1 Guidelines on academic publications in the international sphere
NB These guidelines are designed primarily for doctoral candidates, but they may also be relevant for postdoctoral students, post-holding academics in the earlier stages of their career, and more generally those who have as yet had little experience of publishing their work in the international sphere. 1. Should doctoral students seek to publish articles and/or conference papers while preparing their doctoral thesis? The first priority is always to complete your doctoral thesis on time and to the highest possible standard, and then publish it (usually after revision) as a book. A first book is, all other things being equal, a much more substantial foundation for an academic career than a few articles or conference papers. So don't let yourself to be distracted by short-term goals: without a doctorate, an academic career is nowadays virtually impossible, and the deficiency won't be made good by any number of articles, however excellent in themselves. That said, however, opportunities to attend relevant conferences may well arise during the doctoral period, and can be very useful for acquiring experience of the professional milieu, the topics discussed there, and the academic standards the conference sets, as well as for meeting other specialists in the field. The key word here is again "relevant": if the subject of the conference is genuinely close to the subject of your doctoral thesis, the experience of attending the conference is likely to be extremely valuable, and the exercise of writing a short conference paper will enable you to try out ideas or materials in a public arena without seriously interrupting the flow of doctoral work as such. Equally, if in the course of doctoral work you come across a topic or fragment of interesting material which you can't incorporate into the thesis as such but which can be presented independently without a great deal of further research, then it may well be a good idea to write it up as an article. If you decide to give a paper at a conference where publication of the proceedings is envisaged, or submit an article to a journal, you'll need to make a realistic estimate of the time it will take from start to finish. The process looks something like this, and each of the stages is liable to take considerable amounts of time: composition of a first draft; sending the draft to your supervisor (or a colleague) and (normally) at least one other person for a reading; rewriting and adjusting the draft in the light of that feedback; preliminary copy-editing of the paper (i.e. making sure that all the references are complete, that conventions have been followed consistently, etc.);
2 sending the paper to the journal editor or to the editor of the conference proceedings, which is likely to result in further comments from professional readers and thus further revision; final copy-editing adjustments in the light of the conventions adopted by the publisher; proof-reading. If the paper is written in a language other than your own native language, a further reading may need to be inserted in this sequence, after all substantive revisions and corrections have been made, in order to remove linguistic errors, idiomatic lapses, etc. ("språkvask": see also below). Where a conference paper is concerned, you will also need to take into account the amount of time needed to organize the journey, apply for financial support (and claim the support afterwards), prepare an oral presentation which will exactly fit the allotted time-span, and of course attend the conference itself! 2. What is the difference between a doctoral thesis and a book, and how can one be converted into the other? Your doctoral thesis must visibly demonstrate that you can carry out all the tasks necessary to ensure that the thesis is based on adequate evidence and is properly argued. It must be meticulous in its bibliography and system of references, quote abundantly from primary sources, and be seen to take account of all relevant scholarly work in that subject area. It may be adventurous to a degree, but not to the point where caution and solidity are compromised. In a published book, the balance may well be different: footnotes should not be too long and overloaded with references, and the reader must be kept interested. The relation between these qualities will of course vary very considerably from thesis to thesis, and publications may be designed for very different kinds of reader, from a small group of front-line specialists to the student reader or even the (semi-mythical) "general reader". But it is likely that some process of reorientation and revision will be needed before a thesis can be published in anything other than a series reserved specifically for doctoral theses, and even then you will almost certainly be expected to make revisions according to the recommendations of the examiners. This process can take anything between a few weeks and a couple of years (or more), depending on what your professional and material circumstances are at that stage. 3. Looking for a publisher If you're publishing a conference paper, the publication arrangements will of course be made by the conference organizers. Where you're starting from scratch, however, whether you're placing an article or a book, a fundamental principle always applies: you should look for a publisher/journal whose character and output matches your work as closely as possible. The questions you should ask are: Has this publisher/journal published other work of this kind / on this subject?
3 Is the theoretical/methodological orientation of the publisher suitable to my work? (Don't send a highly theoretical piece to a publisher/journal that publishes mainly traditional studies, or vice versa.) How competitive is the publisher/journal? What is the reputation of the p/j on the international scene? What services does the publisher provide? These may vary widely: in the UK and US, the major university presses provide full copy-editing, proof-reading and design services; other publishers may expect camera-ready copy and will print the text you send them according to a basic design template of their own. The first type produce attractive books but typically take over a year from receipt of the MS to publication; the second may well have your book on the market in a few months, but it is likely to be more functional in appearance. Some presses are also better than others at marketing their products, so it's worth making some enquiries about this too. Spend time in the library checking out journals and books that are in broadly the same subject-area. Make a list of possible journals/publishers. Check out their websites to get the maximum amount of information about their publications AND their publications policy (many journals carry a statement of their aims and policy at the beginning or end of each issue). If you know anyone who has published with these presses or journals, find out what their experience was. Place your selected journals/publishers in order of priority. If you're aiming to publish a book, prepare a "proposal", consisting of a summary of the book's aims/materials/argument, followed by a more detailed synopsis. Remember that the initial summary will be read by the publisher's commissioning editor, who will probably not be a specialist in your field, and possibly also by other non-specialists (many academic presses have panels of academic advisors whose judgements will be sought at one stage or another of the process). Write lucidly and accessibly (but without excessive "popularization"), as you would if you were describing your work on your website or for an up-market publicity exercise. The synopsis should include (under separate headings): a table of contents and brief description of each chapter; an overview of other competing or complementary works: how does your book fit into the current research market? Why should people choose it rather than other comparable books (i.e. what are its USPs = unique selling points)? a realistic statement of the kinds of reader the book is designed for (remember that most academic books sell only to specialists and career academics); an indication of length (for Anglophone publishers, in number of words including notes, bibliography, etc.; elsewhere, the length may need to be expressed in terms of the number of signs); a time-scale for completion of the book (if not already completed). If you have just had your doctorate approved and want to propose a revised version of your thesis, the proposal should include a description of the thesis as such, plus a summary of the ways you propose to modify it for publication. If your book is not based on an already written thesis, it is often better to wait
4 until you have finished a first draft of the book before writing to a publisher. A premature proposal will not enhance the publication prospects for your work. Write to your first-choice publisher/journal, sending, in the case of an article, the article itself in final draft form; or, in the case of a book, the proposal as described above. In both cases, enclose a brief covering letter. Where you are writing to a journal, check the current guidelines for submitting materials to that particular journal (you'll find these in any recent issue of the journal, most often in the concluding pages or on the back cover). Most publishers and journals will acknowledge receipt of your material fairly swiftly, and should normally give you an indication of how long it will be before they let you know whether they want to go ahead or not. Some publishers may say at once that they don't publish this kind of material, or that they think your book will not sell well enough for them to take it on, or similar. Such replies are normal, so don't be discouraged: send the proposal/article to the next publisher on your list. If the publisher/journal say that they are sending your material to one or more readers for evaluation, they are likely to indicate the length of time this will take. Three months is normal, although the actual time it takes may be longer, e.g. if it coincides with busy times of the academic year, or periods when academics are on holiday, since the publisher's readers will almost certainly be established academics. Once the period of time indicated by the publisher/journal has elapsed, you are entitled to write to them to ask politely how things are going, although remember that it will not be in your interests to hassle them unduly, so it's better to wait for a few weeks after the date they originally gave before chasing them up. If they don't give a date, or are uncommunicative, use these guidelines as an approximate indication. Once a publisher/journal has informed you that they will send your materials to one or more readers, you're obliged to wait until that process is complete before approaching another publisher/journal. Remember that they will be using resources (time) and spending money (e.g. on reader's fees) and will not be best pleased if you then write to them and say "Sorry, I've actually decided to publish my book/article with X instead." However, if they don't give you a reply within a reasonable period of time (up to six months, depending on the type of publication and other factors), you are entitled to write to them and say (politely) "If you are unable to give me a reply by …, I intend to approach another publisher." A telephone call may also be a good way of sounding out the terrain. If you're offering a book manuscript, and the publisher says that the readers' initial reports on your proposal are positive and that they would like to see a complete draft of the book itself (or possibly some sample chapters), you will need to negotiate with them an approximate timeline for this exercise. The process may well take a year in all, although publishers are becoming increasingly aware of the pressure on academics to have firm answers within a reasonable period of time. Six months ought to be enough under normal circumstances.
5 If the publisher / journal tells you that they are willing to publish your material subject to revisions proposed by their readers (they usually enclose the readers' reports, sometimes suitably edited to ensure anonymity), give yourself time to consider the proposals carefully. Even if the reports appear to you to be wrong-headed, superficial, unsympathetic to your approach, unnecessarily pedantic over matters of detail, impossibly demanding (e.g. suggesting that the book would be better if rewritten from a different angle), etc., etc., try to take it calmly. It is always difficult to have one's brain-child exposed to the gaze of others who don't appreciate its merits. Go carefully through the recommendations of the readers, deciding which ones you think are justified and could profitably be implemented, which ones you think could be adopted in perhaps a modified form, and which ones you feel you cannot implement. Write a considered reply to the publisher, stating these responses in a reasoned way (avoid sarcasm, impatience and other expressions of affect). Where you cannot accept major changes, explain why and justify your way of doing things. In some such cases, a sentence or two added to the introduction to the book (or in a footnote in an article) can usefully make this defence clear to all subsequent readers. Remember the universal principle: it is better to have to respond actively to criticism, even hostile criticism, than to have one's text waved on by vaguely encouraging readers. The process may be painful, but the publication that ensues will almost certainly be a great deal better, and – most importantly – already prepared to meet such criticism. However, it is also helpful to remember that the publisher's readers are individuals whose response may be idiosyncratic; another reader would almost certainly come up with different or even contradictory recommendations. So you are entitled to accept only those that you feel will enhance the quality of your work, and most good publishers understand this. Note on translations and språkvask If your work needs to be translated (you may, for example, be able to obtain a subsidy to have your work translated), or if you need to send it to a native speaker who will clean up your use of a foreign language, remember that the people who can do those jobs properly are quite rare. A translator of a specialist academic article or book needs (a) to have a thorough understanding of the specialist language used; (b) to have a command of the full range of equivalent words and expressions used in the target language; (c) to have at least some knowledge of the materials and/or their cultural context; (d) to be able to write lucidly and idiomatically in the target language, even when under the foreignizing influence of the source language (e.g. translations from French into English often sound markedly and inappropriately "gallic"). If you have some knowledge of the target language, you will need to read the translation and discuss any problems with the translator, which can be time-consuming. The problems with språkvask are of a similar order. Avoid the assumption that any native speaker can "correct" errors you may have made, as if these will
6 always be simple mistakes of grammar or vocabulary. Whoever does this job will be doing something close to translation: when he or she encounters a problem of idiom, a sentence that doesn't work, a collocation that sounds odd to the native ear, they will have to rethink that phrase or sentence from the bottom up as it were, rather than making a mechanical adjustment on the surface. So try to find someone with a good track-record, or at least someone with experience; preferably someone who writes academic material themselves or is at least thoroughly familiar with that kind of writing. Remember that if you choose the wrong person (whether for translation as such or for språkvask) and set them to work, promising to pay them, you will be landed with an almost insoluble problem when the work comes back and you see that it's inadequate. You may well have to pay the translator off, find someone else to redo it, and pay him or her as well.