on academic publishing
Given my time constraints and upcoming deadlines, and my need to get a piece on Anglo Saxon lit out there sooner rather than later, here's the question:
Submit an article to a "not bad but not the best possible journal for medievalists nor for English lit work" journal, at such a time (its refiguration and relaunch with a new title and slightly sharper focus) that I may be able to drop some names and maybe get it on editors' desks when they are calling for papers for the first few issues, or
Keep working on the damned thing (when?!) and when it's reached that mythically "ready" stage, send it to a specifically medieval journal with better name-recognition in my field (and no, I don't know what journal that would be yet - if I even had an idea, I might've just held my breath when I was feeling lucky and put a stamp on the fucking thing and waited for the results before now. I don't know if I will ever feel like anything I write on Anglo Saxon anything is ready to send out. I guess it's the language factor - I don't feel the same way about Early Modern, Middle English, or even Old French work, but with AS... yeah.)
To be fair, I don't know that the first journal is looked down upon or anything like that - it's not a student journal, it's not geared toward "new scholars" or anything, and while the focus is not medieval nor is it literature (but it is topically related to stuff I do), one of the new editors is an Anglo Saxonist whose work I am familiar with and have used before (and will use again), and who seems to be well-respected (he certainly is in the "conference circles" I travel). One of the other editors is faculty at a university with a respected medieval studies program (a better-known and better-"furnished" one than the one I'm at, a university I considered attending for my PhD for a minute). I think it's just an "unknown quantity" at this point. Hell, it might *become* a go-to place for topical work on medieval stuff, down the road, with an editorial board like it's got - they are specifically mentioning that they'd like medieval submissions in the CFP. But right now, who knows.
I suppose there is another option, which is to send it to a specifically medieval journal first and then, if it's rejected, send it to the other place, but that involves losing my "prime time window" / any possible advantages related to the first journal being new and being edited by an Anglo Saxonist (who might just be willing to give me, or get me in contact with, some solid feedback just because he'd maybe like to see stuff on anglo-saxon monsters coming in).
So there's the dilemma. And no, I haven't finished the revisions on teh Milton piece, why do you ask?
Or finished the Gregory paper. Dratted Gregory.
I think I'm leaning towards New Journal.
ETA: Lest anyone wander by and think I'm dissing journals that try to provide publication opportunities for 'new' scholars, or dissing people who publish in them, let me try to explain where this is coming from (this emerged in comments that were screened b/c they had identifying info): I have been advised that in some cases, the "wrong" publication isn't much better than no publication at all (and depending on who was doing the advice-offering, "wrong" could mean "totally unrelated to declared 'specialty,'" such as an earlier publication on, say, contemporary American lit by someone who is now marketing themselves as a medievalist), or it could mean "in a not-very-prestigious journal," and frankly I still don't know what that means given all the variables - I mean, I'm still waiting for somebody to actually tell me just how I'm supposed to hold my mouth and stand on one leg so I can suddenly *see* this invisible ranking system that makes everything so clear to certain ræd-scerwen sources. But I was essentially told that one shouldn't "waste" publishable work on less-than-the-best-journals -- unless said journals had already rejected the piece (and the implicit thing may have been "in which case you shouldn't bother").
Now, I don't know about you, but the thought of spending several years screwing around with sending one damned article out to various places in order of some ill-quantified "prestige ranking" does not light my fire. If I don't get any nibbles of interest after a few submissions, I'm going to shelve the damned thing. Furthermore, if I want to be an Anglo-Saxonist, my "top journals" are things that I would not even admit I'd sent something to, for fear that I would be mocked mercilessly for my presumption. I'm a grad student. I think it's smart for me to not be a dick about this. But I also think it's smart for me to publish as "well" as I can given the odds of my landing a job offer (which are not good). But I am just not grokking how the "decision making formula" is supposed to work, pretty much. For instance, if I were working on Chaucer, I would think that the Chaucer Review would be a good place for me to try to place an article. But if I'm a wannabe Anglo-Saxonist who works on monsters, angels, devils, and semi-animated corpses, with forays into ecclesiastical matters such as sacramental doctrine and excommunication and the soul-body relationship, my "top journal" is suddenly not so clear.
I'm certain there's much to be said for the specifics of the piece itself being the main factor in decision-making, and I"m not actually asking for a rule book with a checklist for evaluating "publication resources for k_navit and her odd and often frantic forays into [whatever]." But I am eager for other perspectives, and I am eager to know why a journal that is designed to help grad students and "new" scholars get their stuff out there becomes something that someone should be ashamed of, somehow, for publishing in. I mean, if the rules are really "the best or nothing," then why maintain this PhD-admissions illusion anyway? What the hell are we doing leaving the bar so low at first if the real truth is that the bar is indeed so high and no intermediate steps are allowed?
Ok, obviously I've developed an attitude about this since I posted it.
Submit an article to a "not bad but not the best possible journal for medievalists nor for English lit work" journal, at such a time (its refiguration and relaunch with a new title and slightly sharper focus) that I may be able to drop some names and maybe get it on editors' desks when they are calling for papers for the first few issues, or
Keep working on the damned thing (when?!) and when it's reached that mythically "ready" stage, send it to a specifically medieval journal with better name-recognition in my field (and no, I don't know what journal that would be yet - if I even had an idea, I might've just held my breath when I was feeling lucky and put a stamp on the fucking thing and waited for the results before now. I don't know if I will ever feel like anything I write on Anglo Saxon anything is ready to send out. I guess it's the language factor - I don't feel the same way about Early Modern, Middle English, or even Old French work, but with AS... yeah.)
To be fair, I don't know that the first journal is looked down upon or anything like that - it's not a student journal, it's not geared toward "new scholars" or anything, and while the focus is not medieval nor is it literature (but it is topically related to stuff I do), one of the new editors is an Anglo Saxonist whose work I am familiar with and have used before (and will use again), and who seems to be well-respected (he certainly is in the "conference circles" I travel). One of the other editors is faculty at a university with a respected medieval studies program (a better-known and better-"furnished" one than the one I'm at, a university I considered attending for my PhD for a minute). I think it's just an "unknown quantity" at this point. Hell, it might *become* a go-to place for topical work on medieval stuff, down the road, with an editorial board like it's got - they are specifically mentioning that they'd like medieval submissions in the CFP. But right now, who knows.
I suppose there is another option, which is to send it to a specifically medieval journal first and then, if it's rejected, send it to the other place, but that involves losing my "prime time window" / any possible advantages related to the first journal being new and being edited by an Anglo Saxonist (who might just be willing to give me, or get me in contact with, some solid feedback just because he'd maybe like to see stuff on anglo-saxon monsters coming in).
So there's the dilemma. And no, I haven't finished the revisions on teh Milton piece, why do you ask?
Or finished the Gregory paper. Dratted Gregory.
I think I'm leaning towards New Journal.
ETA: Lest anyone wander by and think I'm dissing journals that try to provide publication opportunities for 'new' scholars, or dissing people who publish in them, let me try to explain where this is coming from (this emerged in comments that were screened b/c they had identifying info): I have been advised that in some cases, the "wrong" publication isn't much better than no publication at all (and depending on who was doing the advice-offering, "wrong" could mean "totally unrelated to declared 'specialty,'" such as an earlier publication on, say, contemporary American lit by someone who is now marketing themselves as a medievalist), or it could mean "in a not-very-prestigious journal," and frankly I still don't know what that means given all the variables - I mean, I'm still waiting for somebody to actually tell me just how I'm supposed to hold my mouth and stand on one leg so I can suddenly *see* this invisible ranking system that makes everything so clear to certain ræd-scerwen sources. But I was essentially told that one shouldn't "waste" publishable work on less-than-the-best-journals -- unless said journals had already rejected the piece (and the implicit thing may have been "in which case you shouldn't bother").
Now, I don't know about you, but the thought of spending several years screwing around with sending one damned article out to various places in order of some ill-quantified "prestige ranking" does not light my fire. If I don't get any nibbles of interest after a few submissions, I'm going to shelve the damned thing. Furthermore, if I want to be an Anglo-Saxonist, my "top journals" are things that I would not even admit I'd sent something to, for fear that I would be mocked mercilessly for my presumption. I'm a grad student. I think it's smart for me to not be a dick about this. But I also think it's smart for me to publish as "well" as I can given the odds of my landing a job offer (which are not good). But I am just not grokking how the "decision making formula" is supposed to work, pretty much. For instance, if I were working on Chaucer, I would think that the Chaucer Review would be a good place for me to try to place an article. But if I'm a wannabe Anglo-Saxonist who works on monsters, angels, devils, and semi-animated corpses, with forays into ecclesiastical matters such as sacramental doctrine and excommunication and the soul-body relationship, my "top journal" is suddenly not so clear.
I'm certain there's much to be said for the specifics of the piece itself being the main factor in decision-making, and I"m not actually asking for a rule book with a checklist for evaluating "publication resources for k_navit and her odd and often frantic forays into [whatever]." But I am eager for other perspectives, and I am eager to know why a journal that is designed to help grad students and "new" scholars get their stuff out there becomes something that someone should be ashamed of, somehow, for publishing in. I mean, if the rules are really "the best or nothing," then why maintain this PhD-admissions illusion anyway? What the hell are we doing leaving the bar so low at first if the real truth is that the bar is indeed so high and no intermediate steps are allowed?
Ok, obviously I've developed an attitude about this since I posted it.