Getting Published Successfully - 19 Feb 2013

This course offered some useful advice about getting journals and books published, as well as links to further resources. I'll summarise these here:

Journal Articles

Ways of finding appropriate journals for your research area might include:

• Checking academics publication lists.
• Databases such as Scopus, Web of Knowledge, BL National Bibliography
• Websites of Academic Publishers such as Blackwell, Elsevier, T&F, Springer (follow on Twitter).
• References from other journal articles.
• Peer review journals lists. 

Unfortunately, even if your research is interdisciplinary, you might have to choose your allegiances as regards publishing in journals (perhaps based on what sort of academic department you're interested in working in). You need to make sure you're a credible fit and take care with author guidelines. If possible (and relevant), it can be helpful cite other articles from the journal you're submitting to. It's also worthwhile to do an analysis of journal back copies; the process of analysis will help to determine who you're writing for. A combination of article analysis with overall journal analysis should give a good overview.

Special editions of journals have been proven to get a higher number of citations. If you're interested in submitting to a Special Issue, the way you can learn about forthcoming opportunities might be to have a good online presence or to do peer reviewing for a relevant journal. That way you become part of a 'publishing family'.

The ranking of journals can be measured through the Impact Factor, citations and top-ranked REF journals. However, these measurements are not always reliable. Your choice of journal might to some degree depend on your intended audience (e.g. professional as well as academic audience).

The key criteria for getting a journal paper accepted is:

Has the paper been sent to an appropriate journal?
Does the paper have international appeal?
Is the paper cutting edge?
Is the paper pitched at an appropriate level for the readership?
How significant are the findings?
How productive has the peer review process proved?

Books and Book Chapters

The ideal publisher will publish similar titles at the same level and have a series about your research topic.

There are 5 main ways to get a book commissioned:

• Reactive commissioning - The commissioning editor accepts the author's proposal.
• Proactive commissioning - The commissioning editor invites the author to write.
• Interactive commissioning - The commissioning editor and the author work on an idea together.
• Retread commissioning - The publisher re-publishes (in revised form) something published before.
• Buy-ins - The publisher buys the rights to something published by another publisher.

Proactive commissioning is more likely to happen if you have a good online presence (Uni pages, Acedemia.edu, LinkedIn, Twitter etc.)

The key criteria for getting a book contract is:

Is the market sufficiently a) defined and b) large?
Would the book have international appeal?
Would the book have backlist potential?
How easy is the market to reach? How clear are the channels to market?
Would the book provide readers with valuable benefits?
How productive has the peer review process proved?

Commissioning Books and From Thesis to Book

The difference between a thesis and book is:

• Thesis - more methodology, more analysis, more evidence of originality, less summarising.
• Book - less methodology, longer discussion, wider implications.

Theses have been compared to detective or whodunnit stories: the punchline comes at the end, whereas books have to give the bigger picture, set out conclusions at the start to define the structure of the book (tell a story, be entertaining). The start of a book also needs to really good, if possible!

P1 > S1 > P2 > S2 > P3 > S3 etc. (P1 - research problem, S1 - literature review, P2 - gap in the literature, S2 - design your own research project/methodology, P3 - methodology has limitations, S3 - address the limitations etc.

Copyright

To publish your thesis, you need permission to reproduce images and written consent to publish interview material.

You CANNOT publish you thesis, as well as publishing your thesis as a book.

Ideal conversion of thesis to book - convert one thesis chapter into an article, develop one thesis case study into an article, adapt the rest of the thesis into a book.

Grey Literature

See the CORE search engine, a repository to facilitate free access to scholarly publications distributed across many systems.

See also Greynet.

Further Sources

William Germano - From Dissertation to Book

Anthony Haynes - Writing Successful Academic Books

Anthony Haynes' Monographer Blog

Helen Sword - Stylish Academic Writing

LSE's Impact of Social Sciences Blog (Twitter Guide)

Write Your Research Blog (All-purpose Tool and Writing Abstracts)