1. Publishing your research
Gabe Ignatow
University of North Texas

2. How can you get a tenure-track university job?
1. Publish
2. Teaching experience
3. Specialize
4. Grant money

3. Even tenure-track teaching jobs require publications.
Some lecturer positions require publications.

4. You need to publish to move up the academic hierarchy.
TT-Research approximately 1%
TT-Teaching approximately 10%
Lecturers approximately 10%
Adjunct instructors approximately 10%
Approximately 10% complete the PhD and enter the private sector.
Approximately 60% do not finish.

5. Academic Writing
Academic writing is a high-level skill that is difficult to master.
It is totally different from ordinary spoken language and from other forms of writing.

6. Academic writing is like sculpture.

8. You assemble to create.
Academic writing involves assembling raw materials in new ways:
Previous research
Your ideas
Your findings
Once you have the structure you must polish (edit). This is the real work.

9. You must learn from others.

10. For example, my most cited publication (a theoretical article).

11. How did I know where to submit it?

12. How did I know how to write it?

13. B. How to publish
1. Intensive advising. Students who don’t find this just sort of float away from their programs.
2. Pick 1 or 2 promising research topics early in graduate school. Not more.
3. Subject your work to peer review early and often.

14. Peer Review
Research is not an individual enterprise, but a communal one.
Participation in peer review is how you join the global scholarly community.
It is an initiation and lifelong training; a tremendous learning experience, potentially better than any graduate school class.

15. Peer review can be stressful (understatement here)
It can be a very stressful process. No one likes to be rejected.
Reviewers can seem mean.
A round of reviews can take 3-6 months.
Plan for a year from submission to publication (if accepted).

17. Publication Strategies
Find the Journal Citation Report from the UNT Libraries home page.
A. Swing for the fences (a journal with a sky-high impact factor)
Good strategy if you’re not in a hurry. It’s early in grad school. You think your paper is pretty good. More importantly, your advisor thinks so.

18. B. Swing for the fences expecting rejection but with the intention of improving your research.
(Sublimate the ego)
Editors and reviewers know this strategy well. But it sometimes still works.

19. If you want good feedback from experts in the field that you can’t necessarily get from your professional network.
Sometimes reviewers will suggest outlets that they think will be a better fit. This is useful info.
The better move is to improve your professional network, but that takes time.

20. C. Choose the right journal to start with
With this strategy you’re not trying to game the system.
Journals have audiences. Get a sense of the readership of each journal.
Choose a fairly specialized journal with a readership that will be predisposed to be interested in your work. Find the right fit. A good strategy, but sometimes you may want to be more ambitious.

21. D. Just get it out there! You’re in a rush!
You should still try for an ISI-indexed journal if possible.
If ISI-indexed journals are too ambitious, go for something from a major scholarly publisher.
Or just get it into print somewhere
Or if you’re desperate, or just want to move on to other projects, go for an all-electronic journal. At least it’s a line one the vita (there are now highly respected online journals too).

22. E. Have a sequential publication strategy that combines several of the above. Then stick with it.
Think about your decision tree.
This is fake

23. In all cases, you must learn about the journals, editor, and editorial board.
What has he/she published?
What is his style of thought?
Whom is he probably thinking about for reviewing?
What if it’s rejected? Where to next?
This is one reason people attend professional meetings! To learn this stuff!

24. Some things your advisor won’t tell you.
Do not get sidetracked while in graduate school.
department politics, university politics, hobbies, service work, teaching, advising
These are activities for people who have already put in their 10,000+ hours.

25. Start all of the above as early as possible.
Be confident!