Authoring a PhD

particular subfield of a discipline, will resist publishing
material that is ‘non-core’ for them or even lies close to the
boundaries of their field. They may fear that such material
could blur the identity of their journal.
◆
Interest for a wider audience
.
Across the humanities and
social sciences some of the biggest-selling journals are 
long-established titles which manage to bridge across
between a purely academic readership and a more general
P U B L I S H I N G Y O U R R E S E A R C H
◆
2 3 7

---

2 3 8
◆
A U T H O R I N G A P H D
readership in professionally related fields. Editors of this
kind of journal will not want to run material that only
people with PhDs in the discipline care about or can
understand.
A typical journal will use most but not all of the criteria
shown in Figure 9.1. So to this extent my composite form may
overstate the difficulty of getting your work published. But on
the other hand, top journals in each field are likely to require
that a paper be judged ‘good, above average’ or ‘outstanding’
on around half their editorial criteria, and without attracting
any ‘poor’ scores. Getting agreement on this from four, three or
even two referees is often a challenge.
Yet despite the elaborate refereeing procedures most academ-
ics will readily acknowledge that contemporary journals contain
a lot of routine papers. How great this proportion actually is will
no doubt vary from subject to subject. And perhaps there may
be difficulty in securing agreement about which papers fall into
this category. One now rather dated but still interesting attempt
at systematically assessing the value of journal papers looked at
those dealing with the psychology of memory and verbal learn-
ing. The authors (E. Tulving and S. A. Madigan) found that two
thirds of papers were ‘inconsequential’.
5
They then classified a
further quarter of their sample of papers as ‘ “run-of-the-mill”,
they represent technically competent variations on well-known
themes’. The routine and unimportant papers usually offered
‘one or more of the following conclusions:
(a)
variable X has an effect on variable Y;
(b)
the findings do not appear to be entirely inconsistent
with the ABC theory;
(c)
the findings suggest a need for revising the ABC theory
(although no inkling is provided as to how);
(d)
processes under study are extremely complex and cannot
be readily understood;
(e)
the experiment clearly demonstrates the need for further
research on this problem;
(f)
the experiment shows that the method used is useful for
doing experiments of this type;
(g)
the results do not support the hypothesis, but the
experiment now appears to be an inadequate test of it.’

---

Of most papers they looked at the evaluation team concluded
that: ‘their main purpose lies in providing redundancy and
assurance to those readers whose faith in the orderliness of
nature … needs strengthening’. This meant that in their judge-
ment fewer than one in ten papers in the area genuinely
advanced learning.
The leading American psychologist Robert J. Sternberg sug-
gested that in his field the papers evaluated as out-of-the-ordinary
and particularly useful do one or more of the following:
– report results whose findings can be unambiguously
interpreted;
– report experiments with a particularly clever design, which
can be used as a pattern or ‘paradigm’ by other researchers;
– report surprising findings which none the less make sense in
some theoretical context;
– debunk some previously held presupposition;
– present a fresh way of looking at an old problem;
– report results of major theoretical or practical significance; or
– ‘integrate into a new, simpler framework, data that previously
required a complex, possibly unwieldy framework’.
6
The features in this list need changing a bit and extending for
other disciplines, where experiments may be unknown and
even systematic data may be scarce. In most of the social 
sciences it is very difficult to publish case study material, but
easier to get journals to accept papers including quantitative
data relating to more general theories or controversies. In arts
and humanities subjects, papers are often more thematic or 
theoretical, and their ‘usefulness’ may depend on their inter-
pretative impact. More of a premium tends to be placed on
good writing and style, plus the pursuit of scholarly norms,
such as originality, novelty, full referencing, new sources etc.
And, unlike the social sciences, journals in some humanities
disciplines (like history) are more likely to accept case study
material. But Sternberg’s criteria above still provide a helpful
first checklist of questions to ask in assessing how worthwhile
your own particular paper will be. And the contrast with the
previous list of things that routine papers typically conclude
provides quite a helpful sieve, which may help you sort out
which of your chapters is worth ‘paperizing’ and which is not.
P U B L I S H I N G Y O U R R E S E A R C H
◆
2 3 9

---

So far I have focused solely on main articles in journals,
which are the primary means for advancing professional
knowledge, and the chief ‘product’ you can hope to get from
one or more of your thesis chapters. But, especially when you
are starting out on publishing, it is useful to bear in mind also
that many journals also print shorter pieces, which have lower-
quality thresholds for publication and may be easier to achieve:
◆
Research notes
are usually around 4000 words maximum and
they report a specific empirical finding in an uncluttered
way, without being surrounded by an elaborate theoretical
or literature review apparatus or other lead-in material. It is
usually much better to submit a straightforward piece of
empirical reportage as a strong research note than to inflate
it into a weak or anaemic main article.
◆
Comments
are similar shorter pieces, of around 2000 to 4000
words in length, which pick up on and contest, criticize or
analyse a point in the existing literature, especially a piece
that the journal concerned has recently published. Most
journal editors want to encourage debates and controversies
in their journal and hence look kindly on balanced, concise
and good quality comments.
◆
Short-article journals
exist in many fields (like philosophy,
geography and political science) which are dedicated to
publishing only pieces up to around 3000 words long. Many
of these journals have good reputations and are particularly
interested in helping younger members of the profession.
◆
Review articles
are published by many journals. They take a