A Nice Model for the Publication Process

In the social sciences, peer reviewed journal articles are king. Here is a nice suggestion about a timeline for developing an article and then sending it out for publication that was suggested by my advisor.

You start by developing an idea and then presenting it at a local workshop to get some feedback. At this point, you may have written a short version or just have the powerpoint. Then you submit this to a conference, where you will need to both write a full paper--though not yet of journal submission quality--and also get feedback on it. After that, turn it around and revise, (maybe again presenting locally or at a related workshop), and then get it cleaned up enough to submit to a journal.

So how does that work in practice? I thought of a reasonable paper topic from my dissertation last summer, and had a short synopsis. I started writing an initial conference paper over the fall and submitted the 20 page initial version to the ASA (sociology) conference in January. It ended up being accepted, and I spent about 6 months off and on revising it, developing the theory, refining the literature. (We had to send the final conference version out to our panel discussant, so I wanted it to be pretty solid.) Along the way, I sent it to about 5 people for comments, from my phd cohort and others, and got some useful feedback. Note also that in about May/June I diagrammed two typical articles from the journal to help inform the format and writing expectations. Now it's August, and I've had some good feedback for the article, and today I just submitted it. Fingers crossed -- I'm hoping that it will go to review and get an R&R, which means revise and resubmit in academic publishing lingo.