7 ways to boost your publication chances: the editors’ view on journal submissions
Andrew Dorman & Heidi Pettersson
As journal editors we are faced with the task of sifting through a large number of article submissions of varying quality; while many are excellent, some unfortunately face a quick desk rejection. There are a few things authors should keep in mind when submitting an article, which may significantly increase their chances of the manuscript being sent out for peer-review and ultimately published. In this blog post we’ve collected our top tips. Think we’ve missed any? Leave your own advice in the Comment section below.
1. Write for a specific journal and understand its audience
Editors need to see that you understand what their journal is about in terms of its scope, tone, style and audience. In the case of International Affairs — in a nutshell — it is an academically rigorous policy-relevant journal which publishes articles for a wide audience, mostly based on qualitative, rather than quantitative analysis. Therefore a very specialist, jargon-heavy article featuring regression analysis is likely to be rejected at the first stage. Keeping the audience in mind when writing is important; IA’s audience, for instance, is a broad mix of academics, students, policy-makers and informed generalist readers. Each article needs to be accessible to them all.
2. Read the journal you are submitting to
Related to the above, when writing for a specific journal you must have a good idea of what has been published in the journal previously, in particular relating to your own topic and sub-field. When considering your submission, we value seeing that you are engaging with previously published material and highlighting the value added of your article. From a journal editor’s point of view, if an article doesn’t provide something new there is little point in publishing it. Reading previous articles is of course also an excellent way of getting a sense of the journal’s style.
3. Know what you want to achieve and state it clearly
Occasionally we receive articles where the author either appears unclear about their aims, or has failed to communicate them effectively. Authors should be able to articulate why their topic is relevant, why the readers of the specific journal should be interested in learning about it, what the article aims to do and, as mentioned above, how it can contribute to the existing body of work. This needs to be conveyed clearly in the introduction to the article — the introduction must give an answer to the ‘So what?’ question.
4. Follow author guidelines
This may seem obvious, but it continues to be ignored by many. Always familiarize yourself with the author guidelines before submitting. While articles will of course be copyedited on acceptance, at International Affairs we expect authors to follow our guidelines as far as possible — especially when it comes to word limit and citation style. If an author submits using for example the Harvard style for citations, it is clear to us that they have not looked at the journal nor glanced at the guidelines, or they would know that we use strictly footnotes. Most journals’ guidelines can be found online; ours are here.
5. Get input from others
It is highly recommended to get someone else to read your manuscript before you submit: a critical friend, a helpful colleague or two. But also, especially if submitting to a journal like International Affairs, ask a non-specialist to read it — it can be invaluable to get an outside perspective; formulations which make absolute sense to you may seem impenetrable or nonsensical to the general reader.
6. Submit to one journal at a time
Another golden rule of submitting to academic journals: don’t submit the same article to more than one journal at the same time — it’s simply bad practice.
7. Learn from rejection
Try not to be discouraged by rejection. If the article was rejected following peer-review, you should read the reviewers comments carefully and try to take on board their criticisms; this will help you develop a stronger article which you may be able to place elsewhere, if not in your original journal of choice. It’s easy to think that the reviewers simply don’t understand your point of view or your arguments, but they are more often than not highly qualified experts whose opinion is likely to be an indicator of how your article would be viewed and received more widely in the field, so it’s worth giving their comments serious consideration.
Keeping these points in mind when writing and submitting a journal article can significantly improve your chances of it being sent out for peer-review and, all being well, published. It’s worth remembering, however, that the work doesn’t stop after an article has been published in a journal. With all the online (and traditional) media available it’s a good idea to start thinking early on about how to promote the article and its ideas once it’s been published. Blog posts, op-eds, media commentary, tweeting and other social media, are all ways to get the message out there and have impact. See our earlier blog post on this topic for more ideas.
International Affairs welcomes submissions from all over the world, spanning the entire field of International Studies and from both senior and early career authors. We also offer an annual prize for the best article in a year by an author who has been engaged in the field for less than 7 years. We hope you have found these tips useful; should you wish to submit an article, please click here.
Andrew Dorman and Heidi Pettersson are the Commissioning Editor and Managing Editor of International Affairs.
This post is part of our career development series. Follow the International Affairs Blog to keep up with new posts on related themes.
