Secret to Successful Academic Publishing: Finding and Using a Model Article

As I was endeavoring to publish my first academic article, one of my advisers in graduate school, Ted Mouw, suggested I select a model article and use that to structure my article. I have since used this technique repeatedly and my experience leads me to believe that this is one of the secrets to successful academic publishing. My belief was confirmed when I read that Wendy Belcher also suggests a similar strategy in her book, Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success.

In this week's post I will explain how to find and use a model article. A model article can serve as a guide for how long each section of your article should be, how many tables or interview quotes you should include, and how many citations are necessary in your field.

Where to find a model article

Your model article should come from the journal where you will submit your article. It does not have to have the same topical focus as your article, but should use similar data. If your article is based on interviews, your model article should also have interviews as the primary source of data. If your article has a complex conceptual framework, you should search for a model article that also uses a complex conceptual framework. If your article uses archival data, so should your model article.

What to do with a model article

Your model article will help you figure out both the structure and the approximate lengths of each component of your article. Once you have chosen a model article, the next step is to make an outline of the article, taking note of the length of each section of the article.

Here is an example of how to create an outline, based on an article I published in 2010:

Golash-Boza, Tanya. 2010. “Does Whitening Happen? Distinguishing between Race and Color Labels in an African-Descended Community in Peru” Social Problems.

Abstract:
This article explores how race and color labels are used to describe people in an Afro-Peruvian community. This article is based on analyses of 88 interviews and eighteen months of fieldwork in an African-descended community in Peru. The analyses of these data reveal that, if we consider race and color to be conceptually distinct, there is no “mulatto escape hatch,” no social or cultural whitening, and no continuum of racial categories in the black Peruvian community under study. This article considers the implications of drawing a conceptual distinction between race and color for research on racial classifications in Latin America.

Introduction
496 words

Conceptual Framework
437 words

Literature Review
(three sections)
1356 words

BACKGROUND AND METHODOLOGY
Background
593 words

Site Description
408 words

Methodology
396 words

RESULTS
- Eight Interview quotes
- Three thematic sections (corresponding to lit review)
6207 words

Conclusion
292 words

Implications for Future Research
391 words

As you can see, a model article can provide guidelines for common and not-so-common situations. It is a common issue for sociologists working with interview data to have to be selective about how many interview quotes to include in an article. In this article, I included eight interview quotes, which gives you a rough idea as to how many might be acceptable. A less-common situation is that you need to provide background information because of the relative unfamiliarity of the topic. As this article was based on research conducted in Peru, yet published in the United States, I included a background section on people of African descent in Peru. When searching for a model article, it is important to think about the particularities of your article and to try to find parallels in published articles.

Once you have created an outline, the next step is to match up the length of each section of your article with the sections of your model article. They don’t have to be exact, but if your model article has 1500 words in the lit review and 5000 in the results section, and your article has 3000 in the literature review and 3000 in the results section, that is an indication that you probably should present more data and condense your literature review.

You can create and use an outline based on a model article before you complete your article. In fact, having guidelines for the length of each section before you even begin can help you avoid the very common problem of writing an article that is far too long to be published.

I imagine some readers may feel as if their work is unconventional and does not fit into any mold. I understand and respect that position, but would like to gently remind readers that it is often best to learn the rules before one breaks them. Using a model article to imitate the structure (but not the content) of an article is one way to learn the unwritten rules of academic publishing.

How to Choose an Academic Journal for your Article ... and why you should choose one now!

Most academics are aware of the need to "publish or perish," and the current state of the job market makes the imperative to publish even more pressing. In this post, I discuss the first step to publishing a journal article: choosing an academic journal for your article.

The past few posts this semester have dealt with learning skills that enhance your scholarly productivity, including: planning your Fall semester, making time for writing, planning your week, and writing every day.

Time management and daily writing are skills and habits you can learn by practice. For example, I learned about the skill of daily writing in a class on writing with Sherryl Kleinman in 2004. However, I did not form the habit of daily writing until I joined an online discussion forum organized by Kerry Ann Rockquemore in 2007. That discussion forum encouraged participants to develop the habit of daily writing, and it worked wonders for my productivity. If daily writing has not yet become a habit for you, check out this post for more strategies on how to make writing part of your life.

Similar to time management and daily writing, publishing is also a skill you can learn. No academic was born knowing how to publish. We all learn by doing. The more you write and submit articles, the easier it gets. For the remainder of the semester, we will focus on the nuts and bolts of writing and publishing, drawing from my own experience publishing ten journal articles and two books and reading about academic publishing in venues such as Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success, by Wendy Belcher. This post is dedicated to explaining how to find a home for your academic article. However, if you do not already have Wendy Belcher's book, I suggest you order it now!

How to Choose an Academic Journal

If you do not yet have an article ready for submission, there is no need to worry. You can decide where you will submit your article before you begin to write it. However, if you are reading this blog, it is likely that you have at least one seminar paper, thesis draft, or dissertation chapter that you could transform into a publishable article. If not, with daily writing, you will have a draft in no time.

Look in your bibliography
The first place to look for an appropriate journal to publish your article is in your own bibliography. The works you have cited are the works with which you are engaging in conversation. If you are citing several articles from a particular journal, that is a good sign that journal may be an appropriate place to submit your article.

Find other journals in your area
After looking through your own citations, have a look at other journals in your field. You can do this online. However, it can also be a great experience to actually go into the library and have a look at the journals in person. You also can ask your librarian area specialist. Many colleges and universities have librarians whose job requires expertise in academic publications. They can be a great resource when considering where to submit your article.

Figure out the impact factor and journal rankings
Journal ratings are important. A journal's rating is based on a variety of metrics, which are different ways of counting how many times the articles in the journal have been cited. Articles that have been cited more often are thought to have a greater impact in the field, and thereby bring prestige to the journal in which they were published.

Because journal ratings are important, you should take them into account before making a final decision about where to submit your article. Here are three ways to find out information on the relative quality of a journal.

1. You can use the software, Publish or Perish, to get data on the impact factor and citation rate of journals in your field.
2. You can access Web of Knowledge through your university's library to get rankings of the journals in a particular area or discipline. For example, Web of Knowledge lists rankings within the discipline of Sociology, but also within the sub-field of Race and Ethnic Relations.
3. You can visit the journal's website to find out information about the journal in question. When investigating a particular journal, you should try to figure out whether or not the articles in the journal are peer-reviewed, what percentage of submitted articles they accept, and whether or not the journal is accessible through major scholarly databases such as JSTOR, Elsevier, or Sage.

Once you have chosen a journal, you can begin to write or revise your article with an eye towards publication in that journal.

Ten ways you can write every day

If you've been following the posts this semester on how to have a productive semester, you have already made a plan for the Fall Semester, and blocked out time in your calendar for writing every day.

If you have been writing every day this semester, congratulations! If you haven't, ask yourself "why not?" If you need some ideas on how to actually write every day, then this post is for you!

“Write every day” is fabulous advice. But, how do you actually do it? That was my question for a long time before I finally convinced myself to give it a try. Now that I have been writing every day for four years, I can share with you a few ways to make that possible, and explain to you why I do it.

Why you need to write every day

I decided I needed to try to write every day when I found out that scholars who write daily and hold themselves accountable write nearly ten times as much as others! In Robert Boice’s book Advice for New Faculty Members, he explains the virtues of writing every day. Boice describes a study where new faculty were divided into three groups:

• The first group did not change their writing habits, and continued to write occasionally in big blocks of time; in one year they wrote an average of 17 pages
• The second group wrote daily and kept a record of their writing; they averaged 64 pages
• The third group wrote daily, kept a daily record, and held themselves accountable to someone weekly; this group's average was 157 pages (Boice 1989:609). 

Once I read that, it was clear which group I wanted to be in. I was convinced I should at least try daily writing.

How to write every day

Once I decided I needed to be writing every day, my greatest challenge was to figure out what it meant to write every day. I asked myself, "What counts as daily writing?"

Over time, I came to realize that writing means a lot of things and that there are lots of ways to write every day.

Here are ten ways you can write every day:

1. Write on a blank page
2. Line-edit something you have already written
3. Restructure a paper that you have been working on
4. Pull together pieces of older documents you have written into a new paper
5. Check references and footnotes for accuracy
6. Outline or mind-map a new project
7. Summarize or take notes on something you have read recently that might be relevant to present or future research projects
8. Make a revision plan for a rejected article or a “revise and resubmit”
9. Make tables, figures, graphs, or images to represent visually concepts or trends in a paper
10. Create an After-the-fact or Reverse Outline

If you think of writing as only #1): Write on a blank page, it will be hard to do that every single day. However, it you are open to other kinds of writing, it will be possible to do at least one of these kinds of writing every day.

I try to do at least two kinds of writing each day, starting with the blank page in the morning. I am at my best early in the morning. I use those early, fresh moments of the day to free-write and to create new material. Once I run out of steam, I might turn to editing something I have written or to checking references. If I get stuck, I will pull out a mind map and brainstorm ideas.

My routine each weekday, then, is to begin the day with writing or writing-related tasks. On a good day, I can concentrate for two hours. Usually, however, my mind drifts after an hour, so I take a break to check email or have some coffee, and put in another hour after my break. I keep track of the time I have spent working on writing so that I can be proud of my accomplishments, and so that I know when I need to stop.

I know that many academics reject as ridiculous the idea that one could or should write every day. To them, I would gently ask if they have ever tried it. And, I would add that it is not only important to try writing every day, but to commit to trying it for at least a month to see if it works for you. It is also important to have others to whom you are accountable and with whom you can share your struggles.

If you do try writing every day, let me know how it goes! If you are a seasoned daily writer, let me know why you keep it up!

Make Time for Writing Every Day

One of the best ways to become a prolific writer is to write every day.

If you write every day, you will make progress on your manuscripts, you will become a better writer, and it will become easier for you to write. Scheduling your writing into your calendar will ensure you make time for writing every day.



Yes, I mean, literally, take out your calendar for next week and set aside a specific time for writing every day. I am sure you are a very busy person with many responsibilities. However, if you are reading this blog, then you likely are looking for ways to be more productive. And, one of the best ways to become more productive is to schedule your writing time and treat it just like any other appointment. Here is how.

Schedule writing every day.

Take a look at your schedule for next week and figure out when you might have between 15 minutes and two hours to write every day for five days a week. Spending at least 15 minutes a day with your manuscript means that it will always be fresh in your mind. Deciding now exactly when you will write will ensure that you actually make the time to do it.

Schedule at least 15 minutes a day.

If you think that there is absolutely no way you could make any progress in 15 minutes, I encourage you to try to think of something you could do in 15 minutes. For example, I imagine you could proofread your introduction, free write, update your references, or revise a footnote in 15 minutes. On a previous blog I listed “Seven Ways You Can Write Every Day.”

Don't schedule more than two hours at a time.

I also suggest that you do not schedule your writing for more than two hours at a time. If you do have a day with no other obligations, it is likely more productive to schedule two hours of writing, followed by two hours of reading than to try to schedule four hours of writing. After reading and writing for four hours, schedule in a long break that involves food and exercise and try to go in for another round. Alternatively, you can take the afternoon off, knowing that you have just had a very productive morning!

Treat writing like any other appointment.

Treating writing like any other appointment means that, if you have scheduled writing from 8am to 9am on Monday, and someone asks you to meet at that time, that you have to say, “No, I can’t meet at 8am, how about we meet at 9am?” You, after all, will be very busy from 8am to 9am, working on your manuscript. If you are nervous about claiming you are busy when you are “just” writing, keep two things in mind: 1) If you are at a research university, writing is part of your job; and 2) It is quite unlikely that any of your colleagues will actually ask you what you are doing when you tell them that you cannot meet at a particular time.

So, go ahead, take out your calendars, and schedule between 15 minutes and two hours of writing into your week next week. I have!

Five Steps to Making a Semester Plan for Academics

There is no denying it: the Fall Semester is here. This means it is time to make a Fall semester plan.

The beginning of the semester is always a hectic time for academics. We often are anxious about all we have to do now – finalize syllabi, set up appointments, prepare for classes, and re-arrange our schedules – as well as all we have to do over the next few months - teach, grade, publish, etc. For this reason, I would like to share with you a strategy I learned from Kerry Ann Rockquemore that has brought order to my semester.



Although you probably are in a frenzy to get ready for the upcoming semester, I am going to suggest that you add one more task to your immediate to-do list: Make a plan for the Fall Semester.

Academic life revolves around semesters which start and end several times over the year. The beginning of a new semester, then, is something that academics experience over and over again. However, even for those of us who have been teaching for many years, new semesters continue to be times of high anxiety and insecurity. We may have taught our classes several times before, but we never know how this batch of students will be. We may have been in our department for years, but it is often unclear what issues or challenges our department will face this year. For new professors and graduate students, the horizons are even less clear. The unknown, logically, leads to anxiety.

Setting goals for the fall semester will allow you to see a bit more lucidly what lies ahead and will relieve some of your anxiety by permitting you to come to terms with what you can and cannot accomplish.

Thus, even though it is one more task in addition to all you have to do, I highly recommend you take an hour out of your busy schedule and sit down and write out your goals for the Fall Semester. Here is how you do it.

Step One: List all of the tasks that you would like to accomplish this semester

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Look over your calendar and through your emails to make sure that you do not forget any important tasks. Things you might put on the list include: submit book proposal, send off article, complete a revise and resubmit, or prepare paper assignment for undergraduate class.

Step Two: Separate tasks into categories

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The categories I use are: Research, Teaching, Service, and Personal. Writing goes under the "Research" category, and "Write two paper assignments" goes under "Teaching." Dividing these tasks into categories will help you to prioritize your tasks according to your professional trajectory. For example, if you are at a Research I institution, and your Teaching and Service lists are much longer than your Research list, you may need to figure out how to move things around.

Step Three: Arrange your tasks by month.

It’s almost the end of August, but go ahead and put in August anything that needs your immediate attention. Anything with a September deadline goes in September, and anything with an October deadline goes in October. Once you have dealt with the tasks that have deadlines, you can decide where to put the remaining tasks that do not have firm deadlines.

Step Four: Arrange your tasks by weeks.

If you have four writing goals for September, then you can place one in each week of the month. If you have two, then give yourself two weeks for each. The point is to decide NOW when you will turn your attention to each task. This will help you to keep on track and to feel less guilty about not dealing with everything at once.

Step Five: Figure out what will not get done this semester.

If you have tasks that do not fit into your semester plan, now is the best time to decide that you will either put them off for another semester, remove these tasks from your list of goals, or delegate them to someone else. Believe me, it is much better to make this decision now than to have these tasks weigh on your shoulders for the rest of the semester. If the project is something you really would like to do, make it a priority for the Spring semester. If it is something you wish you could get out of, find a way to do that diplomatically. For example, if you have agreed to do something by November and now realize you will not be able to, you can tell the person with whom you made the agreement: “I just made a detailed plan for my semester, and have come to realize that I simply do not have the time to complete this work this semester.”

I wish you the best as you plan for the Fall Semester.

How to have a super-productive semester!

Would you like to have this be your best semester yet as a faculty member or graduate student? I sure would like for you too. That is why I have planned out the blog posts this semester to take you through the steps for a fantastic, productive semester.

All you have to do is subscribe to Get a Life, PhD by Email and you will have a useful tip delivered to your inbox every week this semester.

You also can subscribe via Google reader or another reader. Or, you can just come back and check this blog out once a week for your weekly writing tip.

I look forward to seeing and hearing from you throughout this semester.

Tanya,
Get a Life, PhD

Five Steps towards Creating a Five-Year Plan to Achieve Tenure

One of the best things you can do as a new Assistant Professor is to create a five-year plan, also known as a research trajectory. This plan will serve as a roadmap towards tenure. Knowing exactly what you need to achieve tenure and making a plan to get there can take a lot of the anxiety out of this nerve-wracking process. This post explains how to create a five-year plan that will enhance the likelihood that you will achieve tenure.

I will focus on the research side of the equation, as this is most often the most important part. However, tenure expectations vary by institution, and you need to figure out what is most important where you work.

Step One: Realize that you only have five years to put together a tenure portfolio.

The time between your first day as an Assistant Professor and the day you have to submit your tenure file flies by. Colleges and universities vary on the procedures and dates, but in general, you have five years to put your tenure file together.

I know you are supposed to have six years, but it is actually five. Let me explain. Suppose you began a tenure track position in August 2010. By August 2011, you will have completed your first academic year, and by August 2015, you likely will have to submit some parts of your tenure file – such as the names of external reviewers. The review of your tenure case will be complete at the end of your sixth year. This usually means you have to start the review process about a year beforehand.

Step Two: Set your goals.

The first step to creating a five year publication plan is to figure out what you need to accomplish to have a successful tenure review. How would you like for your CV to look in five years?

You can find out about departmental expectations by asking your mentors and colleagues. You also should look at the CVs of people who recently have been awarded tenure both in your department and at other institutions. If you think that it is possible that you might leave your current place of employment before going up for tenure, you need to be aware of standards at other institutions. Remember, publications are a form of "portable wealth" that you can take with you to other jobs. And, even if you don’t plan to leave, you still need to be aware, as things might not work out for you at your current institution, and it is important to be marketable. Once you figure out the departmental and disciplinary expectations, you can set your own publication goals.

Step Three: Make a plan for achieving your goals

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Let’s say, for the sake of this blog post, that your goal is to have one book and three articles in print by the time your tenure file is reviewed. You must now figure out how long that will take to accomplish, starting from the ideal publication date. It takes a long time to publish, so you need to plan far in advance.

If you would like for your book to be in print by August 2015, for example, you need to work backwards from that date. For your book to be published in August 2015, you need to submit the final version to the publisher by August 2014. For that to happen, you likely need to submit the original version by August 2013, which means you should submit the book proposal no later than February 2013. There you have your first concrete goal: Submit your book proposal to potential publishers no later than February 1, 2013.

You can then do the same thing with the articles, based on the time it takes for articles in your field to be accepted and published, and the number of articles you reasonably can submit in a year or a semester. Keep in mind that articles are almost never accepted upon first submission, so allow time for revision and re-submission.



Step Four: Map your plan out onto a calendar
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Once you have decided, for example, that you will submit your book proposal by February 2013, your first article by February 2012, your second article in August 2012, and your third article by February 2013, then you can begin to map out the steps required onto a calendar.

For example, if your first goal is to submit an article by February 2012, then you can use the time between now and February 2012 to ensure that your article is ready for submission. You might use August 2011 to make a plan for the revision of one of your dissertation chapters, September 2011 to do the literature review, October 2011 to re-analyze the data, November 2011 to write the first draft, and December to get peer feedback and and January to finish the revisions.

You will need to do this for each of the goals you have set. However, if you have never mapped your goals onto a calendar before, it might work best for you to focus on one goal at a time. For example, once you have revised one chapter of your dissertation into an article, you will have a better idea as to how long it will take to do the others. Then, you can develop a feasible plan for the remaining articles.

Step Five: Execute the plan

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The best way to meet your publication goals is to work on them consistently. If you spend at least one hour every day from Monday to Friday working on one of your publication goals, you are much more likely to meet them than if you only work on them on the weekends or only work on them over break. If getting tenure is important to you, and getting tenure requires publishing, it behooves you to do something that gets you towards publishing each and every day. Usually that “something” is writing. It also includes data analysis, reading background literature, and letting ideas percolate. However, most academics find it fairly easy to spend hours and hours reading and running data, yet find it harder to spend time actually writing. For this reason, it is important to write every day to ensure you achieve your goals.

If you have already started your faculty position and did not make a five year plan, it is not too late. You can make a plan based on what you would like to have accomplished by the time you go up for tenure or promotion, no matter how much time you have left.

The planning process can be stressful as you think of all you have to do. At the same time, it can be calming, as you come to terms with what you will and will not be able to accomplish over the next five years.