To publish a journal article in a high impact academic journal, you are expected overcome all hurdles of publication beyond just generating a valuable idea or piece of research. Writing for academic journals is becoming highly competitive these days due to increased number of researchers and scholars seeking the journal article publication attention. While there is no one specific formula for achieving your journal article publication endeavor, there are specific requirements that a scientific journal article needs to meet in order to be accepted by credible journals. However, expectations of editors may also differ in terms of both within and between subject areas seeking publication. Despite the nature of your discipline or subject area, there are a myriad of challenges that do confront all academic writers looking forward to journal article publishing. Among these include how to respond to the feedback of reviewers, the correct way of restructuring your journal article, and the necessity of revising and resubmitting. Interactions with scholars and publishers have revealed that there are several things a writer is required to do in the processing of a publishing a journal article in and academic journal.
- Ensure that your story progresses logically rather than chronologically
Base on the words of Deborah Sweet, editor and publishing director, it imperative for an author to take some time before embarking on writing their journal article. The time taken is used to give an author seeking to publish a journal article enough time to pay attention to the logical order of the presentation. Focusing on the story that progresses logically rather than chronologically makes the journal article to look realistic and simple to understand. Ensure that your presentation features the logical order in which the experiments were performed. Logic is the fundamental focus in any scientific research endeavor.
- Do not do writing and editing simultaneously
When writing a journal article publication, any attempt to write while editing at the same time may expose you to losing the flow of the work. The best way of writing for publication is to open a file and insert all headings and subheadings. When these are in place, you can start filling any of the headings whenever an idea flows in. Have a daily target (for example 500 words) and stop when the target number of words is achieved. Overwriting may cause you to feel exhausted or lose morale in the process. You need to publish a journal article in a way that leaves you relaxed so that your mind can be at best.
- Write in simple language that anyone can read and understand
Assume you meet someone on the elevator and asks you to quickly your paper, could you do it with a lot of clarity and language in which a person not expert in your area of research can understand? Your abstract should bear this clear argument in the first paragraph of your research paper. Readers are not going to keep hunting for your argument, but you must place it in a place it is easily accessed and used. Although the aim journal article publishing is to inform other scholars, readers tend to use the first sentence to determine if they will include or exclude it from the list of sources of information. Authors who hide their main arguments on other pages such as four or five or eight tend to annoy readers. After ensuring that your argument is clear at the beginning of the paper, make sure it runs all the way through the different sections of the journal article. Moreover, ensure that the argument is tied to the theories underpinning the study and the empirical material.
- Allow a Colleague to Check Your Work
Journal editors continue facing badly written papers from scholars seeking the service of journal article publication. The most possible causes of this include the journal author being English Second Language speaker and having not taken their work through proofreading. When the language and syntax of the journal article are not clear, journal editors find it difficult to work out what is going on and makes the process of journal article publishing a lengthy endeavor. The role of your colleague in this journey of publication is to give the opinion regarding the quality of the content and language use.
- Write a Review or a Response to Get Published
Another good way to get published is by writing reviews. Journal article publishing may be difficult to start and complete from scratch. This is true for people who are early in stages of building their careers. Writing a review or a response gives new authors a chance to practice at a writing a piece of publication and get access to a free book that they want. Most publishers have identified that they publish more journal article reviews that full papers, therefore, they are constantly looking for reviewers. Some journals such as ours tend to publish replies to papers that have been published in the same journal. The reason why editors like publishing reviews or replies to previous papers is because it stimulates discussion among readers.
- Put International Readers into Consideration
People writing from a given country have a tendency of assuming that everyone knows their system. Thus, given that journals such as Stratford Peer Reviewed Journal & Book Publishing is an international journal, there is need to consider the international context when seeking to publish a journal article. Once placed in an online database, your journal will attract traction from several countries of the world. If you are an American, do not assume that you are writing for only Americans. This is also similar to the British.
- Avoid Cramming your Whole Thesis into 15-page paper
In some cases, academic researchers are tempted to throw everything in at once and hit too many by publishing in one journal article. This is just truncating or summarizing of a research article, which does not work well. If you are a serious scholar, your PhD or MSc or MBA project can be used to prepare two or three papers for publication. This helps them to use a specific aspect of their research as a hook.
Submitting Your Journal Article
There are five things you need to put in mind when submitting your journal article for publication.
- Select a the right journal
Journal article publication is not about looking for content and posting it in some journal site. Selecting the right journal requires a scrutiny of the journal article falls within the scope of the journal that you are interested in. Although this may look obvious, there has been an outcry regarding many articles being submitted to completely inappropriate. It could be a bad sign if all the editors in the list are unfamiliar to you. You can also establish the credibility of a given journal by looking through a number of recent issues. The aim of this is to ensure the journal is publishing quality articles on the same topic and that the quality and impact are at par with the author’s.
- Follow the Correct Submission Procedures
Some authors do not spend time to check and read the instructions given to them to submissions. This not only wastes time for editors, but also for authors. Failure to follow instructions leads to stretched processes when it does not need to be stretched.
- Desist from repeating the abstract in the cover letter
The role of the cover letter is to provide an indication of what the author think is the most interesting and significant aspect of the paper. This also extends to what the customer think is the best fit for the journal seeking to undergo the publication process. Repeating the abstract or going through the content of the journal article in detail does not make sense and makes the overall application boring. What the paper actually says will be accessed by reading the content. Use the cover letter as a place for a bigger picture outline and any other very crucial information that you cold like to include.
- Ensure your context is clear to avoid rejection
Lacking a context, that is, a clarity of where your journal article sits within the wider scholarly landscape and the gaps in knowledge being addressed increases the chances of a paper being rejected. The context and importance of the research should be clear from the onset. In fact, the main reason for publishing a journal article is because it is important or there is a gap that requires to be addressed.
- Overstatement of the methodology
The trendy method of the moment in the modern day seems to be ethnography. Thus, most scholars submitting articles for publication claim to base them on ethnography. However, when the manuscript is closely inspected, it is found that the interviews are quite limited and standardized. It is worth noting that holding a few intervals at the café in town does not amount to ethnography. You need to clear about the nature and scope of your data collection. This is similar to the way in which theory is used. If a given theory proves to be insightful to your analysis, it is advisable to use it consistently throughout the paper seeking publication.
Dealing with Feedback
The third element of journal article publishing process is receiving feedback. After your manuscript has been reviewed, you receive a feedback as review report from the editors. Most scholars wait for feedback with a lot of anxiety because they are not sure of the fate of their work. Feedback may take the forms of accepted for publication, accepted with corrections, or rejected. Below are things you need you should not do upon receiving feedback from editors.
- Do not respond with bitterness to the comments of reviewers
To publish a journal article, priority is place on meeting the scientific criteria. Thus, there are comments that comes and that which may not be friendly. Of course you will do the corrections and resubmit the manuscript. It is professional to include a detailed document providing a summary of all changes suggested by reviewers and the changes you have made. Maintain focus on facts rather than ranting. Avoid responding to reviewer feedback immediately you receive it, but rather read it and think about it for several days and discuss it with others before drafting a response.
- Never give up with reviewer comments
There have been cases when authors processing journal articles for publication received a standard ‘revise and resubmit’ letters, but fails to do so. Although it may sound difficult, it is course worth pursuing. Consider that there are some authors who receive major revision letters and choose to persevere and finally end up getting their articles by published by credible journals. It is not a wise choice to go through the major hurdles that characterize preparing a journal article for publication only to give up at the peer review stage.
- Don’t be scared of challenging reviewers
It is not a bad idea to challenge reviewers as long as you have good justification. This also requires that you learn best ways of arguing why the editor is wrong with a lot of politeness. When a rational explanation is provided, it will be readily accepted by editors; however, such explanation must exhibit clarity and having considered all the feedback received and accepted. At the bottom-line, remember that your editors have a better understanding of what they want, so avoid excessively defending your side of argument.
From the above explanation, it is evident that journal article publication is actually a lengthy process that requires patience, hard work and cooperation. If you want to publish a journal article, there is need to be aware of the steps that your paper will be taken through including writing the paper, submitting it and finally receiving and addressing the comments from reviewers. At each stage, there are various things you should or should not do if you want to successfully complete your journey of journal article publishing.