How to Publish an Article in an Academic Journal: Avoid Rookie Mistakes

If you are reading this, I likely don’t need to tell you about the importance of publishing scholarly articles to get an academic position or, if you have one, to secure tenure or promotion. Instead, I’d like to offer you some tips that might help you get your research published.



I am writing this post because I have reviewed an insane amount of articles over the past few months, and have noticed that many of these articles should never have been sent out for review, because they were missing key components.

The authors of these articles thus waited three months for someone to tell them that they do not have a clear argument, that there is no literature review, or that they need to describe their ethnographic methods. Sometimes they waited this long or longer only to hear other fairly generic advice.

I am in the process of submitting an article to a journal. I am thus writing this post both to make sure that I practice what I preach, and to offer some examples from my own writing that might be useful as you prepare your own article.

Some questions to ask yourself

First of all, before you send an empirical social science article out for review, ask yourself these questions:

1. What is your research question?
2. How is your research question related to the current literature?
3. How will you use your data to answer your research question?

Before you send a piece off, make sure that a) you can answer these questions; and b) that anyone that reads your paper also can answer these questions.

I have reviewed twenty papers and books in the first half of this year. Many of the articles received rejections because the articles did not have all the necessary pieces or because the pieces did not have the necessary elements. Thus, make sure that your paper has all of the following elements.

(This post is primarily directed at authors of empirical social science articles, but let me know in the comments how this might be adjusted for other fields.)

Introduction

The introduction should contain a brief summary of the literature with which you will engage, a research question that derives from that literature, and a brief explanation of how you will answer that question.

For example, I am writing an article that engages with two distinct bodies of literature: scholarship on race and incarceration and scholarship on immigrant incorporation. My introduction has one paragraph on each of those bodies of literature, followed by a statement of the research questions and the methods.

“This paper brings the literature on immigrant incorporation into conversation with the literature on mass incarceration through a consideration of these two research questions: 

1. How has mass deportation affected the incorporation trajectories of black male immigrants?
2. What role does gendered structural racism play in blocking the mobility of black male immigrants? 

I draw from interviews with 83 Jamaican and Dominican immigrants to answer these questions.”

I then use two more paragraphs to define the conceptual terms I am using – particularly “gendered structural racism.”

Literature Review

Some of the papers I reviewed simply did not have literature reviews. Others made the rookie mistake of a serial literature review – where the author discusses one piece of scholarship per paragraph yet does not put the works into conversation with each other. The literature review must synthesize the literature and point directly to your research questions.

You can tell you are doing this if you have sentences that look like this:

“Immigration scholars argue that there are distinct paths to becoming part of society and refer to this process as segmented assimilation. These sociologists argue that immigrants who arrive in the country as youth experience either 1) assimilation into mainstream society; 2) selective acculturation; or 3) downward assimilation (Portes and Zhou 1993; Zhou 1997; Portes and Rumbaut 2001).”

You are not doing this if you have several paragraphs that each begin with: “Portes and Rumbaut (2001) argue…. Zhou (1997) argues…..” Synthesis is key here.

My literature review begins with a section on the collateral consequences of mass incarceration, which ends with the statement:

“As scholars get a handle on the collateral consequences of mass incarceration, it is crucial to also pay attention to the collateral consequences of mass deportation.”

The next section is on crimmigration, where I explain how immigration and criminal law enforcement have merged. This section is more background than literature review, and I have gone back and forth about where to put it. For now, it is between the first main section of the literature review and the last, which is on deportation and immigrant incorporation.

The subsection on immigration incorporation begins with:

“Whereas scholars who write about the urban African American experience often highlight the impact of mass incarceration, those who focus on black immigrants rarely mention heavy policing or mass incarceration. Whereas immigration scholars often focus on attitudes and identities, scholars of mass incarceration argue that, regardless of your attitude, U.S. drug laws are so draconian that it becomes difficult for any black or Latino male youth to avoid the criminal justice system, particularly if he lives in a primarily non-white neighborhood (Alexander 2011; Western 2006). This raises the question of how gendered structural racism affects the incorporation trajectories of black male immigrant youth.”

This is followed by a discussion of the prevailing literature on immigrant incorporation - the segmented assimilation discussion mentioned above.

Make sure that your literature review points directly at your research questions.

Argument

Every article needs an argument. You can state your argument in the introduction, in the abstract, and/or in the literature review. You need an argument, however, in order to get published. Here’s mine:

“I argue that a primary factor contributing to their arrest and incarceration was gendered structural racism – not oppositional attitudes. Neither ethnic cohesion nor Anglo-conformity protected these black male immigrants from being funneled into the criminal justice system.”

Note: If your paper is quantitative, you will need hypotheses. In my view, you don’t need these for qualitative papers.

Methods

My article is based on ethnography and interviews, so the methods section is pretty straightforward. I discuss how long the ethnographic research lasted (9 months); how many interviews (83); and the case selection – why I interviewed deportees in Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, and why most of my interviewees are men.

Data and Analysis

This is the meat of your paper – where your original contribution lies. The main trick here is to make sure that you deploy your data to answer your research questions.

In my paper, I am trying to show that black male immigrants who were on a path to mainstream assimilation, who engaged in selective acculturation, and who experienced downward assimilation all met a similar fate – they ended up arrested, incarcerated, and deported. My objective is to show that their attitudes about school and their future goals were not the reason they were deported. Instead, they were deported because they live in heavily policed neighborhoods, were racially profiled, and faced a punitive legal and immigration system. Thus, I divide my discussion of data and methods into those three sections.

Many qualitative papers fail to analyze their data. You not only need to tell us what you learned from your interviews and ethnography; you also need to analyze each piece of data you provide. Tell the reader what it means and why it’s important.

Conclusion

I have not thus far rejected an article for not having a good conclusion – although I did receive one that completely lacked a conclusion. And, that did not look good.

In any event, a good conclusion can only strengthen your article and make it more likely that your findings will be understood and disseminated.

In my conclusion, I reiterate my findings, mention any possible limitations, and explore directions for future research.

Here is my restatement of my main argument:

“Some of these youth assimilated to the local subcultures in their neighborhoods. Others maintained strong ethnic ties. Still others had high aspirations about becoming part of mainstream society. None of these paths, however, could protect them from the consequences of heavy policing in their neighborhoods.”

I think I am nearly ready to submit. How about you?

How to write a book proposal for an academic press

So, you want to turn your dissertation into a book? Or, perhaps you want to write your first academic book on an entirely different subject. Unless you are famous and have publishers soliciting manuscripts from you, you likely will have to submit a formal academic book proposal to an academic press to have a hope of publishing a book with such a press.

Many university press websites have guidelines that can help you through this process. UC Press has a good set of guidelines as does Harvard. Be sure to check the websites of the press where you plan to submit to find out if they have specific guidelines.

In this blog post, I provide generic suggestions for what should go in an academic book proposal, and then suggest a method for writing such a proposal.

A book proposal for an academic press has seven basic components:

1. A one-page description of the book. The most important aspect of this one-page description is the argument you will set forth. Here is one example of how to do this:
1. Paragraph 1: Hook – Invite the reader into your proposal with an interesting anecdote or some surprising data,
2. Paragraph 2: State your central argument. Back it up with a few sentences.
3. Paragraph 3: State the contribution to scholarship and place your work in the literature.
4. Paragraph 4: Provide a brief roadmap to the book. Guide the reader through the book.
2. A descriptive table of contents. Dedicate one paragraph to each chapter. Give the title of the chapter and provide a three to four sentence summary of the chapter.
3. A mechanical description of the final manuscript. Here you say that the estimated length of the final manuscript will be anywhere from 70,000 to 150,000 words. More or fewer words may raise eyebrows. You also should specify how many illustrations and/or tables you anticipate.
4. A description of the audience for your book. Tell the editor who you expect to purchase your book. Will it be read only in your field, or also in other disciplines? Will undergraduates be able to understand your book? Or, is it solely directed at faculty and graduate students? Could it be used in undergraduate or graduate courses? If so, explain which ones.
5. Describe the competition. What are the existing books in your field? Name those books. How will your book stand out from these? Do you use a different methodology or approach? Is yours designed for a different audience? If any of the competing books you mention are quite similar to your own, spend a few sentences explaining how yours is distinct.
6. How far along are you? Do you have a complete manuscript? If you do, say so. If not, say how many chapters you have completed, and provide an expected date of completion. If this is your first academic book, I discourage you from sending a proposal before you are certain you will finish the book within a year. If the publisher requires a complete manuscript, you likely want to be less than six months away from completion before sending the proposal.
7. Who might review your book? You can provide the names and contact information of people who you think might be appropriate readers for your book.

Now that you know what the components are, it should be easier to imagine how you will write such a proposal. I suggest you start with the chapter descriptions, as those should not be terribly difficult to write. Once you have those done, you can begin to work on the introductory first page. When you get stuck, turn to the other, easier parts of the proposal. Describe the audience; list the reviewers; say how far along you are.

Once you get a full draft of your book proposal, set it aside for a week and work on the book, preferably on the Introduction. Pick the proposal back up after a week and see how it reads. Edit it and give it to a friend to read. Once you are comfortable with it, send it out to presses.

You can send your proposal to as many presses as you like. Some presses even allow for multiple submission of the entire manuscript.

Good luck!

How I Published Three Books in One Year

Have you ever looked at someone’s CV and asked yourself how in the world they were able to publish more than one book in a year or several articles in one year? I have. I often have asked myself “How did they do it?” or “What’s their secret?” when looking at someone’s impressive CV.

I never thought that I would actually publish three books in one year, but I did. And, in this post, I will tell you how I did it. The truth is: there is no secret. Publishing often takes a long time, yet sometimes happens quickly. This, in turn, means that, sometimes, you will see a cluster of publications on a person’s CV.

First, let me clarify what I mean by the statement that I published three books in one year. I don’t mean that I wrote three books in one year. I just mean that I had three books released in the space of twelve months. In March 2011, the University Press of Florida released Yo Soy Negro: Blackness in Peru. In September 2011, Paradigm Publishers released Immigration Nation: Raids, Detentions, and Deportations in Post-9/11 America. In February 2012, Routledge published Due Process Denied: Detentions and Deportations in the United States.

Here’s how it happened: Book #1: Yo Soy Negro: Blackness in Peru.

I defended my dissertation in May of 2005, and immediately began to revise my dissertation with an eye towards turning it into a book. I wrote a new chapter in the Spring of 2006, and another new chapter in the Fall. In January 2007, I submitted a proposal to several presses. To my delight, one editor was interested, and asked for four chapters. I got busy and sent those to her the following month. She was remarkably efficient, and got reviews by the May 2007. One of the reviewers thought the manuscript had promise. The other disagreed. The editor told me that I could submit the complete manuscript after a major revision.

I then spent the summer in Peru collecting more data for the book. I did some more historical work and ethnography and came back from the summer to the University of Illinois at Chicago where I had a post-doctoral fellowship. I dug in and began to revise the manuscript. By February 2008, I had a revised manuscript. I thought it was much better, and decided to submit it to what I considered my dream press. The editor expressed interest and sent the full manuscript out for review. A full year later, in February 2009, she had the reviews in hand. One was positive and hopeful about the book. The other two disagreed. The editor decided, based on the reviews, not to move forward. I was devastated, but determined to publish this book. I revised it yet again, aiming to develop a consistent argument and theoretical line that carried through the text. In May 2009, I sent it to a third press.

This press, the University Press of Florida, was efficient, and had reviews in by November 2009. The two reviews were positive, and the revisions they suggested were minor. Finally! I made those revisions, and submitted the final draft for publication in March 2010. A year later, in March 2011, the book appeared in print.

Now, we get to book #2: Immigration Nation.

You might have noticed in the story above that there were long stretches of time when Book #1 was under review. The first time was in the Spring of 2007. At that time, the book was incomplete, so I continued to work on the chapters. But, I also spent some time on my new project on immigration policy. The second time was between February 2008 and February 2009: a whole year. In addition, I was on fellowship between February and August 2008, and had lots of time to write. It was during this time that I drafted what would become the core of Immigration Nation. In the Fall of 2008, I spoke to a few publishers about Immigration Nation, and wrote a proposal. One of the publishers I talked to expressed interest and I shared a few sample chapters with her. However, the book wasn’t finished, and she was dragging her feet. In the summer of 2009, after submitting Yo Soy Negro to Florida, I resolved to finish Immigration Nation.

In August 2009, I had drafted several chapters of Immigration Nation, and sent those to Paradigm Publishers. They were very interested, and gave me an advance contract. They sent the chapters out for review, and I worked on finishing the remainder of the book. Paradigm sent the reviews back to me in February 2010, and I was able to work on the revisions, as I had just sent Yo Soy Negro back to Florida for copyediting. I sent the revised manuscript to Paradigm in April 2010. The editor got back to me with further suggestions for revision, and I worked on those until November 2010, when Immigration Nation finally was ready to move into production. Getting it into production in November 2010 enabled Immigration Nation to appear in print in September 2011.

And, then there was book #3: Due Process Denied.

Once Yo Soy Negro and Immigration Nation were in production, they weren’t completely out of my hands, as I had to complete the copy edits and page proofs. However, those tasks were fairly minor compared to actually writing the books. In the Fall of 2010, a series editor at Routledge approached me and asked if I would like to write a short book on deportations. I said that I would, and agreed to a May 2011 deadline. In February 2011, I decided that I would focus the short book (25,000 words) on the lack of due process in detention and deportation proceedings, a theme I mention in Immigration Nation, but do not develop fully. I worked furiously on the draft, and was able to meet the May 2011 deadline, more or less. The book went out for review. The reviewer was positive, and only suggested minor changes. I revised the book and sent it back to the publisher in the Fall of 2011. The production process was super-quick, and the book appeared in print in February 2012.

So, that’s the story. It took years for me to publish my first book, a fairly normal time for the second, and an abnormally short time for the third, in large part because it is a very short book. I was able to publish the first two in fairly close succession because of the long review process for the first.

Perhaps I do have two secrets to publishing three books in one year: 1) write every day so that you have lots of material to work with and 2) keep submitting your work until it gets published.

Secret to Successful Academic Publishing: Finding and Using a Model Article

As I was endeavoring to publish my first academic article, one of my advisers in graduate school, Ted Mouw, suggested I select a model article and use that to structure my article. I have since used this technique repeatedly and my experience leads me to believe that this is one of the secrets to successful academic publishing. My belief was confirmed when I read that Wendy Belcher also suggests a similar strategy in her book, Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success.

In this week's post I will explain how to find and use a model article. A model article can serve as a guide for how long each section of your article should be, how many tables or interview quotes you should include, and how many citations are necessary in your field.

Where to find a model article

Your model article should come from the journal where you will submit your article. It does not have to have the same topical focus as your article, but should use similar data. If your article is based on interviews, your model article should also have interviews as the primary source of data. If your article has a complex conceptual framework, you should search for a model article that also uses a complex conceptual framework. If your article uses archival data, so should your model article.

What to do with a model article

Your model article will help you figure out both the structure and the approximate lengths of each component of your article. Once you have chosen a model article, the next step is to make an outline of the article, taking note of the length of each section of the article.

Here is an example of how to create an outline, based on an article I published in 2010:

Golash-Boza, Tanya. 2010. “Does Whitening Happen? Distinguishing between Race and Color Labels in an African-Descended Community in Peru” Social Problems.

Abstract:
This article explores how race and color labels are used to describe people in an Afro-Peruvian community. This article is based on analyses of 88 interviews and eighteen months of fieldwork in an African-descended community in Peru. The analyses of these data reveal that, if we consider race and color to be conceptually distinct, there is no “mulatto escape hatch,” no social or cultural whitening, and no continuum of racial categories in the black Peruvian community under study. This article considers the implications of drawing a conceptual distinction between race and color for research on racial classifications in Latin America.

Introduction
496 words

Conceptual Framework
437 words

Literature Review
(three sections)
1356 words

BACKGROUND AND METHODOLOGY
Background
593 words

Site Description
408 words

Methodology
396 words

RESULTS
- Eight Interview quotes
- Three thematic sections (corresponding to lit review)
6207 words

Conclusion
292 words

Implications for Future Research
391 words

As you can see, a model article can provide guidelines for common and not-so-common situations. It is a common issue for sociologists working with interview data to have to be selective about how many interview quotes to include in an article. In this article, I included eight interview quotes, which gives you a rough idea as to how many might be acceptable. A less-common situation is that you need to provide background information because of the relative unfamiliarity of the topic. As this article was based on research conducted in Peru, yet published in the United States, I included a background section on people of African descent in Peru. When searching for a model article, it is important to think about the particularities of your article and to try to find parallels in published articles.

Once you have created an outline, the next step is to match up the length of each section of your article with the sections of your model article. They don’t have to be exact, but if your model article has 1500 words in the lit review and 5000 in the results section, and your article has 3000 in the literature review and 3000 in the results section, that is an indication that you probably should present more data and condense your literature review.

You can create and use an outline based on a model article before you complete your article. In fact, having guidelines for the length of each section before you even begin can help you avoid the very common problem of writing an article that is far too long to be published.

I imagine some readers may feel as if their work is unconventional and does not fit into any mold. I understand and respect that position, but would like to gently remind readers that it is often best to learn the rules before one breaks them. Using a model article to imitate the structure (but not the content) of an article is one way to learn the unwritten rules of academic publishing.

How to Choose an Academic Journal for your Article ... and why you should choose one now!

Most academics are aware of the need to "publish or perish," and the current state of the job market makes the imperative to publish even more pressing. In this post, I discuss the first step to publishing a journal article: choosing an academic journal for your article.

The past few posts this semester have dealt with learning skills that enhance your scholarly productivity, including: planning your Fall semester, making time for writing, planning your week, and writing every day.

Time management and daily writing are skills and habits you can learn by practice. For example, I learned about the skill of daily writing in a class on writing with Sherryl Kleinman in 2004. However, I did not form the habit of daily writing until I joined an online discussion forum organized by Kerry Ann Rockquemore in 2007. That discussion forum encouraged participants to develop the habit of daily writing, and it worked wonders for my productivity. If daily writing has not yet become a habit for you, check out this post for more strategies on how to make writing part of your life.

Similar to time management and daily writing, publishing is also a skill you can learn. No academic was born knowing how to publish. We all learn by doing. The more you write and submit articles, the easier it gets. For the remainder of the semester, we will focus on the nuts and bolts of writing and publishing, drawing from my own experience publishing ten journal articles and two books and reading about academic publishing in venues such as Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success, by Wendy Belcher. This post is dedicated to explaining how to find a home for your academic article. However, if you do not already have Wendy Belcher's book, I suggest you order it now!

How to Choose an Academic Journal

If you do not yet have an article ready for submission, there is no need to worry. You can decide where you will submit your article before you begin to write it. However, if you are reading this blog, it is likely that you have at least one seminar paper, thesis draft, or dissertation chapter that you could transform into a publishable article. If not, with daily writing, you will have a draft in no time.

Look in your bibliography
The first place to look for an appropriate journal to publish your article is in your own bibliography. The works you have cited are the works with which you are engaging in conversation. If you are citing several articles from a particular journal, that is a good sign that journal may be an appropriate place to submit your article.

Find other journals in your area
After looking through your own citations, have a look at other journals in your field. You can do this online. However, it can also be a great experience to actually go into the library and have a look at the journals in person. You also can ask your librarian area specialist. Many colleges and universities have librarians whose job requires expertise in academic publications. They can be a great resource when considering where to submit your article.

Figure out the impact factor and journal rankings
Journal ratings are important. A journal's rating is based on a variety of metrics, which are different ways of counting how many times the articles in the journal have been cited. Articles that have been cited more often are thought to have a greater impact in the field, and thereby bring prestige to the journal in which they were published.

Because journal ratings are important, you should take them into account before making a final decision about where to submit your article. Here are three ways to find out information on the relative quality of a journal.

1. You can use the software, Publish or Perish, to get data on the impact factor and citation rate of journals in your field.
2. You can access Web of Knowledge through your university's library to get rankings of the journals in a particular area or discipline. For example, Web of Knowledge lists rankings within the discipline of Sociology, but also within the sub-field of Race and Ethnic Relations.
3. You can visit the journal's website to find out information about the journal in question. When investigating a particular journal, you should try to figure out whether or not the articles in the journal are peer-reviewed, what percentage of submitted articles they accept, and whether or not the journal is accessible through major scholarly databases such as JSTOR, Elsevier, or Sage.

Once you have chosen a journal, you can begin to write or revise your article with an eye towards publication in that journal.

The Key to Publishing Journal Articles – Submit, submit, submit

One of my wise mentors once told me that one of the best attributes a new academic can have is a thick skin. The reason is that rejection is a major part of the academic experience and if you let rejections get under your skin, you will have trouble moving forward. When you get a rejection from a journal, the best thing to do is to accept that rejections are normal, use the comments to revise the article, and send it out again.

Rejections are Part of Life as an Academic

I have received at least a dozen rejection letters from academic journals, and even more from fellowship opportunities. Rejection letters are unpleasant to receive. Who likes getting told their work is not up to par. However, they are part of life, and the best attitude is to think of rejections as just another step on the way to getting published.

How to Deal with Rejection: Send out as many articles as possible

One way I have found to deal with rejection is always to have a manuscript under review. That way, when I receive a rejection, at least I know that I have another chance for success out there. Of course, the more manuscripts you send out, the more rejections you will get. However, it is also true that if you don’t send anything out, you will never get anything accepted. My strategy has been to submit, submit, and submit.

Submit, submit, and submit some more

I began my position as an Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas in 2005. Just before starting at Kansas, I sent a paper out for review. For the next five years, I always had at least one paper under review. This means that I have never received a rejection letter without another possibility for acceptance out there.

I began my tenure-track position with an article from my dissertation under review by spending the summer before I started my position preparing an article for submission. At the time, I didn’t have the benefit of Wendy Belcher’s book – How To Write a Journal Article in Twelve Weeks – but, that would have been the perfect time to use it. I worked over the summer revising my dissertation, and, just before moving to Kansas, I submitted an article based on my dissertation.

Once I arrived in Kansas, I found a whole new world of responsibilities I had not had before – faculty meetings, committee meetings, students, and formal and informal gatherings with colleagues.

I knew that, to achieve tenure I would not only have to meet my daily responsibilities – attend meetings and teach my classes – but I also would need to publish articles. I also expected my article that was under review to be rejected. To prepare for that inevitable rejection letter, I began to work on another article to submit. I also had articles circulating from my time in graduate school, and got to work on those.

Always have at least one article under review

By the time the rejection letter came in December, I had a different article accepted, and another chapter of the dissertation under review. And, so I continued, always making sure to have at least one article under review.

You might wonder what happened to that article I sent off in August 2005. Well, it was just recently published – in February 2010. Yes, it took nearly five years. In fact, it took the longest, as all of the other papers I have submitted over the years have been accepted, usually after two or three rejections.

As I write this, at the end of my sixth year on the tenure track, every single paper that I have sent out is either in print, in press, or still under review. Had I given up at the first rejection, sure, I would have fewer rejections. But, more importantly, I would have fewer acceptances.

Want to get published? Then, you have to submit, submit, and submit again.

Why “Focus on the Book” Is Bad Advice

To achieve tenure at most research-oriented institutions, you either need to publish a series of articles or a book in addition to some articles. The exact number of articles you should publish will vary from one institution to the next. What does not vary much is the fact that “only” writing a book is often not a good strategy for achieving tenure.

There certainly are many fine institutions that have granted faculty tenure on the basis of their having published a single book. Many bright junior faculty are successful at achieving tenure with the only line on their CV under “Publications” being a scholarly book. Nevertheless, I assure you, you do not want to be that person. First, I will explain why. Secondly, I will describe how to publish articles in addition to a book.

I have spoken to many junior colleagues whose mentors and advisors have told them: “Focus on the book.” They encourage them to transform their dissertations into a book that will be published by a major university press. They tell them not to worry about publishing articles or even attending conferences, because their main focus should be on publishing the book. Every time I hear someone tell me they were given this advice, my heart sinks. “Focus on the book” is bad advice for several reasons:

• 1) Having your entire tenure case rest on one piece of work puts an enormous amount of pressure on you to craft a grand piece of scholarship. For many academics, this stress is ultimately counter-productive, as the pressure to write an opus magnum makes the project seem too overwhelming.

• 2) If you do not publish articles or attend conferences, how will people know who you are? When you submit your tenure packet, you have to list the names of six to ten people in your field who can vouch for your contribution. If your only contribution is a not-yet-published book, it will be hard to find people who are familiar with your scholarship.

• 3) Publishing articles in your field can help you get a book contract. The editor of a very well-known university press once assured me that having a high-profile publication on your CV is indeed impressive to acquisitions editors.

• 4) It takes a long time to write a book. Spending years and years on one project with no tangible results can be depressing. If you send articles out, you can feel a sense of accomplishment with each stage of the article submission and publication process.

If you are still with me, perhaps you now believe that new faculty should not pour all of their energies into writing their book. How, then, do you balance multiple projects? I have three suggestions for successfully balancing more than one project at a time.

• 1) Different stages: It generally works best when you are working on two projects at different stages. For example, you might be revising a chapter of your book while you are conceptualizing an article draft. Having projects at different stages allows you to capitalize on the writing energies you have and to work on projects in the order that feels best.

• 2) Different times: I prefer to have one project as my priority for no more than two weeks at a time. For example, the last two weeks my priority was a substantive chapter of my forthcoming book. This week, my priority is revising the first chapter of another book. These are two different projects that I can turn back and forth to and from. The down time also allows me to request feedback on one project and work on the other while I am waiting.

• 3) Different sizes: If you have a big project (like a book), it can be helpful to have smaller projects that can be finished to keep you going. Working only on a book manuscript for two years without seeing any results can be a long time. In contrast, an article can be published relatively quickly (or at least more quickly than a book)!

Having more than one project going on at the same time (such as a book manuscript and a journal article) permits you to focus your energies where you will be most productive. If you get stuck while writing your book manuscript, you can turn your attention to the article you are working on. If you finish an article draft and ask a colleague to read it, you can return to the book manuscript while you are waiting for feedback.

Rather than focusing all of your writing energy on one book manuscript for six years, it works better to switch back and forth between articles and the book manuscript. The first thing you publish from your dissertation should be an article in a highly visible journal. The steps it takes to publish the article – writing it, revising it, getting feedback, and finding a home for it – will give you a better idea of how your scholarship will be received by scholars other than the members of your dissertation committee. Finally, success at publishing an article can be a great motivator to finish and publish the book.

The Twelve Steps from Dissertation to Book

When I finished my dissertation, I knew I wanted to publish it as a book. I did not, however, have any idea how to publish a book. As I am now at the very end of this long process, I think it is important to outline the steps so that others can know how it works.

I will explain how this generally works. However, keep two things in mind: 1) there is a lot of variation beyond what I describe here and 2) this is generally the process for the first book, not necessarily for the second or third.

Step One: Write the Prospectus. Although it seems daunting, a book prospectus is not a complex document. It contains: 1) a summary of your book that outlines the main argument; 2) a one-paragraph summary of each chapter; 3) a timeline for completion of the book manuscript; 4) a brief description of the target audience and potential classes for course adoption; and 5) the competing literature. Usually these are short documents. Mine have ranged from four to seven single-spaced pages.

Step Two: Submit the Prospectus. Find publishers who might be interested in your book manuscript, and send them the prospectus. Often, they also will want one or two sample chapters. You can send your prospectus to as many publishers as you like. Most publishers list submission guidelines on their websites. These guidelines often indicate exactly what materials they would like to see: usually a prospectus, one or two sample chapters, and a two page CV.

Step Three: Submit the Manuscript. When acquisitions editors receive your prospectus, they make a decision as to whether or not they would like to send your book manuscript out for review. If they do not, they will send you a letter with their regrets. However, if they are interested, they often will call or email you with a request to see more materials. Some presses want to wait for the whole book manuscript to be completed. Others will send out just the prospectus for review. Others will send out 1-4 finished chapters. That depends on the book and the press. They will let you know.

Step Four: The Press Sends Your Manuscript out for Review. You wait between one and twelve months for the reviews to come back. If just the prospectus is under review, this will not take very long. If it is the whole manuscript, usually you will wait several months.

Step Five: You Get a Contract. The press makes a decision based on the reviews. They can decide to a) offer a contract based on the reviews; b) ask you to do more revisions and send it out for review again or c) decline to offer a contract based on the reviews. If it is c), you go back to Step Two.

Step Six: You Sign a Contract. If the reviews are favorable, the press will offer you a contract, which you first negotiate and then sign. Here are some items often up for negotiation: 1) who will pay for the index; 2) who pays for the cover and inside pictures; 3) who pays for the copy-editing; 4) the royalties rate; and 5) when and whether the book will be released in paperback.

Step Seven: You Revise the Manuscript. You revise the manuscript based on the reviews. Some presses will send it out for review again once you revise it. Others will review it internally and ask you to make further revisions. Still others will send it as is to the copy-editor after you make your revisions.

Step Eight: Copy-Editing. Once the book manuscript is revised, it goes to the copy-editor and they proofread the text. This usually takes 1 to 3 months.

Step Nine: Revision. You revise it again, based on the suggestions made by the copy-editor. You then send it back to the copy-editor who sends it to the press after your final approval. You usually have one month to respond to the copy edits.

Step Ten: Page Proofs. Your book is put into page proofs that you get to read and revise again. At this stage, however, you can only make very minor changes. You correct any mistakes and then it goes to the printer.

Step Eleven: In Press. Your book gets printed. This usually takes a couple of months.

Step Twelve: On the Shelf. Your book is available for sale!

As made clear in these twelve steps, publishing an academic book is often a very long process. It is important to keep in mind that it can take years to publish a book, even after you have completed the manuscript. For example, I completed the manuscript for my first book in May 2009 and sent it to a publisher who had agreed to review it. I received the reviews in November 2009, and the publisher offered me a contract on the basis of the reviewers’ evaluations. I signed the contract and then revised the book according to the suggested revisions and returned it to the publisher in March 2010. In June 2010, I received and reviewed the copy-edits. In October 2010, I received and reviewed the page proofs. The book will be out in February 2011 – nearly two years after I had originally “finished” the book manuscript! Keeping this timetable in mind is particularly important if your university prefers you to have a bound book when you go up for tenure.

The Five-Year Plan for Tenure-Track Professors

As anyone up for tenure can attest, the time between your first day as an Assistant Professor and the day you have to submit your tenure file flies by. Colleges and universities vary on the procedures and dates, but in general, you have five years to put your tenure file together.

I know you are supposed to have six years, but it is actually only five. Let me explain. Suppose you begin a tenure track position in August 2010. By August 2011, you will have completed your first academic year, and by August 2015, you likely will have to submit some parts of your tenure file – such as the names of external reviewers. The review of your tenure case will be complete at the end of your sixth year. This usually means you have to start the review process about a year beforehand.

As you have five years to prepare, you need a five year plan. In this post, I will focus on the research side of the equation, as this is most often the most important part. However, this will vary by institution, and you need to figure out what is most important where you work.

Step One: Set your goals. The first step to creating a five year publication plan is to figure out what you need to accomplish to have a successful tenure review. How would you like for your CV to look in five years?

You can find out about departmental expectations by asking your mentors and colleagues. You also should look at the CVs of people who recently have been awarded tenure both in your department and at other institutions. If you think that it is possible that you might leave your current place of employment before going up for tenure, you need to be aware of standards at other institutions. And, even if you don’t plan to leave, you still need to be aware, as things might not work out for you at your current institution, and it is important to be marketable. Once you figure out the departmental and disciplinary expectations, you can set your own publication goals.

Step Two: Make a plan for achieving your goals. Let’s say, for the sake of this blog post, that your goal is to have one book and three articles in print by the time your tenure file is reviewed. You must now figure out how long that will take to accomplish, starting from the ideal publication date. You need to plan.

For example, if you would like for your book to be in print by August 2015, when you submit the names of external reviewers for your tenure review, you need to work backwards from that date. For your book to be published in August 2015, you need to submit the final version to the publisher by August 2014. For that to happen, you likely need to submit the original version by August 2013, which means you should submit the book proposal no later than February 2013. There you have your first concrete goal: Submit your book proposal to potential publishers no later than February 1, 2013.

You can then do the same thing with the articles, based on the time it takes for articles in your field to be accepted and published, and the number of articles you reasonably can submit in a year or a semester. Keep in mind that articles are almost never accepted upon first submission, so allow time for revision and re-submission.

Step Three: Map your plan out onto a calendar. Once you have decided, for example, that you will submit your book proposal by February 2013, your first article by February 2011, your second article in August 2011, and your third article by February 2012, then you can begin to map out the steps required onto a calendar.

For example, if your first goal is to submit an article by February 2011, then you can use the time between now and February 2011 to ensure that your article is ready for submission. You might use August 2010 to make a plan for the revision of one of your dissertation chapters, September 2010 to do the literature review, October 2010 to re-analyze the data, November 2010 to write the first draft, and December and January to finish the revisions and get peer feedback.

You will need to do this for each of the goals you have set. However, if you have never mapped your goals onto a calendar before, it might work best for you to focus on one goal at a time. For example, once you have revised one chapter of your dissertation into an article, you will have a better idea as to how long it will take to do the others. Then, you can develop a feasible plan for the remaining articles.

Step Four: Execute the plan. The best way to meet your publication goals is to work on them consistently. If you spend at least one hour every day from Monday to Friday working on one of your publication goals, you are much more likely to meet them than if you only work on them on the weekends or only work on them over break. If getting tenure is important to you, and getting tenure requires publishing, it behooves you to do something that gets you towards publishing each and every day. Usually that “something” is writing. It also includes data analysis, reading background literature, and letting ideas percolate. However, most academics find it fairly easy to spend hours and hours reading and running data, yet find it harder to spend time actually writing. For this reason, it is important to write every day to ensure you achieve your goals.

If you have already started your faculty position and did not make a five year plan, it is not too late. You can make a plan based on what you would like to have accomplished by the time you go up for tenure or promotion, no matter how much time you have left.

The planning process can be stressful as you think of all you have to do. At the same time, it can be calming, as you come to terms with what you will and will not be able to accomplish over the next five years.

The Benefits of Hiring a Professional Editor

When I was in graduate school, I met with one of my mentors – a new Assistant Professor – and asked her if she planned to submit an article based on a recent talk she had given. She told me that the paper was too long and she was considering hiring a professional editor to get it from 10,000 to 8,000 words. I was astonished.

I had no idea that academics used professional editors, and something about it did not seem right. The idea that an intellectual would pay someone to do their intellectual labor did not sit well with me.

It was not until many years later, after I finished graduate school and had a job of my own, that I came to see the benefits of using a professional editor. Moreover, I began to use one myself. In this column, I will discuss three of the benefits to using a professional editor. 1) Many academics do not have the skills to edit their own work. Using a professional editor is one way to teach you those skills. 2) Professional editors are just that, professionals. This means that they can edit your work quickly and professionally and save you time. 3) Using a professional editor can help you get more work under review.

Using a professional editor will improve your writing.
Most graduate programs do not include any writing training. As a consequence, many academics are not very good writers. We split verbs, dangle modifiers, use too many adjectives, use long and convoluted sentences, mis-use words, and misplace punctuation marks. Using a professional editor will help you to see which errors you most frequently commit, and to correct them. The first time I used an editor, I learned grammar and style rules I never had known before and realized that I repeated the same errors over and over again. The best way to find out which errors you commit most frequently is to have a professional edit your text and tell you.

Using a professional editor will save you time
For those of us on the tenure clock, time is of the essence. The less time you spend poring over every detail of your article, the quicker you can get it under review and accepted. Paying a professional editor a couple of hundred dollars to turn your almost-finished article into a well-polished piece of work can be a fantastic investment. It is no secret that many academics are perfectionists. Paying someone to do the final editing can take off some of that pressure to be perfect and save you a lot of time.

Using a professional editor will help you get more articles accepted
A well-written paper gives you an edge in the peer review process. When reviewers receive papers that have grammatical errors, it turns them off. Many think that your grammatical carelessness could be indicative of carelessness in other areas. If you write “loose” instead of “lose,” perhaps you coded a variable incorrectly or did not transcribe your interview quotes or archival documents with precision. On the other hand, having an article free of grammatical and stylistic errors allows reviewers to focus exclusively on the quality of your work, and not on your minor errors. Even if your article is not accepted, the feedback you receive will be more useful as the reviewers’ critiques will not be influenced by their negative opinions of your writing.

Have a nearly finished article on your desk that you are nervous about sending out? Consider sending it to a professional editor to help you get to that last hurdle of finishing and submitting it.