Reflections on writing your first journal submissions
I previously published in the newsletter of the Society for Psychological Anthropology in their “Mentoring Matters” column.
Journal editors are fortunate to receive submissions from new authors, previously unpublished researchers or scholars early in their careers. If they are like me, we love to publish these for so many reasons: the manuscripts often offer novel ideas and share projects the field doesn’t already know about widely, and we can see the future of a field to which we are dedicated. When I see an article by a new author or mentor someone less experienced in publishing, it’s an opportunity for me too, and I hope we can publish the original research, as long as the editorial office and author together can shepherd the piece through review, revision, and acceptance.
But junior authors sometimes misunderstand what editors expect, so I thought I’d collect some of the feedback I send repeatedly to early-career researchers and share it here:
1) Ethos reviewers are asked whether a manuscript is sufficiently ‘innovative’ or presents material novel enough to warrant publication. Whether a manuscript offers a distinctive contribution to the field is the most important consideration when deciding whether to publish. We do not ask if an author has exhaustively reviewed all the previous literature on the topic. In fact, given word restrictions, we do not want an over-abundance of literature review. Key texts? Yes. Relating your work to predecessors that inspire it? Of course.
Any journal article has to balance how retrospective and comprehensive it will be with how constructive and suggestive the author it is. Check out the length of references lists in a journal before you submit: if your references list is a lot longer than typical, you might be giving the readers too much literature review (if you’re writing a review article or synthetic essay, you might need more).
2) On the other hand, everything you do need not be revolutionary or unprecedented. Do not heap abuse on predecessors, some of whom might be asked to review your article. Most innovation is incremental, not paradigm-overthrowing. Bad faith or unbalanced critique, such as twisting an author’s assertions out of context or belittling other intellectual work, will often lead reviewers to be equally ungenerous. Academic writing is not bloodsport; you do not have cast down your ancestors to get published!
3) To get the balance right with prior scholarship, my advice is to focus on including literature you want to engage with substantially, either constructively or critically. A one-off citation of a text in a laundry list citation at the end of a sentence — those lists of six or eight author names and dates strung together in a parenthesis — are not helpful. Likewise, a drive-by ‘dis’ of another theorist is not scholarship: it’s a kind of intellectual insult comedy routine we don’t need (and not nearly as sophisticated as it might sound).
4) Reduce excessive meta-essaying. Many junior authors waste verbiage telegraphing where they will go and inserting themselves into their texts. “I conclude…” “I will argue…” “I am interested…” “I seek…” “I will explore…” The work is inherently yours. You can just “conclude” or “argue” without narrating. And for heaven’s sake, don’t tell us so that something is interesting to you; get the reader interested in it instead. Every self-reference is not “reflexivity”: sometimes it’s just unnecessarily complex, sloppy writing or introjecting yourself where you don’t belong. Removing this layer of unnecessary first-person reference can be like wiping a cloudy film from your arguments. They will suddenly seem bolder, clearer, and more direct.
The point is not that all first-person references must be erased. Rather, superfluous or obscuring first-person introjection complicates prose and drains arguments of their force. Write, “I will argue that…” and then go back and delete the phrase and see if you don’t like it better. When reflexivity adds substantially to the article’s key arguments, it’s entirely appropriate, but often it does not.
5) Most ethnographic research reports should be rhetorically structured inductively. Start with something from the ethnography fairly concrete — an example, a fact, a case study — and lead into your theory. Most readers prefer to see a clear case or example for a theoretical argument before a lengthy abstract discussion.
Junior authors sometimes front-load their theory, making their introduction a dense literature review and “burying the lede,” as journalists say. The innovative part of the author’s argument is only revealed after the reader has struggled through an intellectual obstacle course. Often, this makes the introduction a slog, with readers unsure whether the article merits perseverance.
Presenting a bit of the ethnographic material or data up front as a provocation or puzzle, coupled with the over-arching question or argument, usually makes the most engaging introduction. Don’t wait until 3000 or 4000 words into a 10,000-word article to introduce your own research. In a theoretical or synthetic essay, this rule may not hold, but most of what we publish are original research reports.
5) The quickest way through criticism in the reviews can be reducing the number of points you seek to make. Articles are often hampered by tangential arguments. If a reviewer pushes back on a minor point, or if a paper you present provokes criticism for a secondary argument, consider taking it out if you don’t need it. Too often, when junior authors get criticized, they redouble their efforts to make a contentious point, often just making the section that attracts the most criticism more obvious and elaborate. If the argument is worth making, maybe it needs its own article, rather than being shoehorned into a piece where it’s underdeveloped.
The most important advice I can offer new writers is to work on writing itself, not like a theoretical project of escalating sophistication and elaborateness, but as a craft where clarity, elegance, and impact are foundational virtues. Revision is so often in the direction of greater simplicity.
Take the time to look at the journal in which you are trying to publish, to understand its audience and the community it speaks to. The editor’s job is not just to evaluate articles, but to find and help develop manuscripts that will engage our journal’s readers and be pieces the authors are proud of for many years. Ethos will not publish your work because you cite trendy terms, bury us in scholarly review, or cut down rival thinkers. We look for innovative work that will engage intellectually the people who have entrusted us to look after this journal: psychological anthropologists and the other scholars who engage with us.
Please send us your work, even if you are first-time academic author! We would love to publish original work that is up to our standards, and we are excited to help new voices join our community. It’s one of the best parts of an editor’s job.
