Publishing in US academic journals

• Submission
  • Identify an appropriate journal
  • Read it regularly to learn its rhetorical preferences
  • Learn of submission guidelines (usually from web site or printed issue)
  • Prepare manuscript exactly as prescribed (bibliographic style, section numbering, margins and spacing, etc.)
  • A clean, fresh-looking manuscript attracts readers; a shopworn, heavily corrected, or error-ridden text repels them.
  • Have the English and rhetorical style polished completely
  • Submit only a completed manuscript, no work in progress
  • You may want to send an email query in advance, esp. to ask if electronic submission is acceptable (nowadays it generally is, and often it is required, although there are still major journals which discourage or prohibit it)
  • Expect a reasonably prompt acknowledgment of receipt of your submission (usually by email); if you don't get one within a few weeks of the time you expect the editorial office to receive your manuscript, send an emailed query to make sure they received it
• Review
  • Most US/W. European scholarly journals do double-blind refereeing (reviewers don't know who author is, author doesn't know who reviewers are)
  • Therefore don't identify yourself too directly ("as I proved conclusively in my trailblazing book Fowler 1998...")
  • Review may take as long as four or five months without being considered excessive
  • After that time, feel free to query editors (tactfully)
  • Don't take any criticism in the review personally. If it raises issues of concern to the analysis in the paper, take them seriously.
  • Editor will usually add his/her own comments to the reviewers' reports, especially when the author is encouraged to revise the paper for publication (prioritizing: A is very important and must be resolved, but while B would be nice, it's not absolutely necessary for publication; you may want to deal with that in a subsequent article)
• Editorial decisions
  • Usually there are various types of editorial decisions after review is complete. At the Journal of Slavic Linguistics we use the following 4 general categories:
    • Accept as is, publish without further revision (unusual!)
    • Paper is acceptable, but needs revisions along the following lines ...
    • Paper is not acceptable, but could be resubmitted after thorough revision and rethinking
    • Reject
  • Sometimes you will be given a deadline for revision. If so, try to meet it, and let the editor know if you cannot.
• Revision
  • Make a sincere effort to meet the criticisms of the reviewers
  • Don't get angry!
  • If a reviewer misunderstood, or if his/her criticisms are factually, theoretically, or logically incorrect, then you may want to explain this clearly in a cover letter with your revision when you send it back in to the editor. Do so professionally, not angrily.
  • If the reviews called for a many point-by-point revisions, it may be worth returning a list of them with indications where and how the important ones were met. This may make it easier for the editor to judge the revision without sending the paper out to the same reader again (which means the paper can be published quicker)
• Hints
  • If rejection doesn't bother you, try for the most prestigious journals first
  • If quick publication is important, choose a middle-ranking journal
  • If you embrace reader's suggestions, and move wholeheartedly and expeditiously to satisfy them -- that will impress the editor
  • "Better" journals (= more prestigious, higher circulation, etc.) will exhibit a higher degree of professionalism in dealing with authors, and will expect a higher degree of professionalism in return on the authors' part
  • Smaller journals (= more specialized, lower circulation, etc.) will often seem more erratic; this is usually due to inadequate staffing and resources