In March, I have two articles coming out in academic journals. One is based on a conference presentation I did in 2005. In 2006, I spent the summer turning that presentation into an article. One journal rejected it, so I did some revising and sent it to another in 2007. They requested a revise-and-resubmit, which I completed in 2008. After a few emails, the editors accepted it in March 2009, saying it would be published in 2010. I think that’s a somewhat typical story of how an article gets published. Yes, it took a few years, but part of that was because I took quite a while to do my revisions and resubmissions. If I’d been quicker, it might be out by now. My point, though, is that I followed the somewhat typical process with that article.
The other article is the one that I think has a lesson for all junior faculty or anyone trying to publish. As I reached the last year before submitting my application for tenure and promotion, a senior member of my department told me I should get a down-and-dirty article out. He said I should take something from the past that was already pretty much written and just get it out so I’d have something else in submission. He said I shouldn’t spend too much time on it but should just clean it up and get it out. In June 2008, I pulled up the file for an article I wrote in 2000 just after I finished coursework. I submitted it to an edited collection that never found a publisher. The editors put together a special issue of a journal on the topic but did not include my piece in that batch. And I understand why. I wrote it well before I completed my candidacy exams let alone my dissertation. Looking at it in 2008, it read well but lacked depth. I spent a couple of weeks tightening my argument and adding lots of footnotes in the style of “For further information on this point, please see these articles.” If you look at my bibliography, it cites nothing published in this century, though the footnotes are all from the last few years.
At first, I was pretty embarrassed by these limitations. It was clearly written by my grad-student self, and my junior-faculty self had grown in different directions. Still, I did like the idea of submitting my tenure application with something else in submission. I did not think it would hurt my tenure case to have this article in my file. I just didn’t see it as my best work. I sent it out after working on it for less than a month and then promptly forgot about it. The month after I received my letter granting me tenure, February 2009, I received an email from the journal’s editor granting me a conditional acceptance. They wanted me to make three changes. If I agreed, they were willing to accept it without submitting it to further review. I made those changes, and it, too, should appear this March.
I tell this story for junior faculty who are worried about having “enough” in terms of published articles. Take a look at something you wrote in the past. Perhaps it’s a seminar paper or a dissertation chapter you decided to jettison, but maybe you have something from the past that you could get to a submittable level by working on it for a couple of weeks. Those in the early stages of the tenure process might feel comfortable taking more time or might feel more comfortable working on it less. Those in the later stages may just want to get something out ASAP. But the down-and-dirty article may be an option. I’m still a little stunned that it’s going to appear. I don’t think it’ll make me famous, but it might help other people exploring similar topics. That’s all that really matters to me.
Obviously, the demands of your particular institution may influence how well this can work for you. I have a grad school colleague who was told that all of her scholarship had to be thematically related when she went up for tenure. I am at a place, though, that is happy to see you publish anything in a peer-reviewed journal even if it bears only a loose connection to your other scholarship. See what you have in your files and perhaps talk to your own colleagues about how it might be received at your particular institution. But maybe you don’t have to worry about publishing only new work that you have taken years to complete. Maybe there’s value in something you already have.
(Photo by Flickr user Aggarwal_Gopal and licensed through Creative Commons.)
Comments
1. Billie - February 01, 2010 at 09:10 pm
Thanks for this, Nels. I needed to read this. :-) Some grad programs prepare their grad students for the realities of a tenure-track job . . . the when, where, and how of academic publishing . . . but others do not. But we have to do this in some measure. It's helpful to know others who have done it and can share their experiences. Thanks!
2. Amy Cavender - February 02, 2010 at 08:26 am
Thanks for this, Nels--it's very timely. (Said by someone who just did fourth-year review and has to submit the tenure dossier in October 2011....)
3. Erin E. Templeton - February 02, 2010 at 10:30 am
Another thank you for this post! I'm in the midst of my third-year review, and it helps to have this perspective. It can be very easy to talk ourselves out of submitting work because it doesn't seem ready, or it isn't polished enough, or if I just had another semester to work out the last piece of the argument . . . when in reality, it is often best to just get it out the door!
4. Mike Austin - February 02, 2010 at 11:30 am
This is a great post. I did something similar by revising a short paper I wrote in a graduate seminar in the philosophy of religion. I did this early in my pre-tenure days as a way to get a sufficient number of publications completed so that the pressure to publish would ease up, which it thankfully did!
5. G. Curt Fiedler - February 02, 2010 at 11:43 am
Interesting take. For the biological sciences, you have to update articles thoroughly, even down and dirty ones - as information changes quickly.
In my case, I don't worry so much about my past writing style - it may have been better then than now. And these days, supposedly good journals are publishing an alarming amount of poorly written and ill-conceived articles. But maybe that's what journals are favoring these days.
6. Todd Finley - February 02, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Some of my articles are just thought of as base hits. I always contact an editor about possible interest in an article before I write it. This increases my odds of creating something a journal might actually find publishable.
7. Rohan Maitzen - February 02, 2010 at 06:54 pm
Although this is certainly practical advice from a professional standpoint, it's interesting how late in the article there's any mention of whether the article is intrinsically valuable, besides as another line on a c.v.
8. Nels - February 02, 2010 at 11:27 pm
Up until I earned tenure, my major motivation for writing anything was to have the line on the CV or, more accurately, the line in my tenure application. I'm a slow writer with too many diverse interests (my graduate degrees are in three different fields, two of which were in interdisciplinary programs), so I have lots of mental roadblocks that slow me down (concerns about audience, venue). The first article I mention, I first submitted to a medical journal. Then, I had to rewrite it pretty drastically for an interdisciplinary studies journal. So, the intrinsic value of an article is usually the last concern in my mind when it comes to writing. I'm finding that out now, post-tenure, as I have five articles on my projects that I consider to be active, all quite different from the article. My motivation to finish any of them is low now that the tenure clock has rung, and I'm trying to find a way to kick myself in the butt about them, but that's a whole other issue.
9. Todd Finley - February 03, 2010 at 09:09 pm
Nels - I like your honesty. Recently, I asked a writer friend to meet me every couple weeks to share feedback on drafts. It is far easier to break a commitment to myself than to Mike. The key here is that Mike is someone I trust to understand when a draft is rough without thinking I'm an idiot. And he is someone I trust to push me to the next step.
Binge writing tends to be less effective for me than a measured pace towards a firm deadline. Good luck! tbf
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