---------------------------------------------------- 108 Additional Reading --------------------------------------------------- 108 Appendix----------------------------------------------------------------- 110 Acknowledgements This book emerged during the preparatory process for a seminar at Kobe University, Japan, entitled ‘The Art of Academic Publishing?,’ in June 2017 at the Polar Cooperation Research Centre, Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies (GSICS). While preparing the seminar, it occurred to me that I would be unable to convey all information that I deem important in just a few hours. I therefore decided to put everything on paper and make this little guidebook part of my talk. What I am trying to say is that without the seminar, this book would not have been written. And without the support and encouragement of Prof Akiho Shibata and the administrative staff of GSICS, the seminar would not have been held. But it is truly the contributions of Dr Ian Stone that indirectly contributed to me writing this book. For it was he who, as former Editor of Polar Record, introduced me to the world of being an Editor of an academic journal and to become part of a machinery which is so crucial for the production and dissemination of academic knowledge. And along the same lines I wish to thank the incredibly helpful folks at Cambridge University Press, first and foremost Stephanie Curnow and Emma Pearce, for making me understand !i and appreciate the work of a publisher and to give valuable comments on the draft of this little guidebook. The Editor’s view, as presented on these pages, would not have been possible without them. Yet the book not only looks at the publishing process from an Editor’s perspective, but also from the perspective of an author. And this perspective would have never been possible without the guidance and support from my former supervisors Prof Timo Koivurova and Prof Florian Stammler, both at the Arctic Centre, University of Lapland, Finland. Academic writing is a skill that needs to be learned through practice and more practice. Prof Lassi Heininen at the University of Lapland was crucial in this regard as he made us as (PhD) students write conference and seminar reports. Similarly, Silva Herrmann and Wolfgang Mehl, who were the organisers of the currently ‘dormant’ Jokkmokk Winterconference in Sweden, encouraged me to write conference reports and to give a first workshop on academic publishing in 2015. I would also like to thank Shadi Sakran, Sebastian Maslow (both Kobe University) and Prof Klaus Dodds (Royal Holloway, University of London) for their helpful comments on the draft of this book. !ii Lastly, it is the University of the Arctic (UArctic) and its Vice-President Organization Outi Snellman who made the online publication and dissemination of this pocket guide possible. Kobe, in the late summer of 2017 !iii Preface When I was a Bachelor student of Scandinavian Studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin, I never would have guessed that I would be writing a book on academic publishing. After all, I thought that the world of science, the world of research and research publication is something I would never be able to reach. I suppose, it is the still the ‘ivory tower’ in which research is commonly perceived to be located – unfortunately this is a narrative which is not completely unjustified. And I also thought that only advanced researchers are even able to have their research findings published in a journal or in a book. Throughout my studies I never encountered a guide to how to publish my own research. I was interested in many issues, but I never felt confident enough to put them all into an article and submit them to a research journal. This changed during my master’s studies in Polar Law at the University of Akureyri, Iceland. The students were motivated to write a paper on their respective research topic and submit it to the University-based, and unfortunately now seemingly defunct, law journal Lögfræðingur. And that is what I did. I suppose this is also what got me somewhat hooked to publishing, which is, as we will see, ex!iv tremely rewarding. Before submission I knew that someone would also comment on my paper before it is being published. I was not really aware of the fact that this is known as ‘peer-reviewing’ – the review of a paper by an expert who gives her/his opinion on the ‘publishability’ of a paper: does it stand academic scrutiny? We will get more into this issue later. Be that as it may, my paper was finally published and I felt nothing but pride. It was my name and my research that would now be available in online and printed form to the world! By the end of my master’s studies, I started to focus on academic publishing. I turned my master’s thesis into two articles which I submitted to two different journals. Both had to be revised, but both were published eventually. In late 2010, still during my master’s studies, my supervisor asked me whether I would be willing to read a book and write a review on it, which would be published in one of the major journals in the polar research – Polar Record, published by Cambridge University Press (CUP). Little did I know at that time of how to write a book review. And even less did I know of what chain reaction this review would bring with it. But I accepted the task and wrote about the aspects of the book which I found most intriguing or worth criticising. Much to my as!v tonishment, the Editor of Polar Record at that time, Dr Ian Stone, liked the review and asked me if I was willing to write more reviews. It did not take me long to say ‘yes’, for as a master’s student the prospect of publications was tempting. As a person specialising in Arctic issues, the book market yielded many interesting publications (and still does!). So I continued writing book reviews and by early 2012 had three published in Polar Record. I sincerely enjoyed publishing – and still do – and planned to write more reviews. But then in October 2012 I received a strange email from Dr Stone. He asked me whether I would be interested in the position of Book Reviews Editor for Polar Record. I had my doubts about it since I was working for the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) at that time, which already took all of my spare time. But upon some time to think I decided that a change would do me good. So I gradually faded out my APECS work and accepted the job as Book Reviews Editor of Polar Record by December 2012. And I have never regretted this decision. Not only enabled me the position to gain insight into the working procedure of a highly regarded international research journal, it also enabled me to expand my network within the academic world significantly, which I was already in the process of establishing through my on!vi going ties with the Arctic university network, the University of the Arctic (UArctic). I suddenly had direct access to early career and experienced researchers who were writing book reviews for the journal. I suddenly had direct access to one of the most redeemed academic publishers in the world, Cambridge University Press, which owns and publishes the journal. And I suddenly was staff of the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, which Polar Record is the journal of. Sometimes, small things can bring about big changes and opportunities! I was also very active in publishing book reviews for the journal as well as publishing some research articles as part of my doctoral degree, which I started in 2012, and after 2 years as Book Reviews Editor, I was part of a transition of the journal as becoming an online journal with a new submission software. The process was initiated by CUP as a modernisation process. Since this meant also an increase in published articles – moving the journal from four to six issues per year – the step to refurbish the journal was necessary to uphold the high-quality publishing standards. However, this also meant that there was a need for a Deputy Editor, meaning the ‘right hand’ to the Editorin-Chief. As a consequence, Dr Stone asked me if I was interested in becoming his Deputy. I did not hes!vii itate long! And by January 2015 I was Deputy Editor of Polar Record! At that time it was also clear that Dr Stone was to retire by the end of 2016. Since as his Deputy I would take over his place, his and my responsibilities were aligned by January 2016 when we became co-Editors of the journal. During my times of Deputy Editor, I not only became aware of the different nuances of academic publishing, but also of the rewarding and challenging aspects this brings about from an Editor’s perspective. Let me therefore briefly outline what an Editor’s role actually is. As Editor of a research journal you are responsible for the overall quality of the journal. You maintain and contribute to the journals’ strategic development. That means that every article which is being submitted to the journal must stand academic scrutiny before it is published. Of course, as Editor you cannot be an expert in everything, so the most important task of the Editor is to facilitate and oversee the peer-reviewing process: to contact referees, to manage their reviews, and to communicate the reviews to the authors. As Editor you are the link between the author, the academic/scientific community and the publisher. For after the reviews have been disseminated to the author, the Editor serves as the one responsible for the !viii paper being published in a proper and academicallysound, ethical manner. The Editor is therefore responsible for the overseeing of the changes the referees recommended, for the proper quality of the paper and for the overseeing of the production process which is taking place after the paper has been forwarded to the publisher for typesetting. To break it down into one sentence: Having a good and engaged Editor is crucial for a journal’s success. For authors, but particularly new contributors the Editor is, in the words of Alexander Pope, the “guide, philosopher and friend”. If s/he succeeds in this then the flow of articles into the journal will increase and the prestige of the journal will be affirmed. The work as an Editor for a multidisciplinary journal such as Polar Record can be time consuming and challenging because one deals with different people from different disciplines in different time zones and from different academic backgrounds. Therefore, in order not to make this a full-time job, with Dr Stone’s retirement the journal recruited a second Editor by the end of 2016: Dr Trevor McIntyre. Since he began his work in 2017, we have been managing the journal jointly. Important decisions can be made together and since he is a biologist, his !ix expertise on natural sciences is naturally far more advanced than mine as a legal anthropologist. But be that as it may, this book is not about me or our journal. It is to provide practical guidance for those who have had no or little experience in academic publishing. It takes the reader through the different steps of the publication process and provides insight into different elements of this process from an Editor’s perspective. It may therefore also be of interest for more experienced researchers and scientists and may – hopefully – contribute to a better understanding of the nuances of academic publishing. While the book is not confined to any kind of discipline, be aware that I draw my experience from the social sciences. So if you feel that there are parts of the book that are irrelevant for a natural scientist, just skip them. In fact, the design of the book is to encourage pinpointed reading. It is the nuances of the different steps of publishing which are the core of the book. And I hope to be able to contribute to you getting your research out there! Of course, the information in this book are not a guarantor that your articles will get accepted. But I hope that I will be able to at least make it a little more likely that your name can be found on a printed or online paper of academic integrity. !x Chapter 1 Introduction The world of publishing is truly remarkable and for those not working in it somewhat impenetrable. Especially when you are a student you might know little of this world which is so fundamental for academic research. This little guidebook is to help you understand what it means to publish. As the title of the book implies, the focus of this book lies on ‘academic publishing’ and not on any kind of other modes of publishing, such as in newspapers. When I talk about ‘academic publishing’, what do I mean? The most obvious part, and the most crucial element of this book, is the publication of scientific and research articles in international peer-reviewed journals. I dare to say that this constitutes the most prominent mode of generating academic research in the world and given the digitalisation of many journals also the most accessible way for others to make use of research findings. In my function as Editor of an academic journal, I am dealing with this type of research generation on a daily basis. The second most obvious way of academic publishing is providing book chapters for edited volumes. !1 These are often commissioned and all in all not quite as frequent as publications in a journal. Moreover, academic books are often very pricy and not all of them are available as digital versions. Although very discipline-dependent, many authors are more keen on publishing in journals than in books in order to make their research better accessible. A third way of academic publishing lies in the publication of books — either monographs of edited volumes. This is usually a pretty long process and shall not be dealt with in this guidebook. Some publishers, however, do now offer the publication of shorter books in a much shorter period of time. There are essentially two ways of publishing a book. The first way is to write a single-authored volume on a specific topic in an academic manner and submit the ready manuscript to a publisher that you deem appropriate to publish it. Here one must distinguish between submitting a finalised manuscript or the submission of a book proposal. I personally would opt for the second option since once you have submitted a proposal and a publisher shows interest, you might still be able to adjust your manuscript to the publisher’s guidelines and recommendations while writing it. The submission of a finalised manuscript means significantly more work afterwards. In both cases, however, peer-review is a !2 given and your work will go through the hands of several experts on the issue. For students without prior experience in academic publishing, this is not very recommendable, however. This being said, another way is of course the publication of an edited volume. Especially when you are in the midst of your doctorate, this might be interesting and certainly a very good way for boosting your research output. If you have a supervisor or are on good terms with a professor, you might want to consider a joint publication with this professor. First, the professor will be of help as regards the logistics of publishing, and second, the professor is always good to have a publication together with. But be aware of the fact that editing a compiled volume demands a lot of work and may distract you from your doctoral research. And besides, it can take several years to have an edited volume published. But be that as it may, this is probably an ideal case and in many disciplines the completion of a doctorate is considered a precondition for publishing monographs or edited volumes. But academic publishing can also be a lot of fun, especially when writing book reviews. Of course, these are not peer-reviewed publications, but you critically examine a book, provide feedback based on your own expertise – yes, even as a student you have !3 expertise. Don’t patronise yourself – and publish it. This is also a mode of academic publishing and, as we will see in Chapter 7, a very good one. Lastly, the internet serves as a tool for various ways of academic publishing, which, however, is so broad that it will only be marginally dealt with in this book. Commentaries, blog publications or scholarly articles for think tanks or websites are but a few ways of getting your name and expertise out there. I am certain there are countless other definitions for and ways ‘academic publishing’ can be framed. For the purposes of this book, we deal with one of the most ‘traditional’ ways – journal publishing – and I hope I will be able to guide you through the different steps of this process. This is a book particularly for master’s and PhD students, but I hope that others might find it an interesting and inspiring read as well since it provides insight into the world of journal publishing from an Editor’s perspective. Contrary to the focus of this book, the book itself is not an academic one and you will find jargon in it as well. I have chosen this way of expression since I find it in many ways much more accessible than the often dry and factual language of the world of research. Moreover, the book draws extensively from my own experience, which I have made as a human being in his 30s and !4 not as a robot. One might criticise me for that, but that is something I will certainly have to live with. For the advanced academic, who might find this book not so relevant as it deals with very basic aspects of publishing, I recommend The Academic’s Guide to Publishing by Rob Kitchin and Duncan Fuller (Kitchin & Fuller, 2005). For those in your early stages of becoming a world-renowned researcher, I hope that this book is an informative as well as a fun read. This is for you. !5 Chapter 2 The Idea As a student of Arctic issues, I was immensely interested in my subject of study – otherwise I would not have started it in the first place. Of course, this is somewhat idealistic and not true for all aspects of it, but I genuinely enjoyed reading on specific issues and to broaden my horizon on the human dimensions of Arctic life and Arctic living. So I started to write book reviews and delved into the world of the written word. It did not take long until I realised that there are certain aspects which I was specifically interested in. As part of an undergraduate and graduate study programme, this interest translated into the writing of essays and papers for seminars and courses. Papers, which are of a different character than papers that are to be submitted to a research journal. 2.1. Seminar Paper vs Research Paper A seminar paper differs in many ways from a research paper. Of course, there are naturally many overlaps, too, but the main difference is that a seminar paper can be submitted as essentially a summary of existing !6 research, which would in a way correspond to a review paper, while a research paper for a journal is always to constitute original research. This means, it should present new research results which have not been published elsewhere. A key ingredient for both types of paper is the study of already existing research. This provides the background for any kind of paper and will provide either your professor or also the referee for a research journal with the impression that you know what you are writing about. In almost every context there is key literature which should be cited. A certain branch of, say, anthropology would not have developed without the research of some anthropologists. And if you wish to write in that particular branch, reference to the key literature is therefore obligatory. In addition, for an Editor it also eases the finding of referees for a paper, because once you have provided key literature, the Editor knows where to locate the paper. Failure to make reference to the basics of your topic may first of all result in a bad grade in your seminar (you obviously didn’t do your homework) or in a major revisions or even rejection of your paper after having submitted it to a journal. Because, again, you obviously don’t really know what you are talking about and have left out key arguments in your paper. !7 With the literature study in the back of your head, you embark on a journey of your own research. Because with the literature study having been done properly, you inevitably find issues which have not been dealt with before or merely been dealt with in passing. And that is where your own skills as an analytic person and therefore as a researcher come into play! For you wish to fill those gaps and you wish to establish yourself as an expert on a particular issue. This may bring about very good marks for a university paper and could pave the way for your professor asking you to have your research published with him or her. That is your chance! When you have decided to put your research into a scholarly form, try to put yourself into the position of wanting to be considered a scholar of integrity and expertise. You do not want to write a paper which is there to please your professor, but rather which is there to please the scientific community. When writing the paper it is very advisable not to refer to lectures given by your professor and to mirror what he or she has been saying in class. Of course, for a seminar paper this might be beneficial because it shows the professor that you have been paying attention and that you have been trying to incorporate the view of the professor into your own research. A good professor !8 might even appreciate much more if you criticise him or her and show argument-based (not emotional) disagreement! But that is, of course, always based on the individual professor. Some, unfortunately, don’t like being criticised! The key for a research paper is to refer to the scholarly literature which is out there. It is advisable to embed it into your own research, to challenge it, to provide findings that support it, to further develop theories, or even to take apart theories. Before writing, therefore, you should be aware of the focus of your paper. It is not enough to be descriptive, but also analytical. Of course, the degree to which this happens depends very much on your own discipline. However, for a seminar paper it is often sufficient merely to describe certain research, but not to critically evaluate it. This would inevitably result in a rejection of the paper if you planned to submit it to an academic journal – for describing it is easy, analysing is not. 2.2. The Research Question Whenever you bring your research on paper, you are confronted with probably the most challenging part: the research question. With that question in the back !9 of your mind stands and falls the paper. The research question is the key around which the entire paper circles. It influences the type of literature you wish to include in your study; it influences your methodology which you apply to result in specific findings; and it influences the structure of your paper. Without a research question, you do not have a paper. A research question is of course a challenging topic and there are many types of guides out there which deal with this issue. From an Editor’s perspective, however, it does not really matter how the research question is formulated. It does not necessarily have to be marked with a question mark, but can be part of the presentation of a gap which you have discovered. For example: “The literature X has shown that in the context of X, Y is missing, this paper addresses the reasons for Y’s absence.” In other words, you have both shown that you know the background of the particular topic, and you have noticed that something is missing in it. The research you are presenting in the paper therefore addresses the question: What are the reasons for Y’s absence in the context of X? In fact, I personally prefer the linking of the research question with a sentence that makes the research question explicit – also a major difference between a seminar and research paper. But that is !10 merely a personal preference due to the fact that it simply sounds more scholarly and not as part of a learning process. This is also a major difference between the publication of, say, a doctoral thesis and the writing and publication of a book. This of course also enables you to think about the scope of the research question. Is it maybe too broad? Is it too narrow? Does it allow for the writing of an article, two articles, or even a book? Or does it not allow to write a full-scale article at all? However, the issue of the research question is a contentious one and how it is to be embedded in the paper is also a matter of discipline. Most Editors in political sciences/area studies, for example, would probably make the clear formulation of the research question in the Introduction a precondition. In many journals in the political sciences articles follow a certain structure which immediately enables the reader to locate the research question in it. This results in rather little leeway for its formulation. But in general terms, after the framing of the research question and its proper presentation, it is very good to discuss it with your colleagues, a professor or in the context of workshops or seminars. This will inevitably yield valuable advice and will provide new angles, which you might be interested in considering (or disregarding). But beware, it might also lead you !11 to realise that you might have to abandon your idea since somebody else, whose research you still might be unfamiliar with, has already dealt with the issue. In either case, unless you are 150% sure that you have discovered a gap, discuss the research question with somebody who you trust and who you would appreciate input from. 2.3. Writing your Research Paper With the research question at hand, you can finally embark on writing down what you wanted to write down. You are actually producing new research! There are of course unlimited ways to structure a paper, with all their pros and cons, and I will not delve into this issue here. Suffice it to say that in many cases the structure of your paper, the theory/method as well as the focus may correspond to the specific requirements and the target audience of the journal your are planning to submit your paper to. But more on the ‘hows’ of finding a journal later. As a general rule, especially for the social sciences, it is advisable to avoid too much context. For with too much background information on the paper, with too much literature review, with too much !12 providing of context, the reader easily loses track of what you are actually trying to achieve. For our journal, we have had papers submitted which essentially dealt with the context of the research question, but provided only marginal insight into how the research question is relevant for this extensive context or what research results this question has actually yielded. There is no rule of thumb when it comes to something like the content of the paper, but I would broadly suggest that a good research paper consists of three major parts, the weighing of which, however, depends on the journal: (1) a section providing solid, but not too detailed, contextual background; (2) a section of necessity, theory and methodology; and (3) a section on the research findings and their discussion. The order of these parts is of course always context- and disciplinedependent, but without or with only marginal information of any of these parts, the paper will face severe criticism from either the Editor or from the referees. When submitting a paper to a journal, it is crucially important that you have an Abstract for it. Without an Abstract, your paper will in all likelihood be returned to you. In essence, an Abstract is the access gate to your research. It is a summary of your research findings, a promotion of yourself and your research and a way to underline your skills as a scholar. !13 Abstracts are usually 150–400 words long, depending on the journal to which you are submitting your paper. While this may seem little, the writing of an Abstract is probably one of the most difficult parts of writing a research paper. The difficulty lies in the fact that the Abstract decides the first steps of evaluating your paper. The Abstract is what everybody reads first! For example, if you write a paper on a specific issue relating to Arctic climate change, submit it to Polar Record, but only refer to specifics of your methodology, your paper will in all likelihood immediately be rejected for being not in the scope of this specific journal. If your Abstract provides additional information rather than referring to your paper, the referees will criticise you for it and you will have to rewrite it. If your Abstract merely mirrors the state of research but does not highlight the relevance of your research paper, you will face criticism or the preferred referee might not bother looking at your paper, thus delaying the processing of it. The key point is: do not write an Abstract hastily! Spend enough time to bring the key points of your research into it; be precise and informative; make sure that you include specific terms that are relevant in and for your research and that pop up during Google searches; and lastly, be sexy and attractive! You want your research to be read and cited, !14 so it helps to attract attention by formulating it in a slightly provocative and attention-attracting manner. There is nothing more frustrating than frustrating Abstracts. This would probably be the right place to show you an example for a good Abstract. Yet, this is only possible when I have a complete paper at hand. Let me therefore present you a small Abstract for this book. Generally speaking, however, the Abstract should contain information on the purpose of the paper and the problem it tackles, on the methodology and on the result. A 164-word Abstract for this book would therefore be something like this, the problem being in italics, the aim in bold, the methodology in bold italics, and the content (results, if you will) without any formatting: The different facets of academic publishing are underrepresented in many study programs and students are dependent on ‘learning-by-doing' or on the guidance by their supervisors, yet without a normative understanding of what academic publishing entails. This book aims to provide students at different levels with background information on what to pay attention to before, during and after the publication process. Drawing from his own experience as Editor of a scholarly journal, the author provides background information on academic pub!15 lishing and takes the reader through the different steps from writing a research paper to the published article. By doing so, students gain a deeper understanding for what different elements of the publication process, such as peer-review, copy-editing or type-setting mean, but also what to pay attention to when choosing a journal and submitting a research paper to this journal. Additionally, the benefits and drawbacks of two different types of doctoral dissertations — the monograph and the article-based dissertation — are discussed. With the Abstract comes the choice of the title. The title of your paper(s) is what shows up when others search the web for your name. When writing your paper, wait with the title until you have finished the entire paper and until you have written the Abstract. Of course, you can have a working title for the paper as this always makes you remember what you are actually writing about, but I would suggest to consider the final title of your paper as being the Abstract of the Abstract. The title should be informative; it should reflect the purpose and scope of the paper; it should include keywords which are critical and which are found in the relevant literatures informing the paper; and it should inevitably attract the interest of the reader. This makes it crucially important that your title should not be very long, but pinpointed and concise. If !16 your title is too long, it won’t enter the eyes of the reader immediately and it will be difficult for your research to gain the attention of those you want to reach (or even beyond that). Many journals only allow for a certain number of words for your title. While this may be slightly annoying at times, it also helps you to really think about how you want to promote your research. Let me provide you with an out-of-the-blue example. Which title would you prefer? (1) Open Doors of a Brown Cupboard in A Scholar’s Office: The History and Normative Function of A Researcher’s Cupboard in Everyday Life and The Reason for Him Having to Open the Cupboard’s Doors Every Day Or (2) The Cupboard’s Doors: Making A Scholar Great (Again)? The difference between these is obvious. While (1) is merely descriptive and probably encapsulates the content of a paper – not a very thrilling one – (2) makes use of a catch phrase which is known throughout the world by now and links it with the topic of the re!17 search paper. (2) will in all likelihood gain more attention than (1) although both aim to fulfil the same function: The presentation of your research. A title is therefore the tool to immediately get attention and to make your research presentable to a wider audience. With a catchy title, you may break barriers that you might have deemed unbreakable. Once you have the paper, the Abstract and the title ready, ask your professor or a colleague to read and comment on the paper. By doing this, you might get another angle on the topic which you might not have considered before. It might point you to structural or systemic flaws in your paper that you may have overlooked. Because bear in mind that you have been working on the paper for a while and the longer the work on the paper lasts, the more blind you get towards the details of the paper. To you it all might appear logical and consistent, but for others that might not be the case. Another option is, of course, to put it aside for a week or so, then read it again and merely then proceed with publishing it. After the completion of your paper comes a critical part of language-checking. I myself am a native German speaker with a fair command of English. Literally all of my publications but one book review are in English and I have therefore published in English!18 language journals. From an Editor’s perspective it is frustrating to see when a paper is being submitted which might be potentially interesting, but which is written in poor English. Therefore, whenever I submit a paper in English, I have it language-checked. Indeed, English-language journals either explicitly state that you have the responsibility for proper English or just take it for granted. Some publishers also offer the option of language-checking the costs of which have to be borne by the author, however. But rest assured, I as Editor do return the paper to the author without forwarding it to any referee if the level of English does not meet academic standards. Of course, since international journals have an international authorship, mistakes happen and referees might point to the need to have the paper language-checked again. However, it always helps to have a native English speaker look at your paper if you are not an English speaker yourself before you decide to submit it to an international journal. Also be aware of the difference between British English — such as organiSation, realiSe, behavioUr — and American English — such as organiZation, realiZe, behavior. Some journals require you to use British English, others to American English only. In many other journals it does not matter as long as you !19 are consistent and don’t mix up the styles. This being said, when you use British English in your paper, but the title of a reference is in American English, then, of course, use the original version, i.e. American English. Of course, a paper is in most cases not the work of the author in isolation and many other people have been involved in it one way or the other. Before you submit you final manuscript to a journal, make sure you acknowledge the help of those having helped you with it. This occurs in the ‘Acknowledgements’. Particularly important are those having commented and thereby improved your paper. If your professor or somebody else has read through and commented on you manuscript, a simple acknowledging line suffices, something like: “The author would like to thank Dr X (University of Y) and Prof Y (University of Z) for their helpful comments on the draft of the article.” Also, after peer review you can extend this to “The author would like to thank Dr X (University of Y), Prof Y (University of Z) and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the draft of the article.” Of course this is not absolutely necessary, but I think it appreciates the efforts of your peers to help you while, at the same time, also providing some sort of legitimation of your research and your writing. !20 Chapter 3 The Journal With your research paper at hand you now have several options. You may of course decide that writing the paper was a nice exercise, but, after being honest with yourself, you are not really interested in publishing it, because you think it may not be worth publishing since it may not fulfil what you have been looking for. In other words: You are unhappy with it and dare not have it published anywhere. This is of course a very valid point. If you are unhappy with your paper, don’t proceed with it since it might be rejected or you simply can’t be bothered dealing with it at all. If you reach this conclusion, you might want to find the reason for why you are unhappy with it. What is it you wanted to achieve and why has the work you have invested in the paper not fulfilled this expectation? In a case like that a good strategy is to put the paper aside and leave it untouched for a while. Once you feel you might want to reassess the paper, then you can start over, critically re-read, rewrite it and reconsider it fully. Additionally you might want to ask a colleague or friend to read and comment on the paper after you have informed him/her on what it is why you feel you are stuck. !21 Once you have decided that you are happy with the paper and confident that it meets academic and/or scientific standards, the tricky question is where to publish it. Several things are to consider here, which you might not be aware of. Two questions you should ask yourself are: do I already have a specific journal in mind in which I want to publish and have I therefore arranged and written my research paper directly for this journal? Or did I write the paper without knowing which journal to publish it in? Both have pros and cons. As regards no. 1, it is of course always good to have a journal in mind because it allows you also write your paper in a way which corresponds to the aims and scope of that respective journal. This inevitably increases your chances of a positive outcome and helps you to focus your article. It also saves the Editor and yourself much time for the Editor immediately recognises that the paper is in the journal’s scope and that it is eligible to be sent to peer-review. The disadvantage is, of course, that you limit yourself in the scope of your paper. In this sense – and in order to avoid limitations – it is advisable to consider multidisciplinary journals as they, in general, appear a bit more flexible as regards scope. But be that as it may, you can always ask your supervisors or colleagues who have published in your field for advice. They will !22 in all likelihood be able to point you towards a specific journal in which you can potentially publish. If you have not considered any journal while writing, the fun part starts: which journal might be suitable for my paper? And as we will see, it also requires quite substantial amounts of work, if you are unlucky – especially as regards style. If you have written a paper without a specific journal in mind, make sure that upon submission your paper fits into the journal’s scope that you’re planning to submit to. Or in other words, pick a journal for which your research fits best. Even if it gets rejected, you still might get some very valuable comments out of it. Generally, make sure that your paper is geared at the journal’s aims and scope and that it fits into the overall content of it. Some questions you should bear in mind are: is the journal peer-reviewed? Does the journal have prestige and is it relevant for my field? If you have time-sensitive research, what is the speed of publication? If you are unsure about a journal, whom does the Editorial Board — a group of senior experts who are advisors and guides of the journal — consist of? Are they based at reputable universities, is the publisher a good one or, at least, does the internet presence of the journal point towards professionalism? Another very valuable indicator is whether the journ!23 als is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which was formed in 1997. Of course, not all journals are, but I dare say that if a journal is a member of COPE, you can trust it. COPE is a body which, “provides advice to editors and publishers on all aspects of publication ethics and, in particular, how to handle cases of research and publication misconduct” (COPE, Website). Apart from this task, COPE also provides very helpful insight into the ethics of publishing by providing materials such as flowcharts or anonymised information on different cases that the committee was consulted for. The way I have found quite practical is a mix of both. Usually, the research idea is evolving in my mind and once I feel comfortable writing a paper on it, I put the first words on paper. When doing so, I already start to consider several journals which might be interested in my paper. Throughout the research, which is often still continuing while writing, you might even get aware of more journals which might be good. Once the research is done and the paper is finished, I usually have two concrete journals in mind, one of which would be my preferred one. Either I have already adapted my paper to the style of the journal or I will then do so. And depending on wheth!24 er you want to do it manually or using some specific software, see below, is, of course, entirely up to you. One last issue: If you have found a journal which you might be interested in, but you are not quite sure of your paper really suits it, you can always contact the Editor and ask for his or her opinion. The best way for an Editor to get a grip of the paper in question and whether or not it suits the journal is to read the Abstract. Based on that, it is possible to encourage submission or to seek a different journal. 3.1. The Instructions for Contributors The style of a journal is something that makes it unique in a sense and each journal has its own. Speaking of English-language journals, some merely accept submission written in British English, some merely in American English and some in both as long as it is used consistently throughout the submitted research paper. I am not sure how many different citation styles there are, but the most prominent ones are the APA (American Psychological Association) Citation Style; the Chicago Citation Style; and the Harvard Citation Style. In addition to this, different disciplines and thus different journals use specific ways for their Biblio!25 graphies. While in the social sciences it is very common to have the ‘author-date’ system, which means (Sellheim, 2017), in the legal scholarship, it is very common to have it as a footnote. In International Relations or Political Sciences you find the citations often as endnotes. Each journal has therefore some kind of link to the style it applies — most commonly known as Guidelines or Instructions for Contributors or Authors. I can only urge you to follow this style carefully and closely before you submit your paper. Of course, you can also submit it without having adhered to the journal’s style, but after peer-review it will inevitably be returned to you so long as the style is being adhered to. So, why not do it right away? Some journals even desk-reject your paper, meaning without having had a look at the content, simply based on you not having followed their style. We'll read more on desk-rejection in Chapter 5. Each journal has its own policy in this regard. If you submit to a journal with a more relaxed policy, the rule of thumb for you should be: the more thorough you are the faster the processing will go after peer-review. Yes, it may take some time and some journals have styles which do not correspond to any of the set styles, but this is the way it goes and it is the responsibility of the author to adjust the paper to the !26 style of the journal. For an Editor it is often frustrating to see that authors obviously expect the journal to do the work for them as regards style and when an Editor returns the paper to the author time and again because the style is not right, it becomes quite nerve-wrecking for both the author and the Editor. If you are unhappy with the specific style of the journal – for some reason – you might want to consider submitting it somewhere else. Just to give you a little overview of some of the most common styles, the figure in the Appendix, which only exemplifies the author-date system, helps you understand that there are fine, but important differences in how the referencing and citation system works for different journals. This being said, there are items you use for your research for which the style templates don't have a format for, such as webpages (though this seems to be changing), legal instruments or court rulings, to name a few. If that is the case, the best way to do it is to add the reference one way or the other, somewhat adapting it to the style of the journal, but letting the Editor(s) know that the style the journal applies does not have a special format for a particular type of reference. This is something that the Editor(s) will gladly take care of then since it points to a gap in the style and since the author simply did not have all information to fully adapt the paper to the style. !27 The issue of different styles is of course something that has not gone unnoticed in the academic world and it becomes quite time consuming (and annoying, frankly) always having to adjust the paper to a specific style, to write the References anew and to figure out how to arrange the paper stylistically. To speed things up, smart women and men have developed specific softwares with which you can easily adjust your paper. These are commonly called Reference managers and can be downloaded from the internet. The two most prominent ones are Endnote® and Mendeley® which can make yours and the Editor’s life much easier. 3.2. Publication Fees, Open Access An issue that might influence the choice of the journal is whether or not it requires publication fees. The general rule is that any journal which publishes either online or in print does not require you to pay for having your research published in it. In the natural sciences, however, there appear to be some high-ranking journals which also require a fee for your research. This is particularly the case if you work has many figures. While most of the journals do not charge a fee for !28 black and white figures, the situation may be different when you have coloured figures that need to be printed in colour as well. In the case of online-only journals, this, naturally, does not apply. In that case, depending on the size of the figure as well as the number of figures in your paper, the journal or the publisher might require a specific fee. How high this fee is depends on the policy of the journal. As a rule of thumb, the fee for each reasonably sized coloured figure, meaning that it does not take the whole page but supports the text, may range around 500–1,000€. Yet many journals give you some kind of discount if you have several figures. The reason for this fee is that figures are of course an important part of research. Yet, research should not become a coloured book and if you have a coloured figure that you deem important for supporting your arguments, really think about whether it is absolutely necessary, or whether it cannot be in black and white. In general terms, journal (and book) articles are hidden behind a paywall, which is a tool to ensure the publication of high quality research, which after all is costly, and to protect subscribers to a journal. As we see below, publishing is an expensive business and also publishers have an interest in disseminating the research to as many as possible. For you as the con!29 sumer this means, that in order to access the article, you can either buy it for around 45€ or rent it for a certain period of time for a specific fee. Especially for students as well as developing countries this has proven to be a big hurdle as regards the accessibility of research and ultimately points towards a systemic problem in research: the more money you have, the easier it is to have access to research, which, after all, is often funded through public sources, i.e. universities. This has led to the creation of Sci-Hub, an online database which circumvents the paywalls and illegally grabs research articles from the databases of publishers. As a student in a well-situated university, you usually have access to many online databases which your library has subscribed to. If you wish to read and use specific articles, it is always very recommendable to contact your university librarians. Moreover, public libraries also have access to research journals. Usually, publishers offer consortia subscription deals for libraries, meaning that several libraries pay a specific fee for a set of journals which is tailored at where the libraries are. For libraries in developing countries, publishers also have aid and donation deals, meaning that libraries can access journals for free or for very little money. !30 Another reason why many journals do charge publication fees is the open access option. In fact, many journals only have this option, which makes your research article available online without any restrictions and thus enables you to advertise and promote your research. Publishers have several types of open access options, mostly referred to as Gold Open Access or Green Open Access. The first option includes an article processing charge, but makes your research in its published form available for everyone under a Creative Commons license. The Green Open Access option enables you to deposit the final manuscript of your research — after peer review — with any kind of online repository, such Academia.edu® or ResearchGate®. The point is that these options differentiate between paid and unpaid open access to your research. In order to make this option financially sustainable, particularly for the Gold option, i.e. to cover the costs, a processing charge is necessary. It can be estimated that the production of an article from the publisher’s side costs around 1,000–1,500€. This includes the work of the Editor, the work of the referee, who might, but mostly does not, receive small compensation dependent on the journal, the copy-editing, typesetting and proof-reading. The shift of many journals !31 to merely being online journals does save some printing costs, but the overall costs of article processing and production still remain the same. The paywall is consequently the guarantor for covering these costs. While the fees for especially the Gold Open Access option are rather high, so is the reward: The research is freely accessible and therefore is more prone to being cited and disseminated. In other words, the impact the paper might have on the scientific community is potentially higher than of those papers behind a paywall. That being said, open access does not equate with this either. Groundbreaking articles remain groundbreaking articles, irrespective of them being open access or not. Or to turn the argument around, just because an article is open access does not inevitably mean that it will be cited more frequently. It always depends on yourself or your superiors then whether you deem the open access option necessary for your paper. As we will see below, open access can also be a somewhat tricky issue. !32 3.3. Impact Factor, Ranking and Citation Indexes When choosing a journal, many criteria play a role. For instance, is the journal relevant in my own field of study/research? Is the article that I wish to publish of interest also for other disciplines? Is the research of a local, regional or global nature? But one element one may consider in choosing a journal is the so-called Impact Factor. In essence, the Impact Factor is a measuring tool to determine the influence and impact of research. This is done by dividing the number of citations of articles published in the previous two years by the number of articles published in the preceding two years. To exemplify an Impact Factor of Journal A: Citations in 2015: 48 2014: 59 Sum: Items published 107 2015: 65 2014: 72 Sum: 137 Impact Factor of Journal A for 2016, which thus results from 107/137 would be 0.781. !33 It is commonly assumed that a high Impact Factor translates into good journals or good research. That is not necessarily the case. The Impact Factor merely means that the journal in question has a certain number of citable items. The higher the Impact Factor, therefore, the higher the visibility. Moreover, an Impact Factor also means that the journal and thus the research finds support by peers in the research community. In the polar sciences, particularly in the polar social sciences, all journals have a rather low Impact Factor of around 1. This is simply because the research community is rather small and the geographical scope is limited. Other journals which are global in scope and multidisciplinary and which address a vast number of different issues may, and do, have a significantly higher Impact Factor. In general terms, if Journal A has an Impact Factor of 0.781 and Journal B an Impact Factor of, say, 1.2, Journal B is generally cited more often or may simply have a larger number of citable items. The Impact Factor, however, is not a one-off thing and there are different companies and agencies that apply different criteria for the measuring of the Impact Factor. One of the most frequently used tools is provided by Clarivate™ and their InCites™ Journal Citation Reports®. The database lists several thou!34 sand journals and provides detailed information on overall citations per year, citations within the same journal and many other aspects relating to citations. With this, it is therefore seemingly a rather easy tool to compare the relevance of a particular journal. Because if a journal has an Impact Factor, this means that it is listed by Clarivate™ and is thus more discoverable than a journal without an Impact Factor. Consequently, if you are looking for a journal in which to publish your research, the Impact Factor is indeed something to take into consideration. After all, the unfortunate and frustrating realities of contemporary academic life are that publications in journals with high Impact Factors may contribute to securing funding, may support your career prospects and simply support your academic prestige. If only life were that easy. Unfortunately, the world of academic publishing is slightly more complex than that and the Impact Factor as a measuring tool has experienced significant criticism over the years. This is because of the fact that relying on citations is not what constitutes the importance of a paper and the reason for why journals are cited more often than others are influenced by many factors. Unfortunately, the Impact Factor has come to be understood that the higher the Impact Factor, the higher the qual!35 ity of the journal. This is, of course, not true. It really depends on the research community a journal is embedded in and the mere capability of the articles published to be cited: it can be a very small number of individual articles, which may contain groundbreaking research, which are cited very often while the rest of the articles of a journal don’t have any citations at all. Let us look at our Journal A from above again. Imagine that of the 48 and 59 citations of 2014 and 2015 90% were made of a single article, this would inevitably not reflect upon the quality of the other articles in the journal. This means that the Impact Factor as a measuring tool is of course somewhat flawed and different articles impact different ways and at different rates. The Impact Factor is also further influenced by editorial decisions, which, however, do not enable a n inference on the quality of the journal itself. For instance, if Editors commission review papers on a frequent basis, its Impact Factor might rise. Just to make clear what I mean with this: A review paper is a paper which assesses and comments on recent papers in a particular topic. Inevitably, the review paper itself does not generate new research but it is very likely that it is being cited anyway as summarising and surveying the state of the art of a particular matter. While !36 the production of review articles is nothing bad and of relevance to monitor scientific progress in a given context, an increased focus on review articles may distort the role of the journal in producing primary research despite its potentially rather high Impact Factor. The scholarly relevance of the journal, therefore, might be lower for your purposes than that of a journal with a lower Impact Factor, which, however, produces primary research first and foremost. As Editor of an academic journal you do have direct influence on what is being published and what is not. The usual way is to follow specific ethical guidelines that ensure a high level of scientific and scholarly integrity. Some Editors, however, have a different mindset and consider the boosting of the journal’s Impact Factor a prime objective of their work. This translates into the direct influencing of the submissions to the Editor’s journal by asking authors, for example, to cite articles from the journal. If that is the case, inevitably the Impact Factor increases, making the journal appear as a leading journal in the respective field. This, of course, is a flawed perception. After all, the articles would not have been cited if the journal’s Editor hadn’t directly interfered in the citation process. In fact, Clarivate™ will remove your journal from its journal citation report if it is suspicious of !37 self-citation. If you as authors ever come across a situation like this, do not hesitate to contact your institution about this as this constitutes a gross violation of ethical conduct in academic publishing. The role of an Editor is to be responsible for the academic quality of the journal – not to interfere with the way research is being produced! In the end, practices like this are, of course, to the detriment of the journal since these practices are mentioned in scientific circles, contributing to the declining reputation of the journal in question. Another way to pick your journal based on numeric data is by national ranking. This is a very common feature in three Nordic countries Finland, Denmark and Norway. Here, it is supposedly the quality of the research which plays the guiding role. The ranking of the publications is divided into three levels, the highest of which is Level 3. In essence, all journals and book publishers are listed in these Publication Forums. As regards journals, it is not only the Impact Factor which is taken into consideration by the panels that shift the journals to the respective level, but furthermore its expertise in the field, which is being represented by the journal’s Editorial Board, its internationality and scientific integrity. In Finland, where I live, the system is relatively young and was first im!38 plemented in 2014. Since the composition and impact of a journal changes over time, the ranking of all journals is being reevaluated every four years. When choosing a journal, I inevitably look at the ranking system. Whether or not this is necessarily justified, especially from an Editor’s perspective, is of course subject to debate. To conclude, to solely rely on the Impact Factor is not recommendable. When picking a journal which does not necessarily fall into the field of your research, it is also advisable to consult other metrics, such as Altmetrics. Altmetrics are in essence data from indirect reference to specific articles, not journals, in social media sources or elsewhere. Altmetrics thus don’t provide citations per se, but refer to the mentioning of single articles or some of their content in the world wide web. But of course, when picking your journal, remember to bear in mind what you want to achieve with the article, who you want to read it and the benefits it might bring to the community. !39 3.4. Dubious, Pseudo, Predatory Journals & Publishers Now that you have produced a solid piece of research, you have become of interest to the scientific community. Assuming that you have produced primary research – meaning that you are the only one having come to the respective conclusion – there are also others that might be interested in either using or even stealing your research. Unfortunately, this has become a rather common practice in academic publishing lately, especially since many journals are now fully online. A common practice for these dubious journals is to send out large numbers of emails to individuals in which they commission papers. (Don’t ask me where they get the email addresses from though). They seem to be legitimate journals at first glance, list their Impact Factors, their ISSN and, of course, have impressive sounding names that conceal their dubious practices. Without knowing what these journals are, one might easily be inclined to submit the paper to them. But a substantial word of caution is now in order: Before submitting a paper to a journal the origin of which you don’t know and the name of which you have not heard before, check the members of the Edit!40 orial Board (if they have any) and the name of the publisher (if they have any). Moreover, check the ‘small print’. Often, these journals claim to follow strict ethical principles that ensure proper scientific conduct and charge quite substantial amounts of money for your article being published open access in them. Interestingly, many claim to have the final decision on the manuscript, meaning completed peer review, within a short period of time. Take a look at the time frame of a journal which advertised itself through the unsolicited sending of ‘Calls for Papers’. The journal highlights these ‘Important Dates’: Important Dates: a. Acceptance Notification: Within 15-20 working days from the date of manuscript submission. b. Date of Publishing: Papers will be published within 2530 days from the date of manuscript submission. (Note: Accepted papers are immediately published online) c. Submission deadline: May 30, 2017 As we will see, in the next chapter, this is often out of the Editor’s hands. In light of these fixed dates a proper academic conduct is doubtful. In other words, your !41 paper does not go through peer-review and although they claim it has met the referee’s standards, your paper may not even have been looked at and thus is published as it is. Of course, now you would have a publication, but it might do more harm to your reputation as a researcher than it may do you good. In the worst case, your paper won’t get published at all and you might find its content either verbatim or in slightly amended form, apparently authored by someone else, published in a proper academic journal. In other words, somebody might have stolen your research. But that is really the worst case scenario. If you find that your research has been used without your knowledge or consent, contact the journal and author’s institution! This is plain plagiarism. As an up and coming scholar you might also get an invitation to join the Editorial Board of one of these journals. If you ever do get an invitation, I would be very careful and discuss this matter with somebody prior to accepting. In fact, I would simply ignore any email or invitation from a journal that I have never heard of and which by obvious standards is a fake journal. However, it so happens that we also invite experts to join our Editorial Board. This is common practice, but if/when you do, you should know the journal and feel very confident about it. !42 The best example that shows how fake journals work is the seemingly quite funny story of the paper ‘Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List’ which was written by professors David Mazière (Stanford) and Eddie Kohler (Harvard), both of whom are computer scientists, in 2005. Their 10-page paper, which contained merely this one sentence as well as nicely-looking graphs and tables, was their response to the increasing number of journals asking them for their contributions. Of course, the paper circulated widely in the (computer) scientific community, but when the paper was submitted as original research to the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology by an Australian computer scientist, Peter Vamplew, things became a little different. Because, contrary to what one might expect, the paper passed peer-review and was ready for publication for a fee of $150. Of course, the referees considered the paper ‘excellent’! Since Vamplew sent off the paper as a means to expose predatory journals, he did not pay the publication fee and the paper was never published (Stromberg, 2014). Two aspects rise to the surface here, which point towards a significant problem of these kinds of journals. One, the obvious lack of peer-review despite statements to the contrary; Two, the breach of good !43 scientific practice of not rejecting the paper right away due to plagiarism. After all, it was Mazière and Kohler and not Vamplew who wrote the paper. However, with a title like the one in question, the paper should have raised some eyebrows, to say the least. Yet, it is easy to blame these dubious journals for what they do. After all, they have developed a business model which obviously serves some kind of market demands. And when looking at the Editorial Boards of many of these journals, their geographical location as well as the authors that have published in them, one cannot help but notice a strong dominance of developing, low-resource countries. Moreover, as was shown in the 2013 study in the prestigious journal Current Sociology, ‘Peripheral scholarship and the context of foreign paid publishing in Nigeria’, also African, particularly Nigerian scholars are tempted to publish in these journals since the main concern for the advancement of the academic employment status in Nigeria is showing publications outside of Nigeria. In this regard, a publication fee and no peer review is an easy way to bolster one’s career. After all, a Nigerian scholar can then show that s/he has an international publication (Obowomale et al., 2014). What should make you always suspicious is the way a journal presents itself. Google® or any other !44 search engine is always a helpful tool and if you are serious about your research and the integrity of your publication, I might simply consider publishing elsewhere if, for instance, the internet presence of the journal you are looking at appears dubious or if it has received substantial amounts of bad press on the web. If a publisher, for example, claims to have a specific journal and presents ‘articles under review’ with titles of the articles and the names of the authors, something is clearly not right. A proper journal never discloses the articles under review and of course never ever discloses the names of the authors. This would constitute a fundamental breach of publication ethics. Speaking of publication ethics: There are also publishers that offer ghost-writing services for a fee and even advertise these on the web. For a fee, students and researchers, as well as others, are encouraged to submit their raw data to the respective platform for them to complete the writing. In other words, this is a ‘wholesale cheating’ business, as David A. Tomar calls this in his online paper ‘Detecting and Deterring Ghostwritten Papers: A Guide to Best Practices’ (Tomar, nd.). If you wish to publish in an open access journal, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a very helpful tool (DOAJ, Website). !45 Additionally, I should mention that these dubious journals are often also involved in organising dubious conferences. On a regular basis I get invitations to conferences which, first of all, really don’t have anything to do with my field of expertise and which, just judging from the design of the emails and websites, if they have, appear very amateurish and unprofessional. Obviously, I have never attended any of these conferences the purpose of which also does not really occur to me. !46 Chapter 4 Submission While the previous chapter has presented some issues which might be worthwhile considering before submitting your manuscript to a research journal, let us now walk through some issues which might be relevant for the proper processing of your research. In other words, we now assume that you have found a journal, which you are confident suits your purposes and which might even publish your paper. 4.1. Means of Submission In the year 2017, the time of writing of these lines, I dare to say that most of the academic journals that exist are in one way or the other linked to the internet. This means that the Editor(s) of the journal in question have access to emails and that they are able to receive submissions. You may thus infer that submitting a manuscript to a journal is being done by email. This is not necessarily the case anymore and it depends on the journal. In fact, many journals still receive their submissions via email or even via paper copy, meaning that you have to send several paper copies of your !47 manuscript to the editorial office of the journal, which in turn takes significantly longer than online submissions. On the other hand, many journals still allow for submissions through email to the respective person in charge. Book reviews are mostly submitted this way. Before you submit a paper, always check the journal’s guidelines on ‘how to submit’ a paper, usually given in the Instructions for Contributors. If something is unclear and you are not quite sure, just contact the journal and ask for guidance. Please do the Editor a favour though: Don’t be lazy, but try to figure it out yourself before sending an email in which you ask for help on the way to submit your manuscript. Laziness from the author’s side is not too highly regarded… While email is still in use, most, or at least many journals have now shifted to online submission software, called Online Peer Review Systems. These different types of online platforms essentially make the submission process much more transparent. Not that it exposes the single steps of the submission, but at least the author can check regularly on the status of his/her paper. These submission softwares are called ScholarOne® or Editorial Manager®. Some major publishing companies also have their own systems. These platforms have significant benefits from an Editor’s perspective. They enable the Editor to follow !48 the peer-review process very closely; receive automatic reminders if a revision or a review is late; maintain and expand a database of referees; maintain and expand a database of authors; and also enable others to gain access to this information. In other words, contrary to email submissions, which might end up in the email server of only one person in charge, also the publisher as well as co-Editors are able to follow the production of papers. This furthermore constitutes a self-regulating tool and increases the level of adherence to good editorial practice. All email communication regarding specific manuscripts goes through the system and therefore all questions and issues that arise are handled in a transparent manner. The downside, as some referees and authors have lamented, is that many emails are automated. Reminders or acknowledgements for reviews or contributions are sent by the system automatically in the name of the Editor. Standardised wording replaces personalised letters. For the Editor this saves significant amounts of time and makes life much easier. I can say this with full confidence since my Deputy Editorship started while it was still common practice to submit via email. Only since the introduction of our online submission system I have had the feeling of being fully under control of all submissions and relevant !49 communication with authors and referees regarding these submissions. Before you submit a paper, it is compulsory to create an account including a password in the system. This is, as some have pointed out, a major downside of the ‘modern’ way of submitting papers. However, these systems are author-oriented systems that make sure that all meta-data the system has on the author has come from themselves. Additionally, although many journals use the same system, if you want to submit several papers to different journals which all use, say, ScholarOne®, for each you will have to create a separate account unless you are part of a society which own several journals each of which can be used the same account for. However, for security reasons and for privacy reasons publishers often require an account for each journal. While this may be the case, in 2012 the nonprofit organisation ORCID was introduced that provides an individual research with a unique ID in order to avoid confusion as regards name changes or cultural differences as regards the names of authors. Many journals nowadays therefore make it possible for authors to register with their ORCID ID (see ORCID, Website). !50 The means of submission, however, does not allow for any inferences on the quality or status of the journal. For different reasons journals and Editors follow their respective practices. After all, it is the quality of the journal and not the way manuscripts are submitted which should relevant to you. 4.2. Double, Triple, Multiple Submission? A question that has arisen repeatedly is whether it is possible to submit a manuscript to several journals at the same time. When submitting a paper, you usually have to check a box in which you confirm that the submission is original and that the manuscript has not been submitted elsewhere. The reasons for this are essentially economic in nature. Each manuscript that is being submitted to a journal needs to be processed. This processing translates into the work of the Editor, the referees and the publisher. Imagine a research paper having been submitted to your journal, having been handled by you, the Editor, and forwarded to two experts on the issue. Especially the referees have spent significant amounts of time to evaluate the paper and then return it to you for further processing. Somewhere along the line of !51 the production process, the author withdraws the paper simply due to the fact that s/he has submitted it elsewhere, it was accepted and s/he prefers the other journal over yours. Just because of personal preference, therefore, your time as well as the time of the referees was wasted. Imagine a world in which it would be permissible to have authors submit their manuscripts to as many journals as possible. If you have one manuscript, you would send it therefore to, say, ten journals for which it might be suitable. You would thereby keep at least ten Editors and 20 referees busy. Imagine then also that 4 of these journals would accept your paper. This would mean that the same research would be published four times at the same time! What this would mean to the research and scientific community is unimaginable. Moreover, you would, of course, not be the only author with the brilliant idea to submit a research paper to ten journals. There would be hundreds of others, which would exponentially boost the number of submissions to a journal. This, in turn, would mean that production costs would go through the roof as well, inevitably leading to publication fees and a stall in scientific productivity. Also the question of copyright would be a tricky one. Moreover, there are only a limited number of experts of specific issues. !52 They would get flooded with review requests for the same research over and over, which, as you might imagine, is not particularly motivating. Double, triple or multiple submission is therefore a very serious issue which also Editors take up nonjokingly. Before you consider submitting to two journals at the same time, consider where this might lead you: Into the position of not being able to submit to either of the journals again. Elizabeth Wager, former chair of The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), powerfully shows the reasons for the avoidance of double submissions in her 2009 paper ‘Why You Should not Submit Your Work to More than One Journal at a Time’ (Wager, 2009). 4.3. The Cover Letter Closely related to the choice of the journal and the issue of multiple submissions is the Cover Letter which usually accompanies a submission although, of course, not every journal provides the option for such a letter, either online or via any other mode of submission. Considering that a journal has the option for a Cover Letter, while this is nothing that influences the publishability of a manuscript, it nevertheless shows !53 the Editor that the choice of the journal is a conscious one and that the paper specifically targets the audience of the journal. In addition, the Cover Letter often outlines the reason for why the journal was chosen and how your paper fits into its scope. Many submissions, however, come without a Cover Letter. This is nothing bad as such, but a Cover Letter, especially in times of online submission systems, is a personal message to the Editor(s) and immediately creates a feeling of trust between the journal and the author. I would therefore not underestimate the value of spending a few minutes thinking about how to introduce your research to the journal. There is no template on how to write a Cover Letter. I recommend it to be personal and informative as regards the reason for choosing the journal and the location of your research within it. There is no need to present the content of your paper though. Merely the title is sufficient. 4.4. Disclosure of Funders Another issue that rises to the surface every now and then is why it is necessary to disclose your funders !54 since it should depend on the quality of the research and not who paid for it that should be relevant. To me, the reason for disclosing your funding sources is quite obvious. First of all, research and science is not straightforward. Research results are not set in stone and the whole philosophy behind the scientific method is to challenge already existing results in order to reach more precise outcomes and to develop our understanding of the world (and beyond) further. The researcher/scientist does not live in a bubble either. S/he is part of a wider system of interests and therefore also fulfils specific purposes. The disclosure of funders enables the Editor to make an informed and transparency-based decision about a paper in which there might be a conflict of interests regarding the funders. Additionally it is a matter of transparency towards the reader who should have the right to know who funded the research they are reading. Imagine a paper on the health effects of smoking, for example. If your conclusion is that smoking is in no way detrimental to health and your research is funded by a high-ranking, prestigious and independent university, I would probably consider that this research might be legitimate. Especially, if other researchers that work for independent institutions come to the same conclusion. On a side note, I would never !55 just trust one research outcome like this. Be that as it may, imagine the same research result being presented by a researcher whose research is fully funded by a tobacco company. Inevitably, I would be suspicious as to the scientific soundness of the research results. In other words, I would suspect a scientific bias in it, driven by commercial interests of the tobacco company. The disclosure of funders thus contributes to an important element of scientific practice: Transparency. Without transparency the scientific method inevitably gets flawed and forfeits integrity. Therefore, if your funding comes from any foundation, company or organisation which follows private, commercial or ideological interests, disclose them. Then your research, research methods and ultimately research results can be brought into a larger context and can be located within a broader scientific discourse. But either way, of course, the referees will look at your paper. And if they think your research findings are substantially flawed, your paper will inevitably be rejected. !56 4.5. The Checklist Whenever you submit a paper through an online submission system, you have to check specific boxes. I cannot stress enough how important it is that you don’t just check the boxes but that you actually appreciate the content that you approve of when you check the box. Because this will make yours and the Editor’s lives much much easier. The checklist usually contains several elements. Let me list a few here. First of all, the Checklist asks you to confirm if you have followed the journal’s style guide. As explained above, this will inevitably become an issue irrespective of you having in practice done so or not. By checking the box you confirm: yes, I know that Journal A applies the, say, APA Style, so I hereby confirm that my manuscript corresponds to this style. By checking it without having adhered to the style, you essentially lie to the Editor. Another box asks you to confirm that you have not exceeded the journal’s word limit. Each journal has a limit for the length of a research article and it depends very much on the discipline and the type of journal you are submitting your paper to what the word limit is. In the social sciences, you find journals with a limit between 6,000–8,000 words or with !57 9,000–12,000 words. In any case, when you check the box, you once again confirm that you have followed the journal’s respective rules. Often you are even asked to write down the number of words, including references, in a special box. As Editor, you become very suspicious when the word count is not filled out – although this often means that the author has to write something in it since otherwise s/he is not able to proceed – or when it merely says ‘n/a.’ Every modern word processing software has the option of a word count, so it is not a problem to enter it. When not doing so, an Editor might quickly suspect something else at play: Either laziness or simply that the article does not meet the requirements of the journal. This being said, there is always leeway and rules are usually not set in stone. If you really do not manage to cut down on the number of words, you can either ask someone you trust for help or you can contact the Editor and explain the problem. As Editor there are several options to deal with this problem then. The simplest is, of course, to ask the author to publish elsewhere. This may be necessary in some instances, but is not really common practice since Editors are also interested in solving problems together with the author. The second option is to encourage cutting down the paper to a higher word limit. If, for !58 example, your manuscript has 17,000 words but the paper is not to exceed 12,000, the Editor may ask you to cut down to 15,000 as a compromise. Reducing a manuscript by 2,000 words instead of 5,000 is a different ballgame. The last option is to ask the author to consider splitting up the article in two articles, which would be separately submitted. This helps the author to get a completely new view on the article’s content and to allow her/him to group different elements of the paper into two different sections. Since you have already done the research, writing two different papers is not that big of a challenge anymore then and you might have two instead of merely one publication. All this being said, the guidelines are of course also very much for the benefit of the author. After all, word limits enable you to focus on the core arguments and prevent you from waffling. They enable you to consider whether some information can be put in a table or a figure. They furthermore make you think about how the reviewer reads your paper: focusing on the most important argumentative elements or just wading through unnecessary (con)text. Another part of the ‘Checklist’ which you should consider is the proper way of uploading your manuscript and all additional files to a submission system. If the system asks you to upload your manuscript !59 as a Word-file, please do so and don’t upload a PDF. The manuscript will be immediately unsubmitted and you will be asked to submit a Word-file. The reason is simple: When uploading a Word-file, this will be automatically transferred into a PDF by the system which also adds a watermark (such as “For peer-review”) as well as line numbers to the document. Also, when you upload figures or tables, upload them separately and don’t leave them in the document. It suffices to leave a little note on where to place the figures in the final version. The system then merges your figures with the manuscript, so that there is a complete paper ready for peer-review. Most importantly, separate the author information as well as Acknowledgements from the manuscript as both are irrelevant for the referee. In most cases, these information are to be kept on a Title Page which is a separate file. Only the Main Document and not the Title Page will be forwarded to the referees. The title and keywords, both of which you are asked to enter somewhere along the submission process, Abstract and Main Document will be forwarded to the referees. Never the Title Page. !60 4.6. Peer-review After your manuscript has passed all inchoate barriers and you have successfully submitted it to the journal starts the most frustrating time: The wait. Because now your manuscript is in the Editor’s hands who is responsible for facilitating and overseeing the peer-review process. Peer-reviewing is the most crucial element of scientific research and has been conducted at least since the 18th century. It essentially means that before research findings are made public, other experts on the issue validate the research findings and therefore legitimise them. In this manner flaws are being uncovered or methodological issues refined. The main purpose of the peer-reviewing process is therefore to uphold the quality and integrity of academic research through the scrutiny of experts in the field. While this is a rather straight-forward process in the natural sciences, the social scientific peer-reviewing process is somewhat more ambiguous. This is simply because many social sciences papers are theory-driven and the referee thus may take an issue with specific theories and wishes a different one (maybe even his/her own) to be applied. At the same time, referees also may consider their own research as groundbreaking and !61 thus consider it necessary to be used in the paper they are reviewing. In this sense, peer-reviewing, while undoubtedly absolutely necessary for the integrity of scientific research, it is not without criticism. That being said, peer-reviewing remains the most appreciated type of research validation within the research community. Although some alternatives have been suggested and tested – the contents and applicability of which have been analysed and summarised in ‘Alternatives to Peer Review: Novel Approaches for Research Evaluation’ by Aliaksandr Birokou and others in 2011 – a widely accepted method which replaces peer-reviewing has not been found (Birokou et al., 2014). In modern times the peer-reviewing process is facilitated through the so-called ‘blind’ peer-review. This means that either side of the process, the author and the referee, may not know who the other one is. However, the blind peer-review is subdivided into two different types. The first one is the single-blinded peer-review process. In this type, the author is known to the referee while the referee is not known to the author. In this manner, it is impossible for the author to contact the referee and to influence the reviewing process. The referee, however, knows who the author is and has all information regarding her/his affiliation, !62 previous publications etc. This type of peer-review is essentially for the benefit of the referee who can comment on and influence the publication of research results without having to expose her/his identity. The downside of this type of review is that it is possible for the referee to, for example, silence potential competitors or simply disliked fellow researchers, even based on gender. The more common peer-review is the doubleblind peer-review, which means that neither the author nor the referee know who the other part is. In this case it is more likely that the research is approached neutrally and without any potential bias or conflict of interest. This, however, depends also of the field of research we are talking about. In the jungle of disciplines and research topics, referees are often limited and most precious and in many instances the number of experts – be they already established ones or up and coming – is equally limited. When an author of one of those limited fields submits a paper it is also very likely that the referee recognises the author just by the mere fact that s/he knows the author’s style of writing or knows all experts dealing with the particular field. Another indicator for the referee is the references the author is using: Is it one particular scholar the author likes to cite? In other words, although double-blind !63 peer-review ideally conceals the identity of author and referee, this cannot be made 100% sure. The Editor, on the other hand, always tries to consult referees which are unlikely to identify the author. But again, this always depends on what field of expertise or what discipline we are talking about. Additionally, the author often has the possibility to suggest referees for a paper, which s/he might deem most appropriate, or even to oppose certain referees. For an Editor, this is, of course helpful as well as tricky. Especially when working for a multidisciplinary journal it is not always easy to find suitable referees. The hints of the authors might be very helpful in this regard. However, this might also mean that they suggest a person who might be uncritical or even supportive of the author and therefore biased. This is impossible to tell for an Editor and it is consequently in the interest of the pursuit of scientific practice to get at least one more opinion on the paper. The Editorial Board also proves to be very helpful in a situation like this. At the same time, referees which the author opposes are also very helpful and although they might be experts, they might be biased and therefore not suitable for evaluating the manuscript. The reasons for opposing a referee, however, do not need to be disclosed. !64 Once the referees have accepted the invitation to review the manuscript, they are usually given a specific time period in which they are asked to complete their review. Depending on the journal, the paper and the circumstances of the referee, this may be a few weeks to several months. Of course, the author needs to sit through this time of insecurity, but one should always bear in mind that writing a review is not something one can do quickly. Not only should the paper’s structure and content be looked at critically, but it should also be analysed, suggestions for improvement be provided, and these be communicated to the Editor and the author. Quickly skimming through a paper and using the famous red pen is by far not enough and it takes considerable amounts of time to produce a critical and constructive review. Just remember that the referees are experts on a specific issue and are therefore in all likelihood engaged in other activities as well. Since there is usually no compensation for a completed review, it may not be the referee’s priority. Altruism and the possibility of keeping abreast of the latest research in their respective field are the main drivers for referees. As Editor you cannot force a referee to complete a review and it also happens that the referee accepts to do a review, but never delivers. This is, of course, !65 very unfortunate and much to the dismay of the author and the Editor, but the reviewing process is a process of good will and not of coercion. While Editors can send reminders to referees as well as tell them that since the time period for the completion of the review has expired a new referee will be looked for, this is merely soft pressure and thus makes the Editor equally dependent on the willingness and ability of the referee to complete the review. If the reviewing process has already taken several months, some authors feel the need to contact the Editor to inquire about the status of the paper. In this case it seems as if the authors fear their paper might have gotten lost or even forgotten about. This is not the case. Editors do their best to ensure a swift reviewing process, but it is in the end not in their hands. !66 Chapter 5 Rejection, Revision, Acceptance After the completion of the peer-review it is now the Editor who decides what to do with the paper. The referee reports are of course the major wall upon which Editors can lean when making their decision. In the case of some journals, however, the Editor-inChief is the one who takes the first look at the articles and also desk-rejects them. If accepted by the Editor s/ he will pass the paper on to an Associate Editor who is then responsible for finding suitable referees. The Associate Editor is then the one making the decision depending on the referee reports and communicates this decision to the author. Some are even more complicated than that and it, naturally, depends on the journal’s set up on how the decision-making process works. For the purposes of this book, we don’t go into the complications of decision-making though, but consider merely the first option of the Editor-in-Chief making the decision. 5.1. Rejection Let us therefore start with the worst-case scenario: Rejection. It quite frequently happens that papers get !67 desk-rejected. This means that the Editor or another responsible person working for the journal rejects your paper before it is even sent out to the referees. There are many reasons why this may happen. Some examples are: The paper does not fit into the scope of the journal; the paper does not follow the Instructions for Contributors; the paper is of notably poor quality; or the paper is plagiarised. Desk-rejection also serves the good relations between the journal and the referees since as Editor you don’t want to ‘waste' a referee on a paper which is in all likelihood not going to pass peer-review anyway. After all, experts in the different fields are limited. Let’s assume, however, that your paper was not desk-rejected and it went out to the referees. Unfortunately, both referees recommend a rejection of your paper though. The reasons for this can be manifold and I shall only present some examples that I have come across in my editing role. One obvious reason is that the paper does not meet scientific or academic standards. Having analysed the paper, the referees have come to the conclusion that neither the methodology nor the research findings are conclusive. While the methodology aims at (dis)proving a certain context, the findings consider the methodology merely in passing and refer to some!68 thing which the methodology does not. In other words, the paper is inconclusive and should be fully rewritten. In this case, the Editor makes the decision to reject the paper on that basis and it is now in the hands of the author to either follow the referees’ comments, restructure and rewrite the paper in order to start a new submission with the same journal or to submit it as it is to a different journal, hoping that the referees will come to a different conclusion there. Another reason to reject a paper is that it is speculative or even polemic. This is particularly the case in the social sciences when arguments are not argumentatively substantiated but merely presented as a fact. For example, it is not enough to build a paper around a specific claim, but it is absolutely necessary to clearly show where that claim comes from, how it is supported and how you use the claim for your own arguments. If the paper does not back up arguments in a proper manner, but merely utilises them as a given, the referees will in all likelihood reject it. After all, a research paper is not an opinion piece, which is a different category and does not necessarily go through peer-review, but an evidence- and argument-based production of knowledge. If your paper is merely descriptive and reproduces already existing research without providing !69 anything new to the topic, I can with almost 100% certainty tell you that the referees recommend rejection. Because it is always necessary to consider the paper in the wider scientific context. And if you merely reproduce, you don’t add anything new. This in turn means that you have produced a review article, but not a research article. These are just three examples of reasons for the rejection of your paper. Every researcher who produces research, writes research papers and submits them to a journal experiences this for various reasons. But don’t get discouraged. Of course, it is clear that a rejection is never nice and it somehow feels like a blow to the face: You have invested so much time and effort into researching and writing this paper, but it does not meet the expectations. This can be frustrating, but it is part of the game. A good way to deal with rejection is to use it as a means of encouragement rather than discouragement. But first of all, let the paper be for a while. Put it aside and deal with something else. Once you have the guts again to deal with it, consider this: You have now a set of comments on your paper which in unmistakable language tell you what is bad about it and usually also how to improve it. This is invaluable. Because it provides you with a detailed account on what makes !70 this paper unpublishable. If you turn this around, rewrite the paper and include the referees’ comments, it becomes very likely that upon second submission you might have a real shot at getting your paper published. Of course, this is still a few months down the road, but you will eventually get this paper out there. And besides: Critical and even destructive comments are always a means of learning. Maybe the comments indirectly point towards a fundamental flaw in your methodology, your argument or even your way of doing research. If you then take this as an advice of how to become a better researcher, you can only benefit. Yes, a rejection is a rejection, and it never feels good. But in the long run a rejection is part of improving as a researcher. As Editor, you of course also get to feel the frustration of researchers whose papers have been rejected. Some even go so far as to asking you to disclose the names of the referees to that they get a better understanding of who has caused this frustration. This is of course no way to deal with a rejection and rather points towards emotional response than scientific practice of accepting criticism. This becomes somewhat frustrating for us Editors as well since we neither want to offend the author nor do want to reverse a decision in case the author demands this. Rejections are !71 never done easily and I can only relate to the frustration this causes particularly for young researchers. But it is a decision that stands and which will not be reversed. If you are unhappy with a rejection, you will just have to learn how to deal with it. This being said, as author you of course get the reports of the referees, so you get first hand information on why your paper was rejected. It also happens that a report is very unfriendly and even insulting to the researcher. While usually it is the responsibility of the Editor to communicate the referees’ reports to the author, this should not always mean that they have to be taken up verbatim. In other words, if a report is insulting, the Editor should ask the referee to write a report which is respectful towards the author. If you, this notwithstanding, receive a report which either is insulting to you or even reveals that the referee has not properly read your paper, misunderstood the paper or has in any other way not acted appropriately, you have valid reason for challenging the outcome. In this case, a note to the Editor is appropriate in which you outline why you do not consider the referee report suitable. An Editor will then look into the matter more closely and will act upon your complaint. !72 5.2. Revision One of the best and most common outcomes of the peer-review is the call for revisions. Depending on the journal, there are several subdivisions of the decision to revise the paper. The first one is ‘Major Revision and Further Review’. In this case, the paper was close to being rejected. In fact, one of the referees might have even proposed a rejection. However, if a publication is in principle possible and the paper has good potential, major revisions and further review are required. For the eager researcher, this is a goldmine. Not only do you have valuable information on how to improve your paper, you even get the chance for another round of reviews which means that the referees take another look at your paper and evaluate if and how you have managed to implement their proposed changes and their points of critique. From now on it is very unlikely that you will receive a rejection. This may only be the case if you have – deliberately or not – managed to circumvent the referees’ comments and have completely missed their points. But since you are capable of reading, you can easily address the points and therefore improve your paper significantly. Most journals therefore require the author to make a list of !73 how you have addressed the referees’ comments. This is an easy way to make sure that you have not missed anything and that your comments meets the requirements for publication. The referees will also notice the improvements and in all likelihood propose the acceptance of the paper. If one or both still have improvement suggestions, these can usually not be major anymore and the path to getting your paper published is more or less paved. This being said, if you receive the decision of major revision, this does not mean that your paper will be published. Only with the notice of acceptance you can be sure of your research appearing in the journal. Of course, referees are people, too, and sometimes people make mistakes. When going through the comments and when writing the letter in which you lay out how you implemented the comments, you can also refer to comments that you do not make part of your revised version. This is a legitimate step – you disagree with the referee. The point here is, however, not to ignore the comments, but rather to explain why you do not wish to implement the proposed changes. This may be due to a significant change in focus, due to additional information that does not add anything to your argument or due to whatever other reason you see why the proposed change or the comment may not !74 be appropriate for the paper. The most important issue for the Editor and the referee is that you clearly explain why you chose not to follow the referee’s suggestion. This is a crucial issue of academic debate and also for us Editors a very valuable part of our work. The second level of revisions is that of ‘Minor Revisions’. In this case, the paper is in principle good to go but the paper needs some polishing. The referees therefore point you towards some omissions or clarifications, may provide you with some additional information or might ask you to tighten up your argument here and there. Another round of review is not necessary and you have managed to produce research which by and large meets the scientific standards of the journal. The proper adherence to the journal’s style is also part of these minor revisions and the more thorough you are from the beginning, the faster the process of minor revisions will be. Once again you will be asked to address the points that are raised in the review and to show the Editor that you have done your homework properly. And once again you can also opt for not implementing something if you have good reason to do so. The Editor, however, can always overrule your point and ask you to implement it nevertheless. After all, s/he is responsible for the quality of the journal and if s/he deems it necessary for you to !75 implement something, you might have to do it notwithstanding. 5.3. Acceptance One of the nicest parts of publishing is the prospect of seeing your research published. After rigorous review your paper has been accepted! This can of course also happen after the first round of peer-review when the referees recommend publication of your paper without further changes. This is, however, rather rare. More common is the notice of acceptance after some revisions – be they major or minor. Either way, the Editor makes sure that you can list your paper as a ‘forthcoming’ publication. And this means that the day of your paper being made part of the scientific discourse is drawing closer. !76 Chapter 6 The Production and Publication Process With the paper having been accepted, it will enter the production process which is done by the publisher’s production department. Several steps are part of this process and it is still a little while to go until you can hold the final paper in your hands. 6.1. Copy-editing First the publisher will forward the manuscript to the copy-editor. Copy-editing is a process which makes the paper conform to the overall standard of the journal as well as the English language. A copy-editor thus meticulously goes through your paper, checks its consistency, checks the references, alters some language here and there and inevitably makes some changes to your paper. This is the stage when the last corrections can be made to your paper. This being said, when the paper goes to the copy-editor, it should be in its very final stage, the finished version that just needs polishing, so to speak. However, there are cases in which the Editor needs to liaise with the author again. For in!77 stance, the copy-editor makes the Editor aware of several paragraphs in a paper which have a lack of citations. The Editor, in turn, contacts the author to make sure that s/he provides the correct citations for the paragraphs in question. The copy-editor is consequently a crucial part of the editorial process of a research journal and contributes to making sure that good scientific practice as well as high academic standards are adhered to. Yet, in general copy-editors assume that the paper has been accepted on the basis of the paper having been deemed good and publishable. The copy-editor therefore serves as the final sanity check. Usually, the Editor does not interfere with the work of the copy-editor since it does not fall within the responsibilities of the Editor to copy-edit a paper. Only in case of some additional challenges, like the one which I described above, the Editor and the copyeditor communicate on the publishability of a paper. It is, however, always in the hands of the Editor to decide how to proceed with a paper, whether to publish it despite some shortcomings or whether to return it to the author for further improvements. But either way, once the Editor has given you the green light for publication, the paper will be published either way. It is !78 merely a matter of fine-tuning and polishing which might still be required. 6.2. Type-setting While you may have arranged and designed your manuscript in a way which sort of looks like the layout of the journal, this was, I must confess, a waste of time. Because it does not matter in which font or font size you submit your manuscript – it will always be re-designed. This is what in the world of publishing is referred to as ‘typesetting.’ The typesetters therefore make your manuscript look very nice and professional and also, once again, check whether all references that you use in your text are properly listed in your Bibliography. The origins of typesetting stem from the first days of the printed press when specific fonts or symbols were carved into wooden and metal sorts, which were then arranged properly in order to be printed on a piece of paper. In the modern era, typesetters not only apply a certain font and check the consistency of the references, but they also make sure that specific digital features are linked with the text and that the display of the font is fine-tuned down to pixel size. !79 In fact, it is very easy to distinguish a type-set paper from a paper which has merely been formatted with a word processing software. It thus the professional appearance of a paper and a journal which also impact the production costs. Yet, this is moreover a sign for a legitimate and high-quality publisher vis-àvis low-key and even fake journals. Just try it out: Pick a journal and try to make one of your papers look like it. While you may figure out the font and the font sizes, I can almost guarantee you that you will not manage to make your paper look fully professional, but merely self-made. Type-setting software and skills are imperative for the professionality of a journal and a publisher. While there are, of course, quality journals that entirely focus on open access by not involving a publisher, the overall appearance still contributes to those journals having the stigma of not being fully professional. In addition to the appearance of a paper, type-setters are also responsible to add meta-data to the paper. For instance they are the ones that add links or ORCID IDs and make the final PDF dynamic. !80 6.3. Proof-reading After your paper has gone through type-setting, you will receive the so-called proof of your paper. At this stage, your paper has been brought into the journal’s form entirely and it is almost ready for publication. Since you have been working on your paper for a long time now and usually always in one specific layout, the type-set version of it may open up some issues which you may not have noticed before. You are therefore proof-reading your own paper and are still able to make minor changes to it, such as correcting typos or eradicating some grammatical flaws, but the overall assumption is that the proof does not require any major changes anymore. After all, type-setting is an activity which costs money and having to re-typeset your paper is not desirable. Being thorough from the beginning is consequently a very good thing. And being thorough when looking at the proof as well. Remember that this is your last chance to make changes to your paper and it is very advisable not to rush through the paper while proof-reading. Moreover, you may have to reply to some copy-editorial queries, such as the spelling of the names of authors or regarding the date of a cited publication, which may be different in the text than in !81 the Bibliography (if your paper has one). Also, if you have tables or figures in your paper, check very thoroughly whether the type-setters have placed them correctly and whether the quality of the figure corresponds to what you had in mind, particularly if they were converted from colour to black and white, which is often the case when there is a printed version of your paper. These issues cannot be changed anymore after you have given your consent on the paper to be published. If there are really major issues that you discover or were made aware of after publication, this would mean the unpleasant publication of an Erratum or Corrigendum. Although many journals are now online, the principal approach is not to change published material. As said, the changes that can be done are usually minor and of a nature that does not change the pagination of your paper anymore. If you still discover major issues that need changing and which would require a re-type-setting of your paper, this will inevitably delay publication and, depending on the publisher, you may have to pay a fee for the extra work. The punchline therefore is: Consider making all changes during your revisions after peer-review and consider the version that you re-submit as the final version which is to be published. !82 6.4. Copyright Transfer Some time during the production process you will have to sign a Copyright Transfer form. This form essentially transfers the rights to your paper to the publisher or to the society that owns the journal, if that is the case. As a consequence of this you are no longer allowed to freely distribute your research or make it freely accessible on platforms such as ResearchGate® or Academia®, as we have seen above. In academic circles this practice has come under some fire since it is argued that tax-funded research is no longer accessible to the public. However, different publishers have different policies as regards self-archiving, which the posting on platforms such as the above is called. While some are very strict and don’t allow any kind of self-archiving, others allow for the posting of the proof. Even some others allow self-archiving if it is guaranteed that the paper is not advertised or even used for commercial purposes. By and large, the copyright transfer still allows an author to distribute the paper amongst her/his peers or amongst students. It is, of course, also in the interest of the publisher to have papers distributed and cited widely. But to which degree this is permitted depends on the publisher’s policies. !83 Even though you may disagree with the logic that underlies the copyright transfer, you will nevertheless have to sign the form if you wish to publish your paper. Publishers will not proceed with the publication of your paper if you decide not to transfer the copyright. Remember though that this is in your best interest, because the copyright transfer offers a strong protection against unauthorised use of your research while it ensures that any requests to re-use your work are handled professionally. Any reputable journal has this kind of policy. In order to fully grasp the meaning of this issue, it is very advisable to carefully read the Copyright Transfer Form that you receive prior to publication from the publisher. 6.5. Publication After having gone through the production process, you will finally receive the notification that your paper has been published. In journals that have an online presence, this usually occurs directly after the paper has been approved for publication. This is referred to as ‘Online first’ or ‘First View,’ just to name two examples. You may have the option of not having your paper published as an online first version, but that you !84 would like to wait until it has been assigned to a particular issue. This is, however, not recommendable and merely sometimes of relevance if, for example, your paper is part of a special issue or a thematic publication. The crucial question that you should ask yourself is, of course: Why wait? After all, it has been taking some time for you to get this far and once your paper is online it is citable and you can promote it through your networks. If you opt for an additional wait, you might have to wait for another few months, since this is the time it takes until a paper is assigned to a specific issue. Bear in mind that there are many more papers that are waiting in line to be assigned and journals only have a limited capacity, i.e. page numbers available. So I do recommend to have your paper published online as soon as possible. Once your paper has been published it will get a DOI-number. The DOI, which stands for ‘digital object identifier,’ is always assigned to online publications and will be done so by the publisher. It is essentially a different version of a URL, but while URLs can change over time, a DOI is a persistent link on the internet. In fact, in the world of online publications, a DOI represents a citable article in as much as reference to a journal volume, number and page range does. Once the paper is online and has a DOI, it is !85 deemed fully published. Once your paper is being assigned to an issue, you will also get the latest version with the new pagination and citation details. The DOI, however, does not change and will still be attached to the article. Depending on the journal you publish with, you will get different modes of access to your paper. The most common is that you get a link through which you can access the published version of your paper for free. Another version is that you receive the PDF of your paper as an email attachment. The nicest is, of course, receiving a paper copy of the journal your paper has been published in after it has been assigned to a particular issue. But as a general rule, the publisher or Editor will make sure that you have access to your own research. Once your paper has been published, the publication process for the journal is complete. Many journals have now also included advertising campaigns through social media outlets, first and foremost Twitter®. Of course, you can do so yourself, but make sure you do not engage in copyright infringement but follow the copyright rules of the respective publisher. Most will not have a problem with content sharing in the sense that you are able to share the Abstract of your paper with other outlets, on blogs or elsewhere. !86 After all, this also serves as a good promotion for yourself, the journal as well as the publisher. In fact, in order to promote your work, it might also be advisable to take a look at the publisher’s website since they often also offer guidance and help for authors to promote their research. !87 Chapter 7 The Doctoral Thesis For many of my current and former peers, a doctoral degree is of course desirable. My own doctorate is not too long ago and I remember well the troubles I had to go through when I had to frame clearly my research question, draft a proposal for funding sources (I was lucky that I got accepted into a fully-funded doctoral school), and plan my research step by step. This chapter is not about how to plan and structure your thesis or your research, nor is it about how you should approach your research, plan it, implement or communicate it. There are plenty of sources out there which are much better suited in this regard. And it all depends, of course, on where you study, what you study and under whose supervision you study. No, this chapter is about the benefits and disadvantages of writing a monograph or an article-based dissertation from a publications-perspective. For many disciplines that is not even relevant, but in Finland (where I did my PhD) as well as in many other countries the PhD student of social sciences, law and the humanities particularly needs to decide which path to take. A good summary on the pros and cons of monographs and article-based dissertations is provided by David Alexan!88 der on ‘Thesis by publications: you’re joking, right?’ (Alexander, 2014). I would also like to stress that the guidelines for obtaining the doctoral differ from discipline to discipline, from country to country, from university to university, from faculty to faculty and even from programme to programme. This chapter is therefore not about the pros and cons of any specific way for obtaining your doctorate, but merely deals with the dissertation, the book so to speak, itself. 7.1. The Monograph A monograph is essentially the ‘traditional’ doctoral dissertation and this means you write a book. It is really that simple. In practice, you have designed and implemented a research plan which allows you to follow one (or several) red thread(s) which you start in the beginning and which you weave together in the conclusion of your dissertation. Throughout your monograph you use specific narratives which you approach from different perspectives and which you follow through until the very end. The end result is a book of several hundred pages which you can be very proud of. After all, it is very rewarding to have a book !89 of your own making in your hands. Bear in mind though that although you do write a book, you in the end write a thesis. If you wish to have your monograph published as a scholarly book by a renowned academic publisher, they will in all likelihood ask you to reduce the theoretical framework and literature review to a minimum. Instead, you should focus on the case studies at hand. In other words, the strategies for writing a monograph dissertation and a monograph book are similar, but different. Yet, when writing a monograph dissertation you can always have its publication as a ‘real' book in the back of your mind. I personally think that in modern times and in light of the unfortunate realities that we academics face, a monograph has some significant drawbacks. And these relate to your ability to publish your research results. One way to disseminate them is, of course, your active presence at national and international conferences where you test your hypotheses in a scholarly setting. Conferences stimulate and criticise your approaches, they make you question your own research and you will be challenged on numerous occasions, which provides extremely valuable insight into what your opponent(s) might challenge you on in your oral defence, if you come from a country where you have oral defences. I therefore recommend to !90 write down and keep notes on the questions and discussions that arise during the discussion rounds after your presentation. This being said, a conference presentation is not a publication and if one of your narratives proves to be wrong or you change your mind on it, you will have to rewrite large parts of your monograph. Moreover, from a publications-point-ofview, it is difficult to get your research published before you have completed your work. The reason is simple: once you have published parts of your dissertation in articles, you will have to cite them. If you don’t, you are after all committing plagiarism. Of course, you are using your own research, but this is what is called ‘self-plagiarism’ if you don’t provide appropriate citations in your monograph. A good explanation on how to cite yourself is given on the website of Walden University and indeed their punchline is that “[i]f you have made a point or conducted research in one paper that you would like to build on in a later paper, you must cite yourself, just as you would cite the work of others” (Walden University, undated). For a doctoral dissertation this means that you can, of course, use your own publications and cite them directly in your monograph. Problematic might be, however, that the research in your dissertation is then no longer considered original and the pre-examiners !91 might wonder why you use ‘old’ research and present it as new. Of course, this is not necessarily so, but publishing your research while using it in a monograph might confront you with problems which you might not have anticipated. Besides, while writing a monograph you might not even find the time to write articles since you are too engaged in focusing on your doctoral research. But that is, of course, completely up to you to decide. Once you are done writing your monograph, you might want to consider publishing portions of it in journals. The impact of a research article is, of course, much higher than that of a doctoral dissertation as it is much more compressed and to the point than the expansive and detailed information and analyses you provide in your monograph. Once you do decide to publish your research in article form, it is a good idea to contact the journal Editor prior to submission and double-check with him/her what the journal’s policies are regarding articles that build on a doctoral dissertation. Since Editors are also academics and fully aware of the problems and pressures for up and coming academics, that should not be a problem. But never forget to cite your monograph then or to include an introductory remark or a footnote along the lines of: “This !92 paper builds on….” or “A more detailed analysis of the findings in this paper can be found in…” The overall problem in terms of visibility through publications that writers of monographs have is simply that they cannot publish properly during their doctoral research. If you prefer a ‘real’ book instead of a ‘fragmented’ book as in an article-based dissertation, you still might want to go with it. 7.2. The Article-based Dissertation An article-based or cumulative dissertation is a rather new way of producing doctoral research. Contrary to a monograph, the article-based dissertation consists of several published articles and a Synthesis. Now, what does that mean and what benefits and drawbacks does this have? This type of dissertation in terms of the research load is no different than the monograph, but merely the putting-the-research-on-paper is somewhat of a different character. This is because you focus on producing research articles, — usually four, at least in the social sciences — that constitute the main core of your dissertation. In other words, you go through the entire publication process that I outlined above four !93 times in order to complete the main chunk of your dissertation. In my opinion this has significant benefits. First of all, already during the generation of your doctoral dissertation you gain fundamental insight into the publishing process and are therefore well equipped for the life of a publishing academic after your PhD. You gain the necessary skills for approaching your own research through a critical lens and with the comments of the referees you even are able to prepare yourself for the oral defence, which is to come some time in the future. Moreover, you receive valuable feedback and ideas for either a new angle on your research topic or for inspiration for future research. Of course, there are some drawbacks that you might consider as well. Whenever you publish a research paper in a journal (or a book), you are at the mercy of the journal or the referees. And reviewing can sometimes take surprisingly long! Especially if you have to go through a second round of peer-reviewing. In one case for me, from submission to publication of one article it took almost two years! And that is, to put it mildly, slightly discouraging. In practice this means that an article-based dissertation, for which you might have 3 or 4 years of funding, is to a large extent completely out of your hands. If one of the articles that you wish to include in your disserta!94 tion is delayed (or rejected after a long delay), you might run into a logistical problem and the completion of your doctorate might get delayed accordingly. There isn’t really any kind of solution here only that you should make sure that you don’t wait with your publications until the very end of your funding period. I would suggest to publish as soon as you can so that you have all articles either submitted to journals or already published by the last third of your funding period. Because what you still have to do is to write the Synthesis. The Synthesis is in essence the part of the dissertation in which you describe and justify your research questions; provide the literature review; describe the methodology; and, most importantly, link the articles together. In many cases, however, you even provide more discussion relevant for your topic that you may have not been able to put into your articles or provide more important background information that is necessary to fully grasp the extent of your research. Because bear in mind that writing articles on a specific research topic always means providing some basic background information so that the reader understands what the article is all about. This in practice means that although you have four different articles, there is always some degree of overlap as re!95 gards the basic information on your topic. But that is, of course, unavoidable. When writing your Synthesis you might get slightly bored by your topic though. After all, you have been writing the same things several times by now and it might get somewhat tiring always to write the same things over and over again. If you reach that point, remember this: the pre-examiners are only able to fully criticise you for your Synthesis, meaning the way you approach your topic and how you link the articles together. If they even reject your points, you can rather easily change your approach and take a different angle to your topic without having to rewrite your whole dissertation. Because, even though they might not agree with you in your articles, these have already been published and have thus gone through peer-review. In order to debunk your findings and a journal-based article, they would have to approach the journal and publish an article themselves. And this is rather unlikely to happen. If they criticise your points in your Synthesis and do not grant you the right to defend your thesis, you still have the chance to change your approach within your time frame. When you write your Synthesis, always remember to cite yourself as well. Bear in mind that you are basing your claims in the Synthesis on articles that !96 have already been published. As a good and ethical academic, you know what to do: provide citations! In case you provide more information that you have not been covering in your articles, you might turn those into even more articles after you have earned your PhD. The rules as to how long the Synthesis is supposed to be differs from university to university and even from faculty to faculty. And before you opt for this type of dissertation, make sure that it is possible in the first place. Assuming that it is, at the end of your doctorate you will have several publications as well as a book publications since both the Synthesis as well as your articles will be published under one title and compiled in one book. This leads to a point which is extremely important to remember. When you publish your articles in your dissertation, make sure that you contact the journal publisher prior to having your dissertation published in order to inquire what the reproduction policies of the publisher are. A good way to do this is upon acceptance of your article in a journal you contact the Editor or any other relevant person in charge of the journal, explain to her/him that this article will be part of a doctoral dissertation and that you wish to reproduce it in the end. There are two ways publishers !97 (usually) respond: (1) Not a problem at all as long as you provide the doi and all other relevant information as to the original publication. In fact, this is something you should do anyway. Or (2), you are not allowed to publish the article in its final form, but you are allowed to publish the final manuscript before it was typeset by the journal. This, of course, leaves you in a bit of a mess regarding the pagination and the overall layout of the paper in question. But as you are probably capable of adjusting your paper to make it look somewhat similar to the final version or know someone who might be, this means merely a bit more work and fumbling around with fonts and margins. Since this is the very final stage of your doctorate, you might reward yourself with a glass of wine while doing this. The important thing here is that you get the permission to reuse the article in writing so that there won’t be any kind of doubts as regards copyright etc. I personally have not heard of a journal refusing a doctoral candidate to reuse an article. This is, of course, not to say that that does not happen, however. In case it does, it might be a good idea to get your institution involved. !98 Chapter 8 Online Publishing, Conference Reports & Book Reviews A rather recent development in the world of academic publishing is the increasing number of commentaries and articles on the internet. Interestingly, especially in the social sciences, these find more and more citations in scholarly articles submitted to journals as well. Of course, there are huge differences in quality. Many, if not most, are comments on specific issues rather than commentaries. The difference here is that the author simply provides an opinion without really having to back up her or his claims. A commentary is of a different nature. In this case, the author provides a concise and critical analysis by providing arguments backed up by scholarly or scientific research. These can be very valuable as regards the references provided as well as the specific take on an issue. By writing a commentary, you might boost your visibility in the international community or in your field and you might be considered an expert of a topic in case you have regularly provided commentaries. The key here is that you don’t just simply provide an opinion, but that you demonstrate that you have understood and critically examined the topic in question. If, of !99 course, you fail to demonstrate your ability to critically think, this kind of publication might backfire. Either way, online commentaries are a good way for improving your visibility and they help you to frame and articulate your argument in a much more concise way. The benefit (as well as disadvantage) is that many online platforms have a comments-section in which readers can immediately respond to what you have written. This unfortunately, as we all know, often occurs in a truly unscientifc manner and is insulting and condescending. My best advice is to just ignore it. Much more interesting are the comments by scholars such as yourself who might criticise you in a more sophisticated manner. These are surely worth responding to as they engage you in a good discussion and might help you in the end to substantiate your claims or even to change them based on better arguments. In my field – polar, and particularly Arctic, research – the last years have seen an increase in ‘think tanks’ and other organisations that provide advice on Arctic issues. Often run by academics, their websites provide valuable information on Arctic developments. This information is often packed in ‘reports’ or other forms of online publications and, while of course the quality differs, in most cases designed to look like a professional research publication. This is because they !100 are not just opinion pieces or comments, but detailed analyses backed up by scientific findings and literature. True, there is no way for the reader to know whether any kind of peer-reviewing process has occurred, but as long as the argument is good and backed-up by scientific data, it is definitely worth taking into consideration. For you this might also be a way to test your hypotheses and to train your writing skills. Depending on how you feel about these organisations, you might want to consider writing a piece or two for them. Again, the comments-section allows for immediate feedback and you might get something valuable out of it. In a sense, given the lack of peerreview, this is not an academic publication as I have used the term throughout this book, but it is an ‘academic-like’ publication. Either way, while these do not count as publications per se, I would argue that since they are after all published, they should and you can list these in your list of publications under ‘Other publications’ or something similar. The same goes for conference reports which you might consider writing. There are, of course, gigantic international conferences which have an official rapporteur or minute-taker, but there are also smaller conferences with smaller sessions which are actively !101 seeking for volunteers to write reports. Or, you might be commissioned by your university to attend a conference and write a report about it. In a way, a conference report is a summary of the presentations in a session. They provide a good way to take the information provided by the presenters to a wider audience and to those that were not physically present. More importantly, however, I find the summary of the discussions that arise after a presentation. While presentations themselves can often be found on a scholar’s website or even the website of the conference itself, the discussions can not. And it is during the discussions that the true worth of a presentation really breaks through, whether it is groundbreaking research, whether it is repetitive or whether the presenter has (or has not) done a good job in presenting his or her argument. Writing a conference report is an arduous task and may take away some of the fun of attending the conference, but by doing that you will learn how to separate important from not so important information (at least based on your own judgement). I would therefore recommend that if a professor asks you to write a conference, session or seminar report, be a volunteer. Now, this might give you the reputation of a bootlicker, but think about the benefits this might have for you as an academic: You certainly get writing experi!102 ence and since it is often publicly available, you want to write well; your name will be linked to the conference/session/seminar and thus you may boost your visibility; you have your name on an official document; and you can list the report as a publication. Again, this is not necessarily an academic publication as it does not undergo peer-review in the above sense, but it may become one: If you have discovered something in the discussions or in your report, which you find very valuable for the research community, you might want to consider contacting a journal and inquire as to whether it might be interested in publishing the report or an academically amended version of it. While the writing of conference reports appears to be boring and annoying, it may be very rewarding in the end. Speaking of conference-reports and peer-review: Conference reports are in many instances published as Conference Proceedings. This means that you have turned your presentation into a short paper which the respective Editor(s) has/have approved for publication. In that sense it has undergone editorial review, but not peer-review in the sense of blinded review. Irrespective of the review, many publishers do publish conference proceedings and it may consequently be that you will find your name and short paper in a !103 book. Another option is that the conference organisers publish an academic volume based on the conference. If you contribute to this publication, you would then turn your presentation in a full-scale paper which then undergoes the (double-) blinded peer-review process — to be published as an edited volume. Conferences are, needless to say, an incredibly important part of early career and general academic life. Probably the most rewarding type of publishing as an up-and-coming academic, at least in my humble opinion, is the publication of book reviews. As you may have seen in the Preface to this little guidebook, it was book reviews that changed the course of my career. Through the publication of book reviews you simply gain access to the world of academic publishing. This is because you have a short publication in a journal and you demonstrate to the readership of that journal that you have the ability and skill to engage in a scholarly discussion on a certain topic. But bear in mind that often a book review is confused with a book summary. This is, of course, not the case. The latter simply summarises the book in question by stating that “Chapter 1 deals with… while Chapter 2....” No, this is not what a book review looks like. Of course, summarising a book’s content is an elementary part of writing a book review, but it is the critical engagement !104 with this content which makes a book review a good book review and you a good book reviewer. Writing book reviews therefore trains your writing practice and makes you known amongst scholars of your field (and the readership of the journal). It also boosts your publication record and therefore may take you where no one has taken you before, to paraphrase Star Trek. But sometimes it is also problematic, because authors don’t want to be criticised. So unhappy or even vain authors may contact the journal to have a rejoinder to your review published. This is, luckily, extremely rare though. I myself had to deal with one very unhappy author once. This is part of the game and in the academic world, these things happen as well. But be that as it may, Editors usually stand behind those writing the reviews, because different reviewers have different fields of expertise and thus approach a book through different lenses. This translates into focusing on elements of the book which the author may not have considered or deems unimportant. We as Editors are then required to deal with this issue and, if need be in case of gross misrepresentation or other ethically and academically dubious circumstances, publish a rejoinder. Vanity, however, is not reason enough. And a retraction of a book review is not an issue. !105 Chapter 9 A Few Final Words We have now reached the end of the basics on academic publishing. I hope I was able to provide you with some insight into that world and was able to answer some of the questions that you might have had. Of course, the words that I uttered here are from my very own perspective but I have tried to make more general statements as regards ethical issues and other important things that are part and parcel of the academic publishing process. Let me conclude by saying that although you might find the world of academia and specifically academic publishing somewhat mysterious, do not be afraid of it. Yes, you may be in your early stages of becoming an academic, but you are already part of the academic machinery, have acquired skills and expertise and have done your own research that goes beyond the mere reproduction of articles and the information that your professors provide you with. In other words, just go for it! If you are not confident enough, ask someone to write a joint paper together with you and submit it to a journal. Even if you are not the only author and your name might appear as the third or fourth, you still have a publication you can be proud !106 of. And yes, you can be proud of it! Because once you have a publication, you have actively contributed to the scientific discourse. And who knows? Some might consider your theories and claims as completely bogus or outlandish, but maybe you are after all a new Albert Einstein. !107 Literature Cited & Additional Reading Alexander, D. (2014). Thesis by publications: You’re joking, right? Retrieved from https://thesiswhisperer.com/2014/02/12/thesis-by-publications-youre-joking-right/ Birukou, A., J. Rushton Wakeling, C. Bartolini, F. Casati, M. Marchese, K. Mirylenka, N. Osman, A. Ragone, C. Sierra, & A. Wassef. (2011). Alternatives to Peer Review: Novel Approaches for Research Evaluation. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 5(56). Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3237011/ Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Website. Retrieved from https://publicationethics.org Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Website. Retrieved from https://doaj.org Kitchin, R. & D. Fuller. (2005). The Academic’s Guide to Publishing. London: Sage Publications. Omobowale, A. O., O. Akanle, A.I. Adeniran, K. Adegboyega. (2014). Peripheral scholarship and the context of foreign paid publishing in Nigeria. Current Sociology, 62(5). Retrieved from http:// !108 journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/ 10.1177/0011392113508127 ORCID. Website. Retrieved from https://orcid.org Stromberg, J. (2014). "Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List" is an actual science paper accepted by a journal. Vox News, 21 November 2014. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/ 2014/11/21/7259207/scientific-paper-scam. Tomar, D. A. (Undated). Detecting and Deterring Ghostwritten Papers: A Guide to Best Practices. Retrieved from http://www.thebestschools.org/ resources/detecting-deterring-ghostwritten-papers-best-practices/ Walden University. (Undated). How to Cite Yourself. Retrieved from http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/apa/citations/citingyourself Wager, E. (2010). Why You Should not Submit Your Work to More than One Journal at a Time. African Journal of Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicines, 7(2). Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/ PMC3021155/ !109 Appendix !110 !111