Hello, I'm a second year History PhD student and was wondering what opinions people have as regards the value of getting published in PG journals? Obviously they are far less valuable than established academic journals, but are they worth publishing in at all? As it stands I'm having a couple of articles published in PG journals this year and am waiting to hear back from two academic journals whether they will publish my articles (one of the latter has yet to tell me if they want my article despite having submitted it over seven months ago!).

I work on the editorial team of a postgraduate journal and we have a very rigorous selection process for articles. Postgraduate journals ARE academic journals. Our articles are double-blind peer reviewed and our reviewers have been trained to have high standards when critiquing articles; in fact often our reviewers are established academics. Even if the articles are not publishable, and by that I mean - cannot be published even with extensive revision - we give very effective peer reviewed feedback to the authors so they become aware of the standards required to be successful publishers.

From the point of view of developing an academic career postgraduate journals are definitely worth publishing in. Our journal at least, is definitely an established academic journal, and just because it is postgraduate does not mean it is not of a high international standard. We wouldn't release an issue unless we had a selection of good articles to publish. If everything we get in is below our standards we don't release an issue. Postgraduate journals are worth publishing in because they put you in front of your peers and obviously being published looks good on your CV. When submitting articles to more prestigious journals in the future the editors will see that you already have a publishing history.

Definitely get involved with postgraduate journals. How many people are actually publishing in the most prestigious journals in the world in the second year of a PhD?

Thanks for the detailed response Huxley. I certainly think that PG journals are worth publishing in, hence why I'm having two articles published in PG journals, but was just curious as to how others in the academic community perceived them. Some people I know (fellow PhD students), have a fairly dismissive attitude towards them, but I'm glad that isn't universally the case!

I'm in a field where there are no 'postgrad' journals that I've heard of, and the idea seems strange to me, but I would say that if you want an academic career you need to concentrate on publishing in outlets that would be deemed REF-able. There is no advantage in multiple publications in places that will not count, when in the early stages of the REF cycle, one hit in a good journal could make a new PhD a good prospect. Go for quality over quantity. On the 7 month wait, I understand from historian friends that that under a year is regarded as OK, but maybe ask your supervisor what the norm for that journal is, and whether an update request is appropriate or not.

Yeah MarstonMoor I have met a lot of snobbish PhD students as well. Snobbery always seems to be tied to conservative, traditional, anti-educational values of domination and priggishness rather than any sort of useful engagement with humanity. Dismissiveness is more an indication of culture than merit.

Hi, personally I would stay away from publishing in PG journals. I say this because of several things. Firstly, there is no reason why you should think publishing in these journals in the first place as one should be aiming for mainstream academic journals (you need to be aspirational!) It is quite possible that your submission to a PG history journal could very well get a major review with a major history journal (and one that is REFable) so in one sense one is selling one's research short and if a good deal of your research is within these publications you are going to have trouble further down the line with finding new material for the mainstream journals. Second factor is the REF factor. PG journals would not be worthy for consideration for REF and would have completely no value on a CV at all, nothing. Tbh I am snobbish about seeing people listing PG publications (never happens in geography because there are not really any), only because I think you are wasting your time and research for the above reasons. Invest time and effort into working up excellent REFable articles. These take time, I worked one up for 1 year in my 2/3rd year and doing another one now for the past 6 months.

[quote]Postgraduate journals are worth publishing in because they put you in front of your peers and obviously being published looks good on your CV. When submitting articles to more prestigious journals in the future the editors will see that you already have a publishing history.quote]

I would also suggest that this is a rather naïve comment. 'putting you in front of your peers' No because whilst peers may not have any papers they may be working on major journals and thus trump you (unless you are also developing major journals yourself). If your peers are not doing anything and you are publishing in a PG journal you may be you are 'putting yourself ahead of your peers' however for reasons stated earlier PG publications are worthless. One the question of 'future editors will see that you have already have a publishing history' this is false because editors do not care about this, I never published anything but went straight to a top journal, so long as the research article is great then everything is fine.

Thanks for your responses bewildered and hutzy998, particularly as regards to the importance of the REF. I certainly agreed that PG articles are of limited use in terms of future employability but I think they have at least some value in getting used to the process of writing for more prestigious journals. Perhaps in that respect they have a similar value to book reviews, i.e. won't get you a job but worthwhile doing anyway as long as you don't do too many of them. I also have a couple of articles which may get published in established academic journals next year so I should have that angle covered, at least to a certain extent.

This is utter nonsense. Many of the people who have published in my journal are now established academics. Likewise, just about everyone who has worked on the editorial team of my journal is now an established academic. Yes you are snobbish AND don't know anything about postgraduate journals. Your field doesn't even have postgraduate journals. How many of your peers (2nd/3rd year PhD) are published in world-leading journals? How many of your peers have experience working on an editorial team of a journal? Have you ever organised an international conference rammed with world-leading academics and publishing experts? Have you copy-edited, peer-reviewed, web published an international journal? Have you ran training courses on peer-reviewing, book reviewing, and public speaking? Have you secured thousands in funding to deliver projects in postgraduate publishing?

I know several names of established academics who have had their careers consolidated through being involved in PG publication, all of them much more experienced and established than you.

The burden of proof is upon you. How many people have damaged their careers by publishing in PG publications?

Yeah imagine the world outside yours, a world where you are published in several major journals and have all the experience of actually founding your own journals, securing thousands in funding, being the instigator of major projects across Universities related to student publishing, delivering conferences rammed with leading experts on publishing, are getting noticed at the highest levels in both your subject and the publishing industry, and then you getting closer to the real world.

As I said dismissive is conservative.

Lets see you establish a whole new subject without your own journal, that you haven't published in.

Own the REF not the article.

This is a very interesting debate.

On the one hand (as Bewildered and Hutzy seem to be arguing) only established academic journals have good research in them.

On the other hand (as Huxley and Marstonmoor seem to think) postgraduate journals are good places to learn about publishing and also a place to get your work out there before going for bigger journals.

My questions for everyone are these -

1) Are the two points of view mutually exclusive? Can these opinions not be combined?
2) Why can PG publications not be submitted to the Research Excellence Framework?
3) Is the Research Excellence Framework not just for staff of Universities?

I wouldn't worry about Hutzy998's post Timmy the REF has not even been fully completed yet and is just another political monopoly.

By Hutzy998's logic everything intellectual that happened pre-REF era is "worthless".

This of course includes all work done by Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Confucius, Machiavelli, Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes, Galileo, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, etc etc, all of which is clearly valueless in light of Hutzy998's infallible logic.

The value of outstanding amateurs and autodidacts such as Patrick Moore, William Blake, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Terry Pratchett, Herman Melville, Ernest Hemingway, Leonardo da Vinci, and Julian Assange has now rescinded in light of Hutzy998's and the REF's authority.

I can certainly see where you are coming from Huxley. On a more practical note I have just been looking at the Assessment Framework and Guidance on Submissions here:
Acceptable output includes:

"work of direct relevance to the needs of commerce, industry, and to the public and voluntary
sectors; scholarship; the invention and generation of ideas, images, performances, artefacts including design, where these lead to new or substantially improved insights; and the use of existing knowledge in experimental development to produce new or substantially improved materials, devices, products and processes, including design and construction"

AND

"research that is published, disseminated or made publicly available in the form of assessable
research outputs"

I will add that in no place does this document say Postgraduate Journals are not acceptable places to publish work.

The document focuses more on the type of work that can be used as evidence NOT the place it is published in.

In fact the "Unclassified Quality" of work, is work of a quality that "falls below the standard of nationally recognised work. Or work which does not meet the published definition of research for the purposes of this assessment", and work that is published in PG Publications can of course be of a standard which "meets the published definition of research" (defined in my previous post above).

Having read this I cannot see how the journal is at all relevant other than being a publication.

If the research was in a Postgraduate Publication and was One star Quality i.e. "recognised nationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour" then Huxley you are correct.