An academic who is trying to get a journal article published is a lot like a salmon swimming upstream, says Dana S. Dunn, PhD, a member of APA’s Board of Educational Affairs. “The most important thing is persistence,” says Dunn, a psychology professor at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
But there are ways to make the journey through the publication process (see The publication process) easier. “The more work you do up front, the more you can ensure a good outcome,” says Dunn. Among other tasks, that means finding the right venue, crafting the best possible manuscript and not giving up when asked to revise a manuscript.
The Monitor spoke with Dunn and several other senior faculty members with extensive experience publishing articles and serving as journal editors and editorial board members. Here’s their advice.
■ Target the right journals. To find the journal that’s the best fit for your article, research the journals themselves. Check each target journal’s mission statement, ask colleagues who have published there if your work is appropriate for it and read a current issue to see the kinds of articles it contains. “If your work isn’t in line with what they publish, they will reject it out of hand and you will have wasted valuable time,” says Dunn.
Also examine the composition of a journal’s editorial board, which will offer valuable clues about the kind of work the journal values—qualitative versus quantitative research, for example, or single-experiment studies versus multiple-experiment ones. You can even shoot a short email to the editor briefly summarizing your manuscript and asking if it sounds like something he or she feels would be appropriate for the journal. “Editors are pretty good at saying yes or no,” says Dunn.
In addition, let more experienced colleagues assess the strength of your study and give you some ideas about possible venues, says Jerry Suls, PhD, a professor emeritus of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Ask how strong and how novel they think your results are and whether your study has any methodological limitations. Although your colleagues may not have a completely accurate view of what journals will and won’t publish, says Suls, it’s still a good idea to get a sense of what they think about your chances.
■ Balance ambition and realism. Aim high, but be realistic about where you send your manuscript. But don’t get too hung up on trying to figure out a hierarchy of which is the “best” journal, says Rose Sokol-Chang, PhD, publisher of journals at APA. Instead, she suggests, think about what you’re trying to achieve with your article. For example, some journals have a longer history, broader focus and higher impact factor, a measure of how often papers in the journal are cited compared to how much is published in the journal. For more narrowly focused research, there are journals focused on subdisciplines that are well-respected by experts and have high impact factors. You could also try highly specialized journals appropriate to your direct area of research, which are more limited in scope and readership. Keep in mind that APA publishes its own journals as well as many affiliated journals, which vary in their levels of specialization.
What you do want to avoid is publishing in one of the increasing number of journals—often online—that aren’t peer-reviewed, says Nova Southeastern University psychology professor Linda Carter Sobell, PhD. Junior faculty may not even be aware that these journals aren’t true academic journals, says Sobell, adding that one possible outcome is that they go up for tenure only to have colleagues point out that their articles are published in nonreputable journals. Tip-offs include nonuniversity addresses or requests that authors pay to publish their work. “You can’t trust them when they say they’re peer-reviewed,” says Sobell. “That could mean the secretary looks at the manuscript when it comes in.”
To check rejection rates, go to www.apa.org/pubs/journals/statistics to get a sense of the odds for APA journals. For other journals, contact the editor, check the publication’s website or directions to contributors or see if your institution subscribes to the Cabellsopens in new window database, which offers information on both reputable journals and those it deems “predatory.”
Also, be sure to submit your work to just one journal at a time. Shotgunning a manuscript to multiple outlets simultaneously “is completely verboten,” says Suls.
■ Hone your manuscript. Give yourself time to write the best manuscript you can, says APA Board of Scientific Affairs (BSA) member Keith F. Widaman, PhD, distinguished professor of the Graduate Division of the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Riverside. To make sure your writing is first-rate, study “The Elements of Style,” says Widaman, who rereads the William Strunk and E.B. White classic every year or two. Learn the difference between active and passive voices, the difference between “that” and “which,” and when to use commas. “There are times when you misportray the meaning of what you’re trying to get across if you write something poorly,” he says.
Before you start writing, draft an outline with subheads that mimic how manuscripts are organized in APA journals. “Carefully constructing a manuscript helps the reader follow your thinking,” he says. Also consult APA’s newly revised Journal Article Reporting Standards (APA Style JARS), which offer guidance on what information needs to be included in a research manuscript, whether your manuscript covers quantitative research or qualitative research (American Psychologistopens in new window, Vol. 73, No. 1, 2018), suggests Sokol-Chang.
Be sure to pay close attention to details such as spelling and footnotes, Widaman adds. “If a person does a crummy job with references, for example, what other details are they not paying attention to?” To this end, take advantage of APA Style CENTRAL, which offers manuscript templates, preformatted references drawn from APA’s PsycINFO database and more.
And polish your manuscript by asking colleagues—both in and out of your specialty area—to offer constructive criticism. Make sure you haven’t overlooked relevant citations, which will suggest to reviewers that you don’t know the literature and where your work fits in. Consider having a statistician double-check your analyses.
■ Be prepared to revise. Most manuscripts are going to be rejected, so don’t take rejection personally, says Suls. It’s also extremely rare for a journal to accept a manuscript as is. Of the thousand-plus manuscripts Suls saw as associate editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, he remembers only two that received a thumbs-up without requests for at least minor revisions. “Most papers are going to be rejected or are going to be resubmitted with revisions,” says Suls. “You’re not the only one.”
Your initial reaction to reviewers’ feedback may be disappointment or even anger. Put the comments aside for a few days while you calm down. “The first thing to realize is that reviewers are not trying to do a search-and-destroy mission; they’re trying to be helpful,” says Dunn. “Often when you read the comments with a colder eye, you realize the comments are good ones that will improve your work.”
If your manuscript has been rejected, revising it should still be on your to-do list—as long as the reviewers haven’t identified some fundamental flaw in your research. If that’s the case, says Dunn, you may have to give up on the manuscript. Reviewers may also require you to do additional studies and include those in a revised manuscript.
For less extreme problems, the editor may invite you to revise the rejected paper and resubmit it or suggest that you send your manuscript elsewhere. Either way, be just as diligent in revising your manuscript as you were in writing it, says Dunn. Thank the reviewers, address every comment they made and use a detailed cover letter to explain those changes, with page numbers so the editor can easily see how you’ve addressed concerns. If reviewers disagree on a particular point and the editor hasn’t chimed in, choose which side you agree with and explain why you chose that side. And if you disagree with a comment and decide to reject that advice, explain that too.
■ Gain experience. Being on the other side of the editorial process can help give you ideas about how to better craft your own manuscripts. If you’re a graduate student or junior faculty member, ask a mentor or colleague who frequently serves as a reviewer if you can become a co-reviewer. “That’s a valuable educational experience,” says Dunn. (See “How to Review a Manuscript” in the May 2018 Monitor for more insights.)
If you do get a chance to review someone else’s manuscript, do it well and turn it in quickly. “If it comes back in a very timely fashion and the review is a good one, that person will be used again,” says Suls. That said, junior faculty should make sure the review process does not cut into the time they devote to doing their own research and writing.
■ Keep trying. Finally, don’t give up if your article is rejected by the first publication you send it to, says BSA member Jeffrey M. Zacks, PhD, a professor of psychological and brain sciences and radiology at Washington University in St. Louis. As long as your research is fundamentally sound, says Zacks, “there’s usually another reasonable journal you can turn around and go to.”
For a set of interactive modules on publishing journal articles, reviewing journal manuscripts and other issues of importance to early career academics and researchers, see APA’s Science Career Series at www.apa.org/career-development/courses .
