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After ten years of being rejected for my first article by a leading Journal in my field, I was asked by them to be a reviewer. It was a bittersweet moment but here is my take on it - this might be helpful for PhD students writing their first academic articles.
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When I sent in my article, it was a work of hard work after presenting the findings in many conferences, seminars & in group presentations. The results had been tested, questioned & a lot of feedback had been incorporated in the results presented.
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It was a co-authored article & we worked hours and hours structuring, writing, and editing it. Very experienced colleagues had read the final draft which we handed in to the Journal X.
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A couple of months later came the rejection. I was blown away by it. The word ârejectionâ comes heavy to me - but it was also my first article as a PhD student and I had aimed for the top most Journal. I wasnât prepared for the rejection.
I was devastated!
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I was devastated!
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The reviewers comments made no sense initially, but when we started reading them bit by bit, it started making sense.
You see the Journal was a traditional one in our field and my work was reporting on an Interactional pattern found for the first time.
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You see the Journal was a traditional one in our field and my work was reporting on an Interactional pattern found for the first time.
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When we started tearing down the comments, some were valid, but some were coming from merely objecting on our methodology which was cutting edge and innovative way of lacking things
My âahaâ moment came then. It was a wrong outlet to send in this kind of work by a PhD student
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My âahaâ moment came then. It was a wrong outlet to send in this kind of work by a PhD student
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We devised a plan to work further on the article. We worked in every reasonable objection and answered all the questions we could. We changed the structure tremendously and brought in our longest example (transcript). We wrote new pieces and met for discussions every week.
Finally the piece was ready. Other leading researchers in our field in the department had again generously commented & given feedback (including my supervisors).
We decided to submit it to a new Journal with the theme which was exactly what the article was about. 8/x
We decided to submit it to a new Journal with the theme which was exactly what the article was about. 8/x
I had based my work on the then editors theoretical framework which meant that if the article had clarity and we had expressed it well, we didnât have to argue for our methodology (presumably). 9/x
The article got accepted with minor changes. Hard work was showing in the text as well, but the most happy thing for me personally was that a novice idea which I had initiated@was now accepted by my community of research! 10/x
I donât care about the impact factor but it was a relief to be accepted. Imposter syndrome challenged & killed. 11/x
The article was published in @ClassDisc and I am happy that it got published there & not in the first.
Eight years on, its onevif the most read & among the three top cited articles!
I am happy that it is being read! https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19463014.2013.783500">https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/1...
Eight years on, its onevif the most read & among the three top cited articles!
I am happy that it is being read! https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19463014.2013.783500">https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/1...
From the original rejected article, I was able to create 5 publications since I was responding to each of the comments and it led to other directions & the taxonomy couldnât be dealt with in just one article! 13/x
My lessons from this:
There is no shortcut to hardwork.
Go for âthe rightâ one rather than the most sought after.
If you burn for your work, and want the academic work read your work, youâll need to do the perfect match-making with the Journal
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There is no shortcut to hardwork.
Go for âthe rightâ one rather than the most sought after.
If you burn for your work, and want the academic work read your work, youâll need to do the perfect match-making with the Journal
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In the social sciences & Linguistics especially, the articles are normally single authored - to reach that stage you will need to develop a community of reviewers around you who give you honest feedback on your ideas and not just your writing.
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