One of my most popular blogs in the series is my own story of trying to publish a particular article that, for many and various reasons outlined here, was problematic and took quite a long time. Since then I have coached over 800 clients on writing, and a good portion of my clients have come to me to work up journal articles into a publishable format, or want to become more efficient and faster at publishing article after article and are looking for better systems and processes of production. As a result of the demand for this service, I distilled all I know in a course called How to Write and Publish a Journal Article which also includes fortnightly coaching with me for 12 months. You can find some free training on this here on YouTube if you are interested in seeing a tiny portion of what that course contains.
Looking back at my original post, I notice now that something was missing - or not missing exactly, but not really dealt with in perhaps the kind of detail a reader might want to know, and that is picking the right journal. The first thing I talk about in that blog is the problem of inter-disciplinary research and getting the right journal fit, but once I had returned to my ‘law only’ version of the paper, I totally abandon this point altogether. This might give the impression that getting journal fit is an interdisciplinary problem, and that is not true. It’s an every-single-article- you-write problem that should always be considered.
Accidental advantage
The reason this vital, critical, first step was not talked about in my original post was that I took it for granted (always a mistake) that everyone knew this was a thing. Once I had stripped the interdisciplinary out of the article, journal fit was not an issue for me. That is, I had an accidental advantage I took for granted, that my research area - my law only research area - is what you might call foundational to my subject matter. It is a thing undergraduates are lectured on as a matter of course, it is fundamental to my subject. So, of course, a lot of the older, prestigious journals are interested and have a history of publishing on this topic because it is so foundational. One thing I did not need to worry about was audience once I returned to my legal fold. This was not in any way niche. It was fundamental, foundational, core, central to anyone who was broadly in the area of EU law and in this particular case, anyone who was into the much broader topic of the rule of law (i.e. all public lawyers everywhere).
After coaching hundreds of clients across disciplines, I now know just how lucky I am in terms of being a constitutional and public law scholar and how many journals would be interested in publishing any of my pieces.
So I thought it might be worth a revisit here, dwelling here on the importance of fit for your chances of publishing success, and publishing quickly.
Targeting the audience
You have probably heard that before you write a word you should know the destination of that piece, and have a selection of journals that would be a good fit. This is not a matter of casting a wide net or vaguely gesturing [any of these]: it is the opposite. Detailed, targeted research on your prospective publication outlets is a step many academics do not do for a variety of reasons:
fear (that no-one is interested);
fear (that someone has already written it);
fear of distraction (they start to read journals and never stop);
time scarcity mindset (fear that they should be writing and this is a waste of time);
delusion (it will all be alright on the night, i.e. it will just magically work out)
delusion (what they have to say is such a game changer everyone will want it)
delusion (new data is intrinsically publishable, someone will take it)
I understand the origins of these reasons and why many of us feel one or all of the above or just can’t face it. But it is false economy. Perhaps ECRs starting out may actually have an advantage here as they might see this as natural and inevitable step. They know that they don’t know much about the journal architecture of their research area, so will research it, but more established scholars who widen or change tack or become more niche also need to be aware this is something you need to return to again and again.
Ideally you need to have 5-6 or more possible options across the different tiers / rankings. When your inevitable first reject comes, you can send it to another good journal with your feedback on board and incorporated. Of course, you may occasionally hit the holy grail of getting accepted first time, and that in itself speaks to what a great job you did at targeting the right journal. But you should not expect it and certainly not bank on it. The journal world is fickle and even with the right fit, you might get rejected for one of the four other reasons.
Rejecting for lack of fit
Of the top 5 reasons for rejection, rejection for lack of journal fit is perhaps the most frustrating because it was all in your hands. The others are about your writing skills (which I would argue are also all in your hands, obviously, if you know what you are doing, but it does involve random opinions too) but this is purely down to you and your journal fit research. I see this reasonably often, and it is especially galling when the author can’t quite see why it doesn’t fit. Let me give an example. Journal A is interested in the question ‘why are carpentry nails pointy and long?’. Your article is about pointy long nails, and so you think, perfect fit. NO. That journal is only interested in carpentry nails and their pointy-ness and length, not nails in general. Similarly, if your article is about carpentry, they won’t be interested either, because they are only interested in carpentry and pointy nails and length of nails, and probably from a post colonial perspective to boot. You might think your piece on why short nails are the best brings an interesting counterpoint, but again, it is unlikely to survive the desk rejection red button.
Let’s think about this from the journal perspective. Their mission is to shed light on why the best nails are pointy and long. That is their stated mission in the journal descriptor but when you read recent iterations of the journal, you find the only discussion on the table is carpentry and postcolonialism employing a quant methodology. You find the editorial board is largely quant based scholars. Whatever the original founding mission, the journal has now entered its own rabbit hole of obscurity. There is zero point bringing a paper on nails that are long and pointy, in carpentry using postcolonial theory with qual methodology. Zero. That is not what the audience is interested in, not what they understand, not what they want to hear about. They don’t want their horizons broadened in general, so save yourself the hassle.
Where it goes wrong is you and your genius can see the connection between question A and question B, but those pesky editors just can’t. Or maybe the editors have 1000 submissions directly on point, using the right language and theoretical perspectives for their audience, and yours is slightly off and it is a way of culling the masses. This is a way to make it easy for them to reject you. This is frustrating I know, but nonetheless, reality. There is a box out there for you, you just have to find it.
If you can’t fit in the box EXACTLY it is not your box and you run the risk of desk rejection.
The generalist journals
Of course there are generalist journals that cover a multitude of things in every discipline. Take a journal named something like law and society. Such a journal could in theory cover a wide horizon of material, but again, there will still be lines within which you need to colour, or a new obsession in a field that has captured the interests of the editors or: REJECT. In some ways, generalist journals tend to be the most prestigious and you are really up against a wide range of scholars tackling lots of different subject material, and so it is harder on the sheer numbers and subject variety to get published in such a journal.
The more niche you are the harder this is and the easier this is
There are tens of thousands of peer review journals out there, but finding the one that fits your niche requires work. It is research. It should go without saying - but I will say it - the people you are referencing in your paper and the journals they are publishing in are your people, and that is where you should aim to publish. You should not submit a paper to a journal where you have no, or only one or two references, from that journal in it. Immediately, this tells editors, this is not really our guy. But what if your niche is in a low ranking area and you are under pressure for metrics to submit to high ranking journals? Change your niche, or broaden the scope so you can reach beyond this small subset of people. Reframe, reframe, reframe. Learn the languages of other disciplines and journals so you can make it fit: this is the hardest publishing work of all and you will suffer multiple rejections based on fit alone. There is no easy way to say this - it is essentially making your work interdisciplinary and that is very tough in terms of publishing (see my original blog).
If though your niche research area happens to be one catered to by the top/ many journals then hooray - you are at a competitive advantage because your fit is easy to find, and there are plenty of journals to choose from. Your people recognise you straight away. You are writing about pointy long nails in carpentry from a postcolonial perspective and they know you and see you are their person. Your very niche-ness makes you instantly recognisable as who they want in their journal, because their journal is that niche. Jackpot.
All this is to say there is no one narrative of how something gets published or not, but there are some absolute rules that apply, and one of them is that you can make the publishing journey easier or harder depending on the type of piece you write and the ease with which this fits in with what your audience will expect.
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