Advice for GSAS students on producing journal articles and on getting from dissertation to book
By Cynthia Verba, GSAS Director of Fellowships
At a panel discussion on November 8, 2011, Harvard University Press Editor Elizabeth Knoll was joined by two GSAS students to talk about publishing. Below, Dr. Verba reports on the discussion:
Elizabeth Knoll has generously participated in this seminar for many years, each time revealing her deep commitment to graduate students by conveying a supportive message, combined with realistic and practical advice. She urges students to attend professional conferences and talk to editors who attend in order to meet new authors, usually in brief encounters: Come prepared with a “good elevator speech” about your project; if it is a narrow topic, try to think about the big picture that your study partially answers. She notes that university press editors are very aware of the pressures of the job market, and that they are likely to be supportive and welcoming. At the same time, Knoll also emphasizes that a dissertation is not a book, and that in most cases it needs to undergo a thorough transformation to become a book, which means that much of the scholarly apparatus required in a dissertation must be eliminated in the book. She in fact urges students to avoid the word “dissertation” in communicating with potential publishers.
The student speakers shared their experiences in getting articles published. They noted that there could be a risk in spending too much time in trying to get published, which could interfere with making good progress on the dissertation and finishing in a timely fashion. Nevertheless, both students found it worth taking some time to publish during graduate school, especially in the current job market. The following steps proved helpful to our speakers in getting published:
- Set publishing as a goal fairly early in the graduate program; for example, have it in mind to convert seminar papers into articles right from the start. It is easier to revise a paper than to start an article from scratch. Seek advice from professors in the field, asking specific questions about the strength of your paper, your goal of publishing and where to submit.
- In more concrete terms, the seminar paper should have a strong original argument; it should contribute to the field by using original material that addresses some controversial issue. This means keeping up with the debates in your field. After that, you need to have an appropriate article structure which you should plan in advance: a colorful opening that makes a thesis statement and identifies in compressed fashion the literature that you are addressing, followed by a narrative of the event that is the subject of your article, and an analysis of the event.
- In deciding when it is ready to submit to a journal, make sure it is good enough, but don’t agonize over every detail or aim for absolute perfection. You seldom receive outright acceptance, and you will be asked to revise on the basis of a reader’s report.
- As for where to submit, aim high, and if necessary, you can work your way down the food chain. Choose journals where your article would be a good match, based on the work they are already publishing. Whether accepted or rejected, do close reading of the reader’s remarks. If the reader wants only modest changes, then go with it; if major reworking and additional research are requested, it might be best to cancel.
- In responding to the editor about revisions, show a willingness to do so, but also be sure to retain the essence of your ideas. If you reject a suggestion, explain to the editor your reason for doing so. Be aware that it can take a whole year between submission and the appearance of the article in print.