How hard is it to publish a paper?

======= Date Modified 10 Aug 2012 09:34:50 =======
Hello,

Well, I'm in the midst of writing a paper for publication and I was just wondering, how hard is it to send and publish a research paper for conferences or journals?

I'm at the moment struggling to write the paper as I have still A LOT of reading, summarizing and comparing to do, and I would think this is normal? Or I'm just doing it wrongly :/

======= Date Modified 10 Aug 2012 11:37:02 =======
======= Date Modified 10 Aug 2012 10:02:16 =======
What I say about publishing during Phd time is that, in my opinion, the article should come straight out of the Phd (I'd say the same about conference papers too). It's not worth the hassle and time etc etc to be reading up on something new. Plus if you're lucky you'll get some decent feedback to use in improving your thesis.

In terms of time, I've found that getting published takes (at the very best) 9 months from sending the thing in to seeing it in print. I'm currently wrestling with a journal to post an article of mine and it'll be over 12 months if they publish it in their winter edition. Why? Well first they forgot about it, then their reviewer forgot about it, then they got a reviewer who slated it, the other reviewer thought it was great, the editor said it would need "substantial revisions to be considered", then she emailed me two weeks later (without me replying to her previous email) and said it was great and wanted me to send the revised version by the start of Sept. Fuckers are playing with me!!

Writing an article is obviously a complex process but just make it as easy on yourself as possible.

======= Date Modified 10 Aug 2012 11:53:21 =======
It must be pretty hard. At the end of the PhD, I have not managed to publish a single article yet, although I have submitted 3 articles so far. I am also part of a committee publishing conference proceedings and I can tell you from personal experience that we value all contributions with extremely high standards in mind. This means that even if a paper is good but there are other papers that are better in academic quality and require less work, if he have to accept a limited number of papers for publication, sadly some good papers are rejected (instead of revised and resubmitted). Sad but true. It has taken me a whole month writing a single paper - and when it is not published, it can get very frustrating.

My only proper academic paper so far I co-wrote with my supervisor. The papers I will be submitting next have been all my own work. I had another paper which I had been recommended to submit for publication, but after 3 different journals have turned it down, I've given up on that one. Actually I've given on submitting papers on medical ethics full stop, despite being a qualified medic.
So it's certainly not easy to get the hang of what exactly it is particular journals want.

I agree with larrydavid that it's much easier when the paper (whether for a journal or conference) comes from your phd as you'll then know a lot more about the subject.

With regards a journal/conference accepting I'd probably say it depends on the journal/conference itself (whether they feel it's appropriate, if it's something they want to publish, etc) but also on who else is submitting. Like marasp mentioned, if there are a lot of other good papers that the editors feel more strongly about, then yours may be rejected. Saying that, there's nothing stopping you from submitting elsewhere - still frustrating though as you may need to revise it to suit that journal...

in my discipline, and for empirical work, I think it purely comes down to method. If you have a great longitudinal study with a massive sample for example, then no matter how badly you position it, it will probably get in with some revisions. If your methodology is bad to being with or has some flaws then you'll have problems. I'm trying to publish some of my PhD stuff that is cross sectional and have had issues because of that - but then I am trying for the top journals - it would get published reasonably easily in lower level journals.

Hey there! I think it is definitely do-able during your PhD, but there are a few things that can make it easier or harder. I got 7 first author papers accepted in journals during my PhD (5 in my first choice journals, 2 in my second choice), but I had a lot of excellent guidance along the way and wouldn't have managed anything like that without good support from my primary supervisor. She commented on several drafts of all my papers before submission, and literally has 100s of publications, so she knew what she was doing. My methodology and sample size were pretty sound, which helps. And I also had advice on which journals might be suitable targets for each paper- a lot of it is about choosing the right journal for your paper. I tried to aim reasonably high and sent all of my empirical and review papers to good journals, but I had one theoretical paper that I kind of accepted wasn't amazing (and it was quite controversial too!) and I sent that off to a lower ranked journal. To be honest, I didn't really like the paper much and just wanted rid of it! But generally I would advise aiming high if time is on your side- there's nothing to lose. Most people in my field (clinical psychology) manage to get something published during their PhDs, but I believe it can be much tougher in other disciplines. Either way- if you plan on staying in academia you will need publications, so go for it. If you get some decent guidance along the way, it isn't that scary a process. And when you get to viva, it's always nice to know your work has already been peer-reviewed :) Good luck! KB

*Sees Keenbean has replied in the main forum page and clicks to see how early in the post she starts to talk about herself and mention the 7 articles published* :p

Wow, Larrydavid, you really do hold a grudge! If you read the rest of my post it describes how much support I had in order to get those publications and how I couldn't have done it without that support! Only trying to offer my advice, for what it's worth. KB

It must depend on the subject - I mean where the paper revolves around large amounts of original data, it's easier than writing a paper that requires some original analysis eg a law paper.

======= Date Modified 11 Aug 2012 17:46:43 =======
I agree DocInsanity- I think it's much more common, and probably easier, to get multiple publications in some fields where you can send off several papers based on the same dataset. It's certainly the norm in psychology to get a few publications, but I gather it's much much harder in other fields such as the humanities etc. Best, KB

I'm only teasing!

Hmmm, I'm never sure with you- we seem to have quite a history of disagreements on here lol! KB