I have served as a journal editor or co-editor for over a dozen years and also have served twice on NCA’s Publications Council (formerly the Publications Board). I have also experienced the publication process from the viewpoint of an author. Thus, I am often asked for advice or insights about the journal publication process.
The process of publishing journal articles may seem to be shrouded in mystery, but the process is relatively straight forward. One caveat: editors are human and humans are diverse. What might be true for one editor may not be true for another. What I offer are some insights that I’ve learned over the years and that I hope can be helpful and useful to you, as a new scholar in our field. Welcome!
Publishing journal articles is one of the key scholarly activities that you should undertake as a member of this scholarly community. However, different institutions and departments may prioritize some kinds of scholarship over others. For example, you should know if your institution prefers books over journal articles. Or, if journal articles are key to building your career, does your institution or department value some journals over others? It is crucial to understand the context in which you work, as your institution is a critical audience for your work. Yet you may want to consider the larger scholarly community as your audience as well. Where will your scholarship get the most attention from scholars working in your area?
Make sure that the journal to which you submit your manuscript is appropriate for your work. Ask yourself if the scholarship fits within the stated aims and scope of the journal, and whether the journal’s readership would be interested in your manuscript. Different journals have different missions and visions, so take a look at previous issues to understand what kinds of scholarship your selected journal publishes.
One of the questions that new authors often face is when to submit your manuscript. How does someone know when it’s ready? While you want to submit the strongest manuscript possible, it also is important to be fearless when submitting your work, and to remember that rejection is a part of being a scholar. Please know that all of us have had manuscripts rejected. Fear of rejection should never paralyze you from submitting your work for review. Instead, you should strive to have your work taken seriously and you should embrace the possibility of being published and making your ideas available to a wider audience.
Please know that all of us have had manuscripts rejected. Fear of rejection should never paralyze you from submitting your work for review.
When you submit a manuscript to a journal, it is understood that you are not submitting to another journal at the same time. No manuscript should be under consideration at more than one journal at a time. That said, if your manuscript is declined by one journal, you are then free to submit it to another journal.
Read the instructions for submitting your manuscript as directed by the journal. Be sure that your manuscript is anonymized. Anonymized means that your name (and the name of any co-author) does not appear on the manuscript itself. The anonymized manuscript should be ready for the editors to send out for review. Typically, the submission platform includes a separate place to enter the author’s name(s), institutional affiliation(s), and contact information. None of this should appear on the manuscript itself.
Journals use different style guides, such as APA, MLA, Chicago, etc. While it is important to pay attention to your selected journal’s style guide, ideally you should become familiar with the discipline’s most frequently used style guides. There are software programs that can help you format your manuscript in a particular style guide, including EndNote, Mendeley, RefWorks, Zotero and others. You should check with your university library to see if you can use any of these through its license.
It is always a good idea to carefully proofread your manuscript to ensure that there are no (or very few) grammatical errors or misspellings that can be distracting to the reviewers and potentially influence their reaction to your manuscript. You might also find it helpful to ask a friend or colleague to read your manuscript prior to submission. Sometimes another set of eyes can catch small errors or can offer suggestions for minor tweaking. You want to submit the strongest manuscript that you can.
Sometimes waiting on the review process can feel like an eternity.
Sometimes waiting on the review process can feel like an eternity. Some authors turn toward other projects and submit other manuscripts to other journals, as they wait for the editorial decision. This can be a useful strategy for remaining productive while also not getting too invested in the outcome of the manuscript under review.
If more than three months have passed, I think it’s ok to send a friendly email to the editor inquiring about the status of the manuscript. There are myriad reasons for delays, and I’ve seen many of them. Sometimes a manuscript gets lost in the journal’s website, sometimes a reviewer falls ills and gets behind, sometimes life intervenes in the editor’s timeline. There are many reasons that an editorial decision might be delayed, but it doesn’t hurt to inquire.
Once you receive the editor’s decision, read it carefully. I have found that some authors receive a “revise and resubmit” but interpret it as a rejection. It is extremely rare for a manuscript to be accepted as it was initially submitted. It is far more common for a manuscript to be offered an invitation to “revise and resubmit” or to be rejected. Be sure that you understand what decision the editor has made about your manuscript.
If your submission has been rejected, read the reviewers’ comments and the editor’s decision letter carefully. Are there suggestions that would strengthen the manuscript? Some authors immediately send the rejected manuscript to another journal. However, it might be worth taking the time to consider the most significant suggestions you’ve received and revise your manuscript accordingly before sending it to another journal. Whatever you decide, don’t let your manuscript sit “on your desk” for too long. Manuscripts, unlike wine, do not get better with age.
If you are offered an invitation to revise and resubmit your manuscript, jump on it. You are being given an important opportunity that you should not pass up. For some people, it can be helpful to read the decision letter and the reviews and put them aside for a day or two. Others prefer to tackle the revisions immediately. In any case, do not ignore the invitation to revise and resubmit.
Again, read the reviews and the editor’s letter carefully. Identify and organize the issues raised and the suggestions made. Carefully think through which ones will strengthen your manuscript and which ones might not. In general, reviewers are making suggestions with the best of intentions. They want to help you create a better manuscript. There may be a few times when this is not the case, but such instances are rare. Most reviewers are doing this unpaid service in a spirit of generosity and mentorship.
Take reviewer comments seriously. If they are off-track, the reviewers may have misunderstood your argument/analysis and you should see if you can clarify what you are doing for them and for all of the future readers of your manuscript.
Take reviewer comments seriously. If they are off-track, the reviewers may have misunderstood your argument/analysis and you should see if you can clarify what you are doing for them and for all of the future readers of your manuscript.
Sometimes an editor might request extensive revisions and you must decide if you can (and are willing to) make these revisions. If you cannot undertake such extensive revisions, contact the editor and let them know that you are withdrawing the manuscript from consideration.
Should you decide to make the revisions and resubmit the manuscript, you will need to write an anonymized letter to the editor and reviewers that details how you responded to their concerns and suggestions. Explain how you addressed some of their concerns and point to the changes made. If you think that some of the suggested changes would take your manuscript in a different direction or would weaken the piece, explain why you did not make these changes. This letter should help the editor and reviewers understand the revisions that you made to the manuscript as well as those that you did not make. Remember that this letter should be anonymized—it should not have any identifying information about you or your co-authors, if any.
In general, you should try to revise your manuscript in a timely manner. “Timely,” however, can have different meanings for different journals. Sometimes an editor might be nearing the end of their term and are close to filling their issues. Other times, the editor might be just starting their editorship. Or an editor might have a special issue or two scheduled that might build in other constraints. The editor’s letter typically indicates or suggests what a timely turnaround time might be. If not, you should feel free to ask and possibly suggest a deadline for yourself.
Publishing journal articles need not be too mysterious. You should feel free to ask colleagues at your university or other universities to help you get started. Many people are willing to answer questions, read editorial decision letters and reviews, and provide all kinds of advice that may help you get published. Remember that you are a member of a community of scholars who can be a great resource to you. Someday, you can help other junior scholars in this community get published in whatever formats the future holds.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TOM NAKAYAMA was the founding editor of the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication (2008-2010) and is currently co-editor of QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking (Michigan State University Press). Nakayama is Professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, MA. He is a former Fulbright scholar at the Université de Mons-Hainaut (now the Université de Mons) in Belgium. He works in the area of critical intercultural communication.