Publishing Strategy

Lightly edited from Zoom’s automatic transcript, so expect some transcription errors. Speaker labels come from Zoom, and […] marks a passage that was cut.

Elisa D’Amico Okay, I am gonna try to share… my screen. Can you see… what looks to be a presentation that great. Okay, I'm gonna hide all of you all and get started. So, we're gonna talk about the publishing strategy. I come from a political science background, a quantitative political science background. Kasia comes from a more qualitative and… more of, like, a subfield political science background, so I hope we can have some feedback on, both of these universes. I've also… like, moved a little bit more to being interdisciplinary towards the natural sciences, but there's lots of ways that you can be interdisciplinary that I'll get to, and we're gonna dig into that. Articles, books, policy writing, we're gonna try to cover all of these in a, hopefully, reasonable amount of time. And figure out what suits you in terms of your goals.

Elisa D’Amico This is what we're gonna talk about. We're gonna talk about understanding like, what a top-tier journal looks like, and what that would look like for you personally, depending on your field. This might be, like, easy for some of you, but it's kind of worth refreshing, and getting some perspective about Everybody might know what these, like, top, top journals are, but there's, like, a ton of excellent journals that we should still be shooting for, for a lot of reasons, and we don't want to, like. lose sight of some of this as well. Some of the differences, again, like, within the U.S. and out of the U.S, I can't speak a ton for… things much outside of the Americas and Europe and the British Isles, But I can… yeah, hopefully this will be beneficial either way. Journals, depending on which route you want to go, some stuff that you've probably already been dealing with or thinking about with, like, the quantitative versus qualitative publishing strategies, when to do things at which career stages.

Elisa D’Amico We're gonna talk a little bit about this non-academic writing. And then, like I said, we're gonna just talk a tiny bit more about the processes, for both articles and books. And then we're… I'm gonna give some… Kasia some time to talk about these… things that I've never done, and, especially with the book editing, and then… Kind of, yeah, yeah, and then… and then we will have some questions. Okay, so… this is something that I found my US colleagues were much more familiar with than my UK and Europe… maybe UK colleagues, but, like, when we're thinking of where to publish, you always want to, like, look up the journal's strategy, because you might get, like. journals reaching out to you, or, like, almost, like, commercial journal, like, publish here, and this can be, like, predatory. It can be these, like, new, like, not very rigorous journals trying to make money, and it could also… and, like, not a ton of value added to you as a scholar.

Elisa D’Amico But it's also a matter of… If you want to get publications out that are maybe quicker. and not your, like, groundbreaking as a scholar, like, hanging your hat on type of articles. It's okay to publish lower. later in your career, or even a little bit lower as you work yourself up as a scholar, and earlier, earlier in your career. But generally, if you're in the, like, PhD student, postdoc, even assistant professor phase, especially if you have fewer publications, you want to mostly be going for Q1. So these are, like, the top, obviously, like, quarter of journals. And the best place that I think you find really excellent rankings of this is… I've never known how to say it. I call it SCImago. Yeah, well, SCImago, yeah. SCImago. I'm unsure, but this is the best place for, like, our more social science… well, really, in general, I think, but… It helps with our fields because it's not just an impact factor or citation-related, but it has a lot of weighting about, like, the journal's metric in the past few years, and it takes more things into account.

Elisa D’Amico that mean that, like, just because there was an excellent journal in, like, 2005, so many things changed, and now we know, like, how it's doing, like, within the last few years, like… so it does a lot of balancing, and I think this is the best place to check for your journal rankings in real time, because it's updated annually. And it has several ways of looking at the rankings, like, that show different things. That impact factor is more of a citation thing, and SJR is this weighted version. And so you can… I mean, they'll change a little bit, but you can, like, look at both of these things when you're sorting. We could look at the page later if you want. And then, rankings vary by subject category. So, like… For example, Kasia and I have a paper that's forthcoming right now. I'm more of a political scientist, but Kasia has more of, like, a… what is the other… what are those other categories? Like, they're, like, social sciences… Social sciences, or more like area studies. Yeah. And so, for that field, it's a Q1, but for political science, it's a Q2, or something like that. And so.

Elisa D’Amico depending on what… who you are as a scholar, these could be weighted differently. I won't, like, go into that too much, it's just something to note. And then… So this is this, like, last note here. So this is our… Let me just make sure. This is our, like, ranking that we need to be aware of, right? And then, geographical differences in publishing. So, in the US, in political science, it's very, very disciplinarily driven. Like, political scientists want you to publish in political science, and… IR broadly, which is sort of, like, wrapped up in political science in many ways. So… getting in, like, a general top political science or IR journal is, like, the best you can do. So, like, AJPS, JOP, APSR, ISQ even, Like, these, obviously, you'll see these in the rankings. These are gonna be your, like, landmark where you want to land almost no matter what, but particularly if you're in the quantitative, like, political science tract.

Elisa D’Amico But definitely anyway. And this is something you almost have to do in the U. Almost, almost have to do in the US context. They say that they… respect interdisciplinary work. I think that in the US, the interdisciplinary stuff is something that you do, again, when you've already, like, checked the box on all of these, like, landmark political science publications. So, like, publishing in a nature climate journal is impressive generally. but… and global environmental change and ones like this, like, these are very, like, well-respected, like, globally, but in American political science, they can be a little siloed, so they might kind of get it, but not really… but still want to see that landmark political science publication. So, if you are doing, like, maybe a lot of, like, you have, like, a criminal… like, a crime-related component to your IR work, and you publish in criminal justice, you're gonna need to, like, explain that a lot more. I do a lot of environmental science stuff.

Elisa D’Amico And so when I publish in, like, the more natural science journals, like, it's kind of understood in climate politics, but it still might need to be explained a little bit more. And this depends on a lot of things. So… outside the U.S, they're much more… sympathetic is the wrong word, but whatever. Sympathetic or accepting of interdisciplinary work. So, area studies, sociology, geography, the natural science, and even policy outlets can like, be… have more weight, than the more siloed American political science universe, and so it's okay to actually say. you're an interdisciplinary scholar in these settings. Like, when I was on the job market in the U.S, I would rarely say in my US interviews that I'm, like. interdisciplinary, and if I did… if and when I did, I would say, I have this, like, climate, environmental science component, but I'm a political science blah blah blah blah blah. And so, this is not something you have to do as much out in the U.S. And… then the publishing across tradition, same thing.

Elisa D’Amico Once you're on the tenure track in the U.S, you can start to… publish a little bit outside, because there's value of especially collaborating in your university across departments. Like, there's weight to that for your tenure packet. But again, you cannot do that at the expense of then not publishing in political science until you're tenured. And then, again, outside the US, it's like. You can be more interdisciplinary, this is normal. So, whatever. You guys know the journals, you can look at SCImago or whatever later. this is kind of what we're working with, with the top rankings in the more general political science and IR journals, but then we have these subfield journals that honestly are almost sometimes better, even ranked and respected than some of the general political science journals. So, like, JPR, for example, is journal… of Peace Research, yes. Journal of Peace Research, GEP is Global Environmental Politics. These are subfield… honestly, comparative, anyway. These are more subfield journals, but they're, like, so well respected. Like, JPR is respected almost just as much as, like.

Elisa D’Amico some of these ones on this left column here. So it does… it's not like a… and there… and these subfield journals are always more friendly towards, like. excellent qualitative work as well. and so… I have this, like, more… like, so… so there's subfield, which is… these… this middle row, and this is still in political science broadly, right? So, like, I don't have global environmental change on here, because that's not really political science. Or, like, categorized as such, but, that would be more on this right side, this interdisciplinary, like, more natural science version. And this can go for other things that are, like, actually outside. Like, this could also be… like, criminology, or psychology, or whatever, right, yeah, or law, whatever your, like, extra subfield or alternate field is. And again, these ones over here, excellent, and honestly, respected, like, worldwide, but again, in an American system, it kind of… It varies. I mean, nature is almost always safe-ish, but even still. Okay.

Elisa D’Amico This is kind of redundant, I'm gonna skip through this. The top political science journals, it's easier to get a pretty good quantitative article out there than it is probably to get, like, an excellent qualitative paper there sometimes, or it has to be really, really, really excellent. And so, if that's you, that's fine. Like I said, this middle row, or this middle column, like. Are also so excellent, so well-respected, and maybe in this universe. If this is you, like, you don't have to get that one APSR, AJPS, JOP publication, like, they wouldn't even expect you to, because they are hiring you to be a certain type of scholar, and that's something that they all understand and, like, don't care as much about. So you can do these really, really good subfield journals, is my point. And this is a thing everywhere, whether you're a qualitative scholar in the US or abroad, like, this is, like, easily respected everywhere.

Elisa D’Amico I'll kind of go through this quickly. So, for master's students, really publishing at all, even in lower journals, is, like, good and cool and respected and fine. I say non-predatory journal. If you are concerned that it's a predatory journal, you should just Google it. If it's, like, a Q4, you might want to double check. Q3s are often fine, but even so, if you can shoot for, like, a lower or a quieter or more specialized Q2, that's great. But the stakes are just lower here in general. It's just gonna be any of these things are gonna be impressive, full stop. And it's about, like, learning the process, like, getting the hang of it. Also, this is for actual journal publications. policy writing, and conference is a little bit more if you're a computational scholar. And these working papers, like, these are blogs, this is all great at the master's level, like, really, really good. And so I wouldn't be like, oh, I need to be, like, these PhD students publishing in these top journals. Like, that's still not expected for me on this phase, although it does give you an edge, but it's, like, completely unnecessary.

Elisa D’Amico PhD students, Coming for the job market. You should really… unless you have several things in the works or several things out, only go for Q1 and Q2 journals until you have, like I said, enough under your belt to pull in some of these quicker, like. like, volume-related publications that are in, like, lower journals. But there's so many excellent lower Q1s, and so many excellent Q2s that this is, like, something that you should generally probably try to shoot for. Again, subfield work is fine, but you want at least one. Like, I know migration scholars that will do, like, Journal of Migration Studies, Journal of this, Journal of That, like, these super, super subfield journals that are, like, pretty good, and they're in this realm, but, like, you should try to get, like, one that's in… Even, like, political… what is it? Political research… Quarterly?

Elisa D’Amico Like these, that are, like, good enough Q1s, but they're not, like, maybe top 10, but they're general enough for, like, to be quite widely read. So this is something that you should try to get under your belt alongside your subfields, publications. So, some committees will accept this high volume of strong subfield publications if the call is very… Specific, but you don't know… you… Given the state of the job market, it's good to have some of these more general ones under your belt, just so that you can sort of, like. cast yourself, like, a wider net, like, as more broad of a scholar, like, speak to these other audiences, things like this. And if you have an R&R as a PhD student on the job market, that's also totally fine. So, don't worry too much about getting it, like, done and dusted, accepted, like, out, out, out.

Elisa D’Amico like, it's better almost to, like, cultivate something really nice and get an R&R, on the job market, or going into the job market at a really good journal, rather than just, like, wrapping it out and getting, like, an easy, easy win publication, especially if it's your job market paper, or, like, your biggest research contribution of the, of the stage you're at. Again, the super specific subfield work is good as part of your portfolio, and actually probably really important for that, but should not be… in this… in this economy, should not be all you have going into the job market. So again, a great R&R from, like, a great, well-placed place is, like, something that you should probably do for, like, for your most promising publication. After the PhD, maybe even if you're at the postdoc stage or tenure track stage, like, you can do a bit of quantity and quality. Like, don't ever sacrifice quality for quantity, but you can start doing both, especially once you have some of these higher level, general publications out. Lower Q ones are literally fine, kind of, the whole time.

Elisa D’Amico again, before tenure, I wouldn't go to, like, Q3s and Q… like, that's not… never go to Q4s, but that's not, like, part of something you can do yet just for the sake of getting something out, because they're still going to want to see, like, performance on this top level, and there's lots of tenure requirements that require… unless you take a teaching position, that will require you to have this. interdisciplinary… I mentioned this before, but interdisciplinary… publishing will become more acceptable in the U.S. around this phase, as long as it's still well-placed. Again. Staying away from some of the super niche stuff is… and trying to do, like, the more well-known interdisciplinary outlets is probably good here. Okay, good. Circling back to the teaching-focused positions, the expectations are so different. Like, if it's a teaching… like, if it's a non-tenure track teaching-focused job, or it's kind of different in the UK and over here, there's, like.

Elisa D’Amico teaching lectureships, you could maybe say a little bit more about what would be required for that, but I know for the teaching-heavy positions in the US, that will always be that way. You might need to sort of, like. get publications out for promotion, but the bar is completely different. You probably can do lower journals, or more policy writing, or even book reviews, or… I think also, like, teaching-focused publications, like, at least in the UK, like, when we read those kind of job descriptions. You seem to get, sort of education-focused research is kind of in the discipline, like, in the discipline of political science or international relations and the field that we're coming from, they would like you to publish, potentially, on actual, like, education. Yeah, like, pedagogy and stuff. Yeah, so it is very different, yeah. Yeah.

Elisa D’Amico And I think it is kind of hard, it does vary, I think, internationally, and there's lots of… in the US, there's, like, non-tenure track lecturing positions, but there's also some of the liberal arts schools are sort of like this as well, because anything that has a heavier teaching load, they, of course, like, aren't gonna, like. overwhelm me with the research requirements. Book chapters are also better for this. Yeah, this is just a different universe, and For obvious reasons, they're not gonna make you… like, have the same grind, have, like, that would be completely unfair. But yeah, hear volume and doing it… Probably matters a little bit more than, like. not doing it at all, and hoping for really high publications. Okay. books. I… oh my god. Honestly, I think, like, having a book chapter is good, is great, when you're on the job market. It's like, if you can, like… put in a little bit of volume in any way possible, to your CV, that's fine. I think one… one book chapter is more than enough.

Elisa D’Amico in terms of, like, the resources you're putting in, the time you're spending on your different strategies. Kasia can maybe have different advice on this. I'm… I'm a yes woman, so… Yeah, yeah. My problem is that I've probably taken on too many book chapters, but I would tend to agree that, you know, like, having two or three… maybe, yeah, one is more than okay, and then just kind of leaving it at that. I think sometimes you feel like people have done, you know, put in a favor for you, for example, and you want to return the favor by accepting a request for a book chapter, but sometimes you just need to say no. Yeah. And focus on a journal article, because that… or on your own book. On your own monograph. This is my own advice to myself.

Elisa D’Amico that is a lot more value added to your CV, for sure. Yeah. And when you're on the job market in this way, just, like, Yeah. a more resourceful use of your time. For sure. And then there's… there's some… I'm not gonna get into the, like, university press thing a ton, a ton, but, like. having academic… press-related… I don't even know if it matters for chapters versus your actual manuscript. I don't know how that's looked at, but of course, like, push for academic press is kind of when you can… oftentimes, when it's a book chapter, you're offered, that's not really in your power, but, Oxford Handbook Chapters… kind of have an exception, because these are worth it. If you can get one of these at any stage, that's really, really good, like, that's… everybody's gonna know it, it's gonna be cited, it's gonna put your name on a map, you should say yes to those if the opportunity presents itself. There's other handbooks.

Elisa D’Amico That can also be good even as a learning experience, or like a stepping stone to an Oxford Handbook chapter, but again. it falls more into, like, the… what should you do with your time type of a thing. Yeah. Policy writing and non-academic outputs, okay. this… I remember being on the job market, or being, like, later… no, being mid through my PhD and being like, okay, what do the… what do the top university kids have that I don't have? And it was actually… to my surprise, the non-academic rating, they all had, like, these blog posts and these reports, and I was like, okay, I need to do that. So then I went and did that, but I hadn't… nobody had told me this. So I think that to be competitive, it is useful to have this big policy engagement section of your seat, not big, but have, like, a couple of things in there. Even if you self-publish a blog, or, like, ask your university institute to, like, publish it or something, just, like, a couple of these… are nice, and they're short-term wins, they're not as much effort, they can be advertisements for your article, things like this. So, I have a note here.

Elisa D’Amico So, foreign policy, international affairs, foreign affairs, The Economist, New York Times, if you can do this type of writing, that, like, lives somewhere between, like, a policy output and an academic article, like. it's not empirical and, like, rigorous in the same way, but it is so highly read, and has, like, such a big, like, almost impact factor, that it kind of can give you, like, one of these wins as well. What time is it? And then… the international organizations are also really good outlets for, like, substantive stuff, and you'll see through emails and listservs, they'll have, like, a lot of call for papers, thought pieces, blogs, you should just find these good listservs that serve you. And so if you can get some, like. different policy reports, blogs, whatever, out through these venues. That's really, really good. It can look kind of professional. Again, don't spend too much time trying to do this sort of thing at the expense of your academic rating when you're on the job market.

Elisa D’Amico And, and… I say don't post… I say don't post week blogs just for visibility. Again, it is only if it displaces your time from your real research. It works… Again, while this other way around, where you do the research, and then you use your public-facing output to advertise, like, the layman's version of your research, more or less. This is kind of the way to do it, but again, if your research isn't moving that fast, and you can do a short-term win policy, sort of facing output. easily, that's good too. Okay. And then also… I was just gonna add as well on the policy report thing, so sometimes you can find grants and things like that for specific policy reports that you might be able to sort of, I don't know, do a workshop and then, collate that, the information that you, kind of.

Elisa D’Amico gather from a workshop into a policy report, or do some sort of short-term research, and then put that into a policy report. I think those kinds of things are valuable for your CV, because it's grant capture, and it's, it's a policy or think tank. output as well, which, yeah, having a few of those is probably not gonna do you any harm. Yeah, for sure. I remember Talia could probably talk a little bit more about this. If there's questions, she does this, but anything that you can get funded to write, I think, is almost… almost… always something you should probably say yes to. Yeah. Because also, it means if they're gonna pay for you to write something, that means that they're good and… they're, like, on the map enough for that to be advantageous for everybody. Yeah, there's also op-eds as well, I don't know if you have a slide on that. No, I would say it falls into kind of the same universe. Yeah, so I was… I would say if you… if you like that style of writing, and you don't labor over, like, a thousand words, and you're happy to be… for it to be sort of circulated in months later.

Elisa D’Amico people… and it's, like, quick, easy, digestible, not… doesn't need extremely rigorous research behind it, but obviously, you're an authority, you're a voice on this issue, then sometimes they can be quite good and useful, because it does increase your visibility as an expert on that issue, and sometimes, outlets pay, so that's nice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that… So for a day's work, like, earning $200, $300 is isn't a bad thing. Yeah, I completely agree with that, and that kind of goes to my last point about this, which is that, like, obviously not everybody is going into academia. So, if you're not going into academia, and you have this huge public-facing side, you're an authority, you've written these op-eds, like, that is gonna be really good for… I mean, like, rigorous research article publications is also excellent for the non-academic job market, but that's when, like.

Elisa D’Amico maybe cultivating a CV to have a heavier side of this, like, is actually quite, quite worth it. It might be the opposite, where they want to see you can do this. and are happy to know that you can do the thing that is research, whereas in academia, it's a little bit the reverse. It's like, they want to see that you can do excellent research, but kind of want to see that you can do this thing, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. books. So, a lot of qualitative scholars that I'd see to interview in the US would say, like, my book manuscript, rather than my job market paper, kind of. You kind of still have my job market paper, but anyway, there's also a different professionalization conversation. But definitely outside the U.S, I was shocked to hear that, like, everybody, when I was interviewing out of the U.S, like, was, like… talking about their book contracts, and so I was talking about my book contract, like, my, like, my book manuscript, too, that I would then make into a blah blah blah, which I guess I have been, like, do… like, making strides towards, but it was not something that I was professionalized to do getting a PhD out of the US.

Elisa D’Amico So, that was a huge difference. There's obviously a lot of reasons why qualitative dissertations are more conducive to a book than, like, the three paper, more fragmented quantitative ones. Like, I don't think I need to explain that to you, but, the strap. Kasia could probably answer questions about this, but the strategy of, like… Pushing out journal articles versus your book manuscript is probably… It's tricky, probably, and, like, more complex. Yeah, it's hard. But, like, yeah, in the US, books are more of a senior scholar output sometimes. Again, focused on academic presses. really quick, like, just to have a book prospectus as part of your job market materials when you're assembling your job market materials, you should create your prospectus almost no… if you're… especially if you're gonna be on the international job market, almost no matter what.

Elisa D’Amico And use Oxford University Press's template. It's so good, and it's, like, very transferable to all the other university press requirements as well, I would say. I did this Oxford University Press First Book Prize. Every year, they give 10 of these away, and I just submitted my dissertation on a whim, and it got to a round where they gave me reviews, and then that, like, helped me progress to, like. not even having to finish my manuscript when I then submitted to Cambridge University Press, and so I think that is so beneficial to do. I would say just do it. Just, like, apply for this. It comes out, I think, in, like, December, January, every year. And, this prepares you for, like, anything that you want to do with the book down the road, so I would get this out of the way, if at all possible.

Elisa D’Amico the book R&R thing, I'm just gonna save for, like, later, or a different slide. really quick with the submission process. This is, like, this is easy. This is maybe also a different conversation, but… I know I talked about go for Q1, go for high Q1s, whatever. You need to check the fit, so, like, sometimes I'll be like, you know what? Everybody publishes in… oh my god, what's an example? J-O-P. But… I do climate conflict research. I'll just, like, go in, and I'll be like, since 2022, in Google Scholar, Journal of Politics, climate conflict keywords, and I'm like, okay, they don't publish on this at all. So, like. maybe I'm not gonna submit here. Yeah. Again, there's different types of articles that have, like, research notes, this and that, that have different merit and could probably go different places. That's kind of a separate conversation. Maybe it should be part of this conversation.

Elisa D’Amico ask me if you're curious about that. But you want to just make sure that you're not trying to submit somewhere that, like, you're not speaking to the literature there. Also, I feel like this is something that people don't realize, and that stresses them out sometimes, but the formatting doesn't have to be perfect, but it needs to be consistent. So, like, honestly, I know it's annoying, but, like, you should, like… It's very beneficial to use Overleaf for this, or LaTeX, because it's very easy to switch formatting, like, in seconds that way, and it looks really nice. Although some… some journals still want you to form… to provide a Word document that is a pre-formatted document that you can download from… like, Taylor and Francis, or… Yeah, so they'll always need an editable version. Yeah. So, oftentimes, you can submit the editable version as your raw LaTeX file, and that's what I do, and I always make them deal with that, but… Yeah, it can be finicky. Some of the submission systems can be a little bit finicky with, like, rendering some of these things. I think it just depends on the journal, really, like, what they prefer. Yeah.

Elisa D’Amico But, the moral of the story is that, like, you don't need… normally, you don't need it to be perfectly formatted, and if it doesn't pass the technical check, it'll go to the desk, or the administrator, and they'll be like, oh, you need this, this, and this, or this is over the word counter, this is this. They'll just push it back to you, and you can resubmit it, but it's better to just submit it, and for them to tell you what's wrong with it, like, rather than spending, like, so, so many hours of your life being like. messing with the spacing, or the section headers, or whatever. Yeah. So, obviously anonymize it, you know how to do that. Identify your corresponding author. This does not have to be the first author. This was something I learned just from co-authoring with faculty when I was a PhD student. Like.

Elisa D’Amico The corresponding author is the person that submits it, writes the cover letter also. Don't ever forget to write the cover letter, and there's some weird, finicky ways in which you will submit the cover letter alongside it. All the portals can be a little different. But I normally like to give the corresponding author role to a co-author that maybe hasn't been corresponding author before, so that they can kind of practice it. it's kind of… it's mostly inconsequential who the corresponding author is, except once I published somewhere where I was the corresponding author, and… the… My co-author's university had a publishing agreement with them, but my university didn't, and they only allowed publishing agreements from the corresponding author's university, so we had to… it's, like, not open access, so that was annoying, but normally that's not a problem. I have never seen that, like, other than this place.

Elisa D’Amico But when in doubt, maybe choose a corresponding author that has better agreements with their institution. Write the cover letter, use Overleaf, blah blah blah. Okay. After you submit it, like I said, it'll go through a technical check. Most of the time, it goes straight to the desk. Some places are more, like, annoying about this than others. Like, I just had, my, like, submission was at the desk in JPR for literally, like, three and a half weeks. which is kind of long for JPR, and then it… it was with the admin, not even the editor. And then it went… briefly to the editor, the editor was like, send it out for review, and then it went back to the admin, and then the admin was like, this is 15,000 words, make it 11, and then we'll send it out for peer review. It was like a weird backwards technical check thing, whatever. Interesting. But it'll go… for technical, and then they'll send it to the editor, no matter what. So an editor's gonna look at it. Some… a lot of places have two editors look at it, to avoid, like, picking favorites or whatever, but… the editor will keep it in their desk normally for, like, maybe a week. That really vastly depends on a million things.

Elisa D’Amico Yeah, I have smaller… like, you've had stuff with an editor for, like, a month? Three months. Okay, for 3 months. And so, yeah, there's, like, there's differences here, but, to be fair, 3 months and it's successful, so I think, like, it doesn't… like, the amount of time you wait does not… it doesn't really indicate how well your journal article's doing, you know what I mean? Like, it could be accepted within a week of, like, it's sent out for review within a week, it could be 3 months, and, you know… Because I think that, like, the… The super competitive journals that are obviously more well-staffed have kind of a social responsibility to, like, desk-reject you more quickly if they're gonna reject you, like, eventually, so that they don't, like. keep your article with them for ages, and then just, like, throw it away? I think… I think it all depends on… I really think it depends on the staff, like, how much they have… who's… basically how many people they have on the, sort of, editorial board. Right. The place that I sent it to is… it's very well ranked, but I think it's quite small in terms of, like, the number of people working on it, so… Yeah. Yeah, and I think this might also be a slight difference between, like.

Elisa D’Amico political science, quant, versus more qualitative stuff, so I think amongst… when I did my digging around and asking people how long it usually takes, they said about, you know, 3 months is Kind of okay. you know, 4 weeks to 3 months, like, don't sweat about it. Which is mad. Okay. I said smaller journals can take a month or more. Okay, a month or a few, or whatever. Okay. So, yeah, and then, whatever, it's with the editor. And then they'll desk reject it. In my case, there's… I get desk rejected all the time. At the desk rejection phase. some of the editors will give you feedback. I don't know what this depends on. I have no idea when they decide to or not to give you feedback. Some of them will be like, this is great, but this and this and this we don't think would work, or it's a scope thing, or submit it to its top conflict journal, I get a lot, things like this.

Elisa D’Amico Sometimes the feedback is valuable, and always implement it, because especially if you're submitting to the top places, like. it's good advice. And then resubmit, rinse and repeat. But if it's not desk-rejected… Also, don't worry about when your stuff is desk-rejected, like… it's normal, and sometimes there's arbitrary reasons why it is. Sometimes it was, like, an accidentally not a good fit, like. yeah, there's a lot there. If it goes out for peer review, that's great. I always take this as a win, because either you're gonna get… an R&R, or you're gonna get a reject, but you'll have a ton of feedback to work with. And I'm a big fan of sending your article out so that you can, like, get the feedback and move forward. So, again. different rules of thumb with how long things take, but, like, 3 months with peer reviewers. After that, you can probably ask the editor, like, hey, what's going on with my submission? Because it might be that the editor needs to be like, hey, like, we said to have this due a couple months ago, will you please just do your review?

Elisa D’Amico to the reviewer and, like, nudge them a little bit, and they're so busy that they might not prompt them to do this unless you prompt them to prompt them. But you also don't want to annoy the editor, because they have a ton on their plate, and they… you might be in the queue, like, super late. So there's a balance here, but, like, 3 months is, like, almost always, like, acceptable to follow up. 2 to 4 reviewers, I would say, 2 to 5. Depending on your field, will provide feedback and say, yes, no, maybe so, and the editor will mediate this. So, like, there could be a reviewer that, like, really hates it, but two that love it, and the editor loves it, and then it'll go through, you know? Like, the editor is the one that is, like.

Elisa D’Amico like, the judge here. And the editor, normally, if there's contradictory feedback, will give you more guidance on how to deal with the different conflicting reviews, and if they don't, you should, ask them to. And… I don't know, maybe it's different in your, like, subfield, but a conditional acceptance off the bat after, like, a submission is so incredibly rare, I've actually never heard of it happening… ever. Maybe it's different for you, but an R&R is more common, or a rejection, and even if you get an R&R, especially if it's major revisions, it's common to have, like, 2, even 3 plus R&Rs before an acceptance. Yeah. Yep, I'd agree, yeah. R&r is good news, blah blah blah, I just said this. A second R&R is common. Editor will tell you what to prioritize. Also, you can push back against the reviewers. A lot of them are unreasonable, and it takes a lot of work to figure out, like, oh, who do I need to please and tell? Put a lot of stuff in the footnotes.

Elisa D’Amico Yeah. Like, don't push back entirely against that one annoying reviewer, even if they're pretty unreasonable, just take, like, the easy, unreasonable stuff on board. Or, again, reach out to the editor to, like. arbitrate, or whatever, what's going on here. Especially where you have, like, a specific comment. We've had this as well, where one reviewer said, oh yeah, you've really done… you've made significant changes, and this is so much better, and the reviewer, too, was like, you've made no changes, and this is not any better. So, in cases where there's actual… an actual, you know, paradox… And the editor knows, right? For sure. Yeah. Footnotes are your friend. The memo, I'm not even gonna talk about Katie here has… A lovely TikTok that talks more about the revision memo. There's pretty much two ways to do it, and it also depends on how much… how major the revisions are.

Elisa D’Amico You can go line by line and be like, every single comment I'm responding to… I've done both of these, or you can go thematic, so be like, this is a chunk of things that everyone clearly want to change, so is this, so is this, and then here are some minor things throughout. Honestly, approach one reads better, and is easier when there's maybe fewer revisions that need to be made. But I've seen people request the line-by-line, if you've done thematic. So I think it just depends on a lot of things. I'm erring towards the line-by-line lately, just to, like, cover every single one of my bases. You could always do it line by line, but then throw it through ChatGPT and make it more thematic or something. But open with a note to the editor that is, like, these are the major things I did, and if there's any discrepancies you want to sort out at that phase, you can write it there too. Acceptance. So, you can get acceptance, conditional acceptance, there's almost always, like, little revisions, then it goes to the, like, copy editor and, like, the formatter, and then they'll push back stuff and be like.

Elisa D’Amico I need the exact page numbers for this article, and, like, stuff like that, tedious stuff that you have to fix, and you have to respond to their requests. You normally have to pay a fee if you want to open access. There's a ton of open access agreements with institutions. It's kind of worth… looking at that if you care about it. If you really care about open access, It's good for citations. Yeah, yeah, it's good for citations, but… yeah, ask if you have questions. And then you're done. And then you get… yeah, and then you're done. I'm not gonna talk about the book submission process. It mirrors the journal article one a lot. For a first book, often you need a full manuscript, plus your prospectus. For other books… this is wrong, actually. Sometimes this happens. Yeah, this happened to me, but I think it's less common, Yeah. I think a full manuscript is common. Again, I said use OUP's template, first book price, blah blah blah blah blah. So, it'll go out for reviewers, whether it's a full book or sample. Yeah. Reviewers will come back. This differs, so we were just talking before this, like, my R&R for the book… is not going back out to reviewers. It's going, I'm gonna write the revision memo, but you write the revision memo now before making changes, rather than after, in my case, and then the revision memo goes to the Cambridge University Press board, where they're, like, giving out book contracts, and they're like, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. But they just see what changes I plan to make based on reviewers' responses, so it's more about your plan. Kasia has this experience right now, though, where she's a reviewer on a book.

Elisa D’Amico And it was more like a journal article, where she did make the change, the author did make the changes, and then pushed it back to you. So I guess there can be both, but it somewhat mirrors… Yeah, it's really… it's quite similar. But I was shocked about the whole revision memo thing when I first… like, got, like, an R&R in this way, I… I… that was new to me. Yeah. But okay, that's what's going on with the book. That's more about the book and the R&R and the blah blah blah. It's not an acceptance until it goes to the board and they give you a contract, despite how much work you might be doing on this. But I will say, it's valuable to have had it go out for review anywhere, because like I said, I collected my OUP reviewer feedback.

Elisa D’Amico built that into my memo, sent it out for review again, and it shows that it's at least getting to the going out for review stage. And also it's valuable feedback in the same way a review and reject is from a journal. Yeah. I think also just a warning of, like, books obviously take a really long time to write, and reviewers can be kind of brutal, so I just think, like, make sure that you're prepared for somebody to kind of rip it apart, but try and see it really constructively, rather than, like, I've spent 3 years writing this book, and then 1 year reviewing it, and editing it, and making sure it's ready for publication, and then I get this R&R that's, like, still, you know, saying that it needs so much more work, like, just don't be disheartened, because… It hap- it happens to everyone. Yeah.

Elisa D’Amico Yeah. Yeah, a mean reviewer is common. But also, it's a matter of… because books take so long to write, there might be, like, current events, things going on that you want to then incorporate, but they weren't in the iteration, and it's, like, a whole building process, I would say. For sure. I know we're, like, really, really, really incredibly low on time. The use of AI… these are things we can talk about. The use of AI in writing and submission. There's a lot of, like, thoughts I have on this. How to deal with unreasonable reviewers, where to send your… pay… when you're going through the strategy of, like, first I'm gonna send it here, and then if it's rejected, I'm gonna send it here. Like, if you have questions about that process. Also, Kasia can talk about editing A book. Oh, like, a whole-ass book? And then, policy writing is more of a company, like, professionally. So, okay, I'm gonna stop there and just see if there's any immediate questions for our remaining few.