Språkvetenskapliga fakulteten, LILAe

Kalendarium

Organizer: Michael Boyden. Description by Gordon Hutner: My workshop, “Scholarly Publishing: What, Where, When, and How,” is based on nearly 30 years of experience editing American Literary History. I’ve given this presentation, at all kinds of departments, to large audiences and small, to literature students and humanities grad students, as well as students from other disciplines. While conceived as a how-to, it begins with the otherwise unspoken question, “Why publish?” Students know that it’s important to establish credentials on the job market, but they often have a limited awareness of the publishing expectations for the rest of their career. Nor are they necessarily attuned to either the personal rewards and consolations of active scholarly publication or the system of intra- and extramural emolument of which publishing, especially at R1 jobs, is such a crucial part. Finally, they generally do not envision how their scholarly communities will be constituted outside of grad school and the crucial part publishing plays. So I try to give them a brief overview of the role of publishing in their long-term future and of the various kinds of publishing they may be asked or are interested to do, as well as the professional rationales (and rewards) for continuing to publish beyond the employment market realities. Those realities drive the rest of my program, beginning with two questions: how much they should publish at this stage, i.e., what they should anticipate as entry-level requirements. Secondly, I ask, what kind of writing should they make use of. I help them to see the particular challenges involved in converting such material into publishable essays. We begin by considering the professional work a scholarly article is supposed to do as opposed to the work assigned to a dissertation chapter, seminar essay, or panel paper— differences of purpose, scale, and scope. What ensues is a discussion of how to adapt their writing to that purpose. I emphasize how so many submissions founder on the failure both to articulate, forcefully and early, an engaging statement of argument and to create strategies for effectively organizing arguments. From there we turn to how to choose venues for their articles. I explain the simple steps they can take to limit the chances of their essays going to the wrong journal and how they can find the right ones, including some basic advice about how to identify the journals that will be interested in publishing their work. I also explain the best ways to avoid a situation where an essay that spends an unjustifiable length of time on an editor’s desk. After brief attention to cover letters, I next describe what happens when an essay is submitted, and how editors winnow out the ones with the best chance of surviving the competition for space. At this point, I explain a journal’s schedule and why the process takes as long as it does. I further explain that rejection is quite normal and that virtually every one of their professors has suffered this commonplace fate at one time or another. At this point, I also segue into a discussion of readers’ reports and how to understand them; who writes them, what forms they usually take; and how professors, rather than fellow students, can help students digest them. I also describe the expectations of a resubmission. Then we deal briefly with the consequences of acceptance and the next steps they should take. We also discuss the etiquette of corresponding with editors, especially when a journal has been in arrears and something seems amiss. I gladly take questions.