The Balance between Academic Ideals and Publication Realities

The Balance between Academic Ideals and Publication Realities
It would be difficult to find a scholar willing to deny that an ideal publication scenario would be one in which the article he or she submitted for consideration by the acquisitions editor of a top-tier academic or scientific journal was immediately accepted with rave peer reviews and then published without a single change or hitch. The very thought brings a pleasant sigh, but from a less subjective perspective, such a situation would only be suitable for the very best research and the most refined of writing. For most scholarly authors, the complete experience of publishing is more onerous, but it is a process designed to improve scholarship, and when it functions at its best, that is exactly what it does. The trick lies in finding the balance between your ideals about your work and the accommodation of the useful if sometimes frustrating realities of publication.

Following the author guidelines provided by most scholarly journals is a case in point. You consider your research unique, and its unique qualities have not only required somewhat different procedures than are normally used in your field, but also necessitated a different organisation of material than most journals publishing in your subject area request. You have searched exhaustively, but you simply cannot discover a journal with more flexible structural guidelines that is also well suited to your work. You could, of course, submit the paper to a less suitable journal, but that may prove to be little more than a waste of time, and the wisest option is to choose the journal best suited to your work and adjust that work to fit within the parameters its guidelines indicate. There is usually considerable space for flexibility within even the more rigid guidelines, and structuring your paper to meet journal requirements can sometimes help you enhance its argument and render your research more accessible for the readers you anticipate. Besides, if you are planning an academic or scientific career, you will need to master the shaping and reshaping of text for grant applications, publication proposals, teaching materials and many other documents in addition to publishable manuscripts, so it is never too early to figure out how to manipulate and reformat your writing. While you restructure, be sure to keep an eye on length limitations, preferred documentation style and the proper placing and format of tables and figures as well.

Adjusting your ideals is much more difficult when it is the content of your writing that is at stake. Finding a balance between the ideal content you submitted and the revised version envisioned by the editors and peer reviewers who offer criticism on your paper may seem impossible when first faced with their feedback, but careful and objective consideration of the comments of thoughtful and informed readers usually leads to improvements. This does not mean that the best policy will be to throw your ideals to the wind and agree to every change, but taking the time to determine exactly what you can and cannot change and how your overall plan for revisions might effectively resolve the problems identified by the reviewers will give you a strategy for revising your work in ways that successfully accommodate the needs of the journal without compromising the integrity of your research.

Writing style is another aspect of scholarly documents that tends to require refinement before publication. You may, for instance, prefer a more informal and chatty style for an article about the attendees of football games, and such a style would certainly be appropriate when quoting the words of your participants, but advanced scholarship should be presented in a formal prose style. If you want your article to be taken seriously, you therefore need to adopt this sort of scholarly style. In addition, your prose should be clear and correct without errors in grammar, punctuation and spelling. If writing in the English language is not among your specialties, it may prove very difficult to retain your own voice and style while applying the rules and principles that will guarantee accurate and precise communication of complex concepts and procedures. In such cases, a professional proofreader or editor who specialises in scholarly writing as well as your discipline may be the most reliable means to finding the perfect balance.