Towards Publication: Articulating the journey from conference to rejection letter
Event Date: 19 October 2016
Time: 1.00 p.m. – 2 p.m.
Location: Cathedral Wing 507b
Speaker: Peter McInnes (aided and abetted by Will McConn, Pallavi Mittra)
Introduction: ‘I hate writing, but love having written’ Dorothy Parker
As part of my ongoing project to explain (to myself mostly) those aspects of the writing process which I’ve never seen written down. For while there are innumerable tomes on how to wrestle findings from data, sessions and seminars on publication and developing contribution, and any amount of editorial advice purporting to hand authors the keys to publication, there is little in these that helps when you switch the laptop on. As the title tells you, the dark corner being examined here is converting the ideas that were feted at conference into something that is worth the editor and reviewer’s attention. And, as ever, you won’t gain a set of prescriptions for successful publication here. Writing is elusive, personal, situational, and as Dorothy Parker suggests, a cross we’re obliged to bear. So what I’m hoping is that in crystalizing what I do I will elicit advice and alternatives from attendees. Drawing on recent conference papers with m’colleagues (to whom all credit should be given while all blame attaches to me) the session will take the audience through the excruciating process of discerning development pathways for conference papers, aligning the paper to argument, embellishing scholarly engagement, and signposting publishability.
Format of the session
The light-hearted session will ask experienced participants to spill the beans on what they’ve taken-away from presentations of their paper at conference, and how they’ve gone about preparing it for publication. There’s no pre-work per se but it might be useful to spend five minutes sipping a coffee and considering the one big lesson you would like to pass on in the area of:
- Decoding feedback – what did the things people said to you about your conference paper really mean?
- Discerning your data’s best bit – if you are looking for a diamond in the rough, how did you know what the gem amidst the dross was, and what did polishing it entail?
- Deciding direction – final papers are often situated in different literatures from those they rely upon for their conceptual frame. How did you identify the problem your paper was going to address?
- Describing you position – if methodology sections are quite weak these days (George Wright says so), how have you gone about strengthening yours?
- Discussing the obvious – conference papers are typically strong on empirical description, but run out of steam when it comes to the discussion. How have you gone about stoking the boiler to deliver contribution?
- Determining target publication(s) – the age old issue. How do you know where to send it, but also how do you communicate its suitability to the editors.
Published: 12 October 2016
