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Liz McCarthy: Publication Without Tears: Tips for Aspiring Authors
- 1. Publication without tears: tips for aspiring authors Liz McCarthy Web & Digital Media Manager, Bodleian Libraries Digital Communications, Journal of Information Literacy
- 2. ⢠Inside the âblack boxâ ⢠Framing your article ⢠On writing
- 3. Have you submitted an article for publication? Do you edit or peer review already? You might enjoy this Scholarly Kitchen article if so.
- 4. Inside the âblack boxâ Managing editor: Cathie Jackson Book review editor: Ian Hunter
- 5. ⢠Relevance to the journalâs remit ⢠Originality and interest to our audience ⢠Title and abstract ⢠Methodology ⢠Use of literature and referencing ⢠Clarity of expression and structure Peer review criteria
- 6. ⢠Relevance to the journalâs remit â research- or practice-based investigations into information literacy ⢠Originality and interest to our audience â useful contribution to knowledge or good practice? ⢠Title and abstract â appropriate wording and length and informative? ⢠Methodology â appropriate? rigorous? ⢠Use of literature and referencing â good analysis of literature? Good referencing or signs of plagiarism? ⢠Clarity of expression and structure â clear exposition of argument? Logical structure? Spell out acronyms, avoid jargon! Peer review criteria
- 7. ď Accept for publication without amendment â almost never! ď Revisions required ď Major revisions required followed by peer review ď Resubmit elsewhere ď Decline submission Reviewer recommendations
- 9. ⢠Make a list of all the actions needed of you ⢠If you canât meet them, discuss this with the editor(s) ⢠Revise the paper and resubmit it ⢠If there were comments you didnât address, because you couldnât or because you disagreed with them, say why ⢠Remember that addressing these comments may unearth other suggested changes â several rounds of revisions may be required What to do with reviewer comments
- 10. ⢠Make a list of all the actions needed of you Can you address them? If so, how? ⢠If you canât meet them, discuss this with the editors Tell us why ⢠Revise the paper and resubmit it with a covering letter detailing how you have addressed each comment You might also like this Storify. What to do with reviewer comments
- 11. JIL copyeditors Lizzie Seals Sharon Lawler Helen Bader Lisa Hutchins
- 12. JIL Copyeditorsâ advice ⢠Use the publication template if there is one ⢠Define acronyms and abbreviations on first use ⢠Format your references using the journalâs house style ⢠Ensure all in-text citations are given a full reference at the end, and that all references are cited in the text ⢠Ensure diagrams and images are copyright-cleared and attributed
- 13. Once it is published ⢠Add it to your institutional repository if publisher permits ⢠Tell the world â use the DOI where possible
- 16. What is a journal article?
- 17. LightgreenLegobrickbyStilfehler,CCBY-SA3.0 You might find this blog post useful too.
- 18. ⢠What is your story? Who is your audience? ⢠Current research project? MLIS project? Could you publish something based on your literature review, findings from a pilot project, final project conclusions? ⢠Early idea/exploration? Share reflections/interim findings via conferences or blogs ⢠Writing by yourself or with a co-author? Where and what to publish?
- 19. Where and what to publish? ⢠Read journal author guidelines and previous articles ⢠Consider journal mission and scope E.g. JIL focuses on information literacy â not library skills, libraries or teaching in general ⢠Peer-reviewed article? Shorter project report? ⢠Consider writing conference reports, book reviews ... or becoming a peer reviewer
- 21. On writing
- 22. Tell your reader ⌠⢠Context â youâre contributing to a dialogue ⢠Approach and method that underpin the research ⢠Rigour â the validity of your approach and findings ⢠What/why/how of your research
- 23. What/why/how ⢠What is your research? ⢠Why are you doing it? ⢠How are you doing it?
- 24. What/why/how ⢠What is your research? What questions does it address (or ask)? ⢠Why are you doing it? Why does it matter? What will it change? What interests/frustrates/niggles you about the topic? ⢠How are you doing it? Whatâs your approach or method? How does it frame your findings? How does it help you mitigate bias?
- 25. A bit more on writing
- 26. ⢠Keep focused Pin your hypothesis or question and your what/why/how analysis by your desk. Everything you write is directed towards answering the question. ⢠Flatpack it Dive in wherever you feel you have something to say. Write up the section which comes most naturally and compile the sections later.
- 27. ⢠Itâs iterative Draft, redraft, draft again (and see Lamott on first drafts!) ⢠Find (or bribe) a proofreader This could be a colleague, friend or family member, but always get someone else to read it through! ⢠Read critically to help you write critically Become a reviewer â or âbuddy upâ with another aspiring author and support each other
- 28. ⢠Free-writing Donât wait until you know what you want to say â get ideas out of your head so you can reflect on and develop them ⢠Join (or start) a writersâ group You can read why we love them in this blog post. ⢠Break it down Itâs like eating an elephant!
- 30. Journal of Information Literacy http://jil.lboro.ac.uk/ Twitter: @JInfoLit
Editor's Notes
- How did you find the experience? Most people would say: slow! and rather involved! Stories of epic review times â months, years ⌠It can feel as though you send your piece off and it goes into a black box (or maybe a black hole) and even when it emerges at the other end you still donât really know what has happened inside that box. It can also be functionally â as well as creatively â challenging: âIn order to finalize my submission, I had to negotiate a misleading and counterintuitive third-party platform; read and try to absorb several pages of arcane (and sometimes self- contradictory) format guidelines; categorize my article according to a rubric that did not make sense; follow an uploading process that left me, at several points, unsure of whether I would have the opportunity to include essential figures. âNever has the word âsubmissionâ seemed so bitterly apt as it did during this process.â (http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2015/06/15/the-manuscript-submission-mess-brief-notes-from-a-grumpy-author/)
- At JIL, as with all journals, all articles submitted are scanned by a human : ) A number of articles are declined on the grounds that theyâre out of scope â for JIL this would mean not about information literacy â so one of the most useful things you can do when deciding to submit is check the scope of the journal and what itâs for. This is quite a broad-brush proceeding â weâre not rejecting on quality here but on subject matter. If the paper doesnât fall outside our scope, weâll assign it two peer reviewers.
- This is what we ask our reviewers to look for and weigh up. These criteria will be similar for other journals. Hereâs a bit more about what the JIL peer reviewers look for â how these criteria get used in our context âŚ
- [Out of scope piece] [Methods and rigour in LIS?]
- The reviewers get 4-6 weeks to look at the work â and thatâs assuming that the first two reviewers weâve approached are able to review it! Pressure of work and the fact that all of this happens through goodwill, unpaid, and extra to the day job in our case, is what often leads to delays in getting back to authors.
- At that point, the whole caboodle comes to me : ) I get the original article plus the peer reviewersâ reports and recommendations (plus any future rewrites, which come to me first). Generally reviewers will want some revisions â these are often clarifications, but can sometimes be larger, conceptual-level changes. But I pick out and balance the most salient points from both (or all) the reviews so that the author gets a clearly structured message about what needs doing. I also review the reviews ⌠and the reviewers! OJS allows me to rate them. Again, I try to do what it takes to keep papers in â to bring them up to publication standard â rather than to put them out. This can feel like being a critical friend, or sometimes a proofreader-for-sense-and-clarity; sometimes it can feel like being a mentor. But there is almost always something worth publishing in every paper. If JIL isnât the right place Iâll try to suggest where might be. Grounds on which I will decline: ethical unsoundness; (total) lack of methodological rigour. Even a lack of connection between data and conclusions may be salvageable, but if the research project itself has been designed unsoundly (or hasnât been designed at all) thereâs little I can do to salvage it. The moral of the story is: ensure you have a robust research design : )
- Itâs emotive. We do know that. And even if itâs an RânâR, it sucks to have your writing criticised. But please do remember that a âresubmitâ verdict is NOT a rejection (it has been known for authors to react as though theyâre the same thing). Storify: https://storify.com/explorstyle/acwri-twitter-chat-dealing-with-reviewer-comments At JIL we will always try to point up what we like and think works as well as what we think needs work.
- Once accepted, the paper is passed to copyediting
- And then the copyeds will probably come back and bother you! The main issue is to follow the journal guidelines â format your paper in the way that you are asked (itâs like being a student all over again âŚ) NB difference in practice for images between published and unpublished work
- Obviously, celebrate too : ) A DOI is a perma-link that will always allow people to find your article (unlike a URL) and itâs linked with aggregation services like Scopus which are starting to display alt-metrics.
- Thinking about impact and metrics ⌠The choice around open access can be a difficult one. ECRs have their way and their name to make; impact matters; and openness is a variable concept â itâs different in different disciplines. Ultimately the choice is yours â unless youâre RC funded : ) Be aware of your options, and also fo the impact of all of our choices on the scholarly ecosystem
- But what does it all feel like from the inside? What could YOU publish, where will you take it, and how will it feel?
- Letâs think about what a journal article IS and what itâs for. Itâs a particular kind of communication container and it has certain characteristics. How is an article different â in feel, in purpose, as a read â from other kinds of publication ⌠such as a Masterâs thesis, or a presentation?
- Itâs a smaller container â itâs still a contribution to or advancement in knowledge but it may be a modest one: another brick in the wall! Articles generally focus on a single topic of concern and look at it in a detailed way â like a laser beam or a spotlight. Other differences pointed out in the blog post by Pat Thomson: fewer ideas dealt with (one or maybe two), and fewer major points made (three or four) a synthesis of research literature, not a review far fewer references â only those dealing directly with the paperâs theme theory used sparingly and explained in your own words fewer citations in the text â you can shortcut the âaudit trailâ
- Take a few moments to think about aspects of your research that could stand alone; that would contribute to the dialogue; themes or topics you could explore in more depth or in a different context⌠? Discuss in pairs (actively listen and feed back if thereâs time). Take some time to make a note of what youâve come up with.
- A messy, challenging and emotive subject! Not made easier by the fact that you have two aspects to think about: the shape, construction and persuasiveness of the finished product â which is often what people mean when they talk about writing (that nice, linear, articulate piece of work) â and the far more elusive and very messy process that gets you there. Which is not at all linear and often doesnât feel very articulate. Letâs look at the product to start with âŚ
- The same principles apply to this âcontainerâ as to other scholarly communications â like theses : ) These issues need to be addressed explicitly in a peer-reviewed article. They are part of the criteria that peer reviewers work to. Context: ensure you refer to the literature and place the work within a wider context. This helps your readers situate it with reference to their own knowledge and experience of the field, and it also helps to signal what youâve done thatâs different or new â your own contribution. Approach and method: this is so much more than choosing a scientific-sounding methodological label! How you approach your question, the framework you choose to work within, and how you design your data collection instrument, are what ensure the validity and integrity of your work. Get a guide book for your chosen method and use it as a tool to underpin your whole research process as well as the write-up. Rigour: You should also back up any claims you make with appropriate evidence (otherwise itâs just your opinion!). Some of this will come from the literature/the research context; some from your data. Bear in mind that your claims need to be proportionate to your findings : )
- A handy framework for bridging the gap between product and process! These questions are useful in two ways: 1. In the finished article, for situating the research in its context and signposting what the articleâs contribution is; but also, 2. In your own thinking and writing process, so you can be clear about the âbig pictureâ of what youâre doing. And each answer â or set of answers â feeds in directly to the major conventional sections in an article: The âwhatâ will inform your introduction the âwhyâ will, too, and will also help you to choose which parts of the literature to use to contextualise your work the âhowâ is crucial for your methods section. This very simple framework can help your thinking and writing, as well as help structure your finished piece of work. You can expand the questions if you want to âŚ
- Take a moment to reflect on the potential piece you described to someone earlier â could you answer these questions about it? Do they illuminate it or help situate it at all?
- Tips for helping with the process mess â to help you get writing and keep writing (and stay on top of it)
- Itâs important â but hard â to keep focused on the âbig pictureâ (the research question or hypothesis) while you do the minutiae â the small-scale, step-by-step stuff.
- These are (word-for-word) the advice we also give to aspiring article writers.
- Itâs really important to get your ideas out of your head and onto paper â you have to get past those first drafts! Writing is a form of thinking: you donât have to commit yourself to every word you write down; you can âtry onâ different standpoints. https://librariangoddess.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/dont-get-it-right-just-get-it-written/
- Three great sources of real-world help about writing.