A tale of two (types of) publications
More than 120 days ago, 121 to be precise, I embarked on my Medium journey. I’ve published 25 pieces so far, this is my 26th. I am now also part of Medium’s Partner Program, which means I’m now eligible to earn from my stories by placing them behind a paywall.
Though I’ve long held a desire to write, I can’t label myself a “real” writer; “junior writer” feels more apt.
I also happen to be a junior academic. As an academic, the contrast with the rigidity of academic publishing is stark. Medium provides an extremely refreshing outlet. I just have to hit publish when I feel the story is ready. (Frequently, I publish and also edit later. I really like this feature.)
Out of sheer curiosity, my explorations in writing extended beyond self-publication, and beyond Medium.
Unexpectedly, I received an invitation from the AI Monks publisher. I was beyond happy they approached me and immediately accepted the offer. This was effortless work as the piece was already out.
Since I enjoyed the first Medium publication with an editor, I sent some of my pieces for publication to other Medium publishers and got accepted as a writer for many of them, including Modern Women, Illumination, and Runner’s Life. I look forward to seeing my future work in these outlets.
Some of my pieces haven’t been accepted yet, but that doesn’t deter my future ambitions. For instance, publishing in Towards Data Science remains a goal I’ll keep pursuing.
Shifting gears, I also submitted my pieces to more traditional magazines.
Like academic publications, you need to follow their rules and guidelines, but the reward can be pretty nice — the prestige and reach of a traditional magazine are no joke.
Submitting to these magazines — differently from Medium publications, where you share a link to your unpublished draft or published story — you follow a different protocol which reminded me a bit of the academic publications. Many features of magazine publications are refreshingly different.
The pitch (or cover letter): When submitting the story to a magazine, one should summarize the story conveying the key takeaways (and potentially your credentials for writing such a piece). People are busy, so the pitch opens or closes doors.
You have a few precious seconds to hook the editor and make them want to read your story. It’s like speed dating for stories. And it’s similar to an abstract in academic publishing — just with a bit more personality. It’s all about giving the editor a taste of what’s to come, without giving away too much of the story. (I haven’t been able to master this so far.)
In the academic world, we can submit a cover letter — it’s actually requested, but nobody writes anything meaningful there. Our pitch is the abstract which gives all the story away. Immediately. The details can be found in the paper.
The editorial process: Almost all places will give you a timeframe within which you should expect to hear from the magazine. (In some cases they will tell you that if you don’t hear from them within two/three weeks, consider that they have passed on the piece and feel free to submit it elsewhere.)
Most scientific journals can’t give you such a precise timeframe. Mostly because the process depends on so many other factors that are beyond the editorial control.
The scientific publication timelines can be a bit of a gamble. It feels like playing roulette with your work and life. Some editors/journals are super responsive, while others might take longer than the time you need to give life to another human to get back to you.
A personal case, I submitted one of my academic articles to a reputable Econ journal. The journal is supposed to be “relatively fast” but the editor couldn’t get a hold of one of the referees for more than six months. (When faced with such cases, I really wonder if we, as a profession, are serious about science after all. How can we fully trust the scientific process when it’s plagued by hasty decisions, unexpected delays, and apparent disregard from referees in responding to editors?)
Parallel submissions: Some magazines will explicitly let you know that they accept parallel submissions. You just need to click a box to state that the piece is also submitted elsewhere for consideration. If, in the meantime, the piece gets accepted elsewhere, you just let the editor know.
Submissions of academic articles mean that the article is not under consideration elsewhere. This is another source of delays in the publication process.
Subjective decision-making: Nonacademic publications are extremely straightforward about the fact that your piece gets published or not is absolutely a subjective call.
This is at odds with academic publications that in some instances pretend that decision-making is objective and scientific. But can it be if the decision-making is purely based on humans (for which we have plenty of evidence that many factors affect them, including hunger, sleep, or even anger)?
We may as well call it the Hunger Games for papers: a bunch of overworked academics squinting at papers and making snap judgments.
Resubmission: Many magazines, if not all, invite you to pitch them again, including pitching them with the same piece in the (near) future. The reason? Recognition of the subjective decision-making and potential incompatibility with current needs.
In academic circles, is very difficult to be reconsidered for another round at the same journal unless major changes have been made to your work.
Payment for authors: Most reputable magazines will pay writers for their work. The payment for each piece is made clear, so authors know ex-ante what to expect.
For academic publications, not only do we pay for our submissions, but our articles are placed behind a paywall. And if we want to make our work universally accessible, there’s an additional fee for the authors to bear.
(Note that in some outlets, the authors need to pay a small fee for the article to be considered, but the fee is less than 3 dollars. The submission to Econ journals costs the authors a minimum of 100 dollars.) This means that only people who can afford the high fees for access get to read the latest research. It’s a bit of a pay-to-play system, and not everyone can play.
Having submitted both to academic journals and magazines (and publishing for Medium from my account or other publishers), I can say that non-academic rejections hurt much less.
The whole academic process currently does not seem to prioritize knowledge sharing. It also creates a pretty major barrier to entry for junior researchers from less famous institutions.
I feel like we need a total paradigm shift to make academic publishing more inclusive and less, well, elitist. I hope we can soon move to a better model.
The world of publishing, whether academic or not, can do better to nurture new voices, not silence them. I do hope that academia can evolve, making room for the up-and-comers like the world of non-academic publications has.
Rejections sting, no matter the outlet, but the system shouldn’t.
P.S.: When I mention “academic publishing” in this article, I’m referring to the conventions and experiences within economics journals. In some fields, academics pay submission fees only when submitting to predatory journals.
Thank you for taking the time to read about my thoughts. If you enjoyed the article feel free to reach out at arieda.muco@gmail.com or on Twitter, Linkedin, or Instagram. Feel free to also share my story with others.
