Opinion & Perspective
Perishing to Publish: An Analysis of theAcademic Publishing Process
James McCrostie
Publish or perish? It is a question to be kept constantly in mind foranyone unlucky enough to be stuck spinning in the revolving-door
contract system so popular with Japanese universities. As a form ofacademia’s golden rule applies even in Japan, university job postings
typically call for applicants to have at least three publications. Of
course, most scholars working here have the advantage of getting
something published in the in-house journals that every university
in the country seems to print, publications that are usually neither
refereed or even edited. Regrettably, the fact that no one bothers toread these presents a major drawback.
For scholars who want others to actually read their work, and
who want to put something worthy of recognition on their resume,the ultimate goal remains publishing in refereed journals. However,submitting papers to reputable journals containing articles byprominent scholars can prove intimidating. Therefore, this paper
analyzes the academic publishing process to help demystify theprocedures for inexperienced scholars. While the process remains far
from being straightforward, persistence and patience are undoubtedly
the key elements for successfully publishing academic articles.
After finishing a paper and deciding on a journal to trust withyour baby, preparing acceptable citations presents the first step intesting an author’s determination. Despite the fact that as disciplines
applied linguistics and TESOL supposedly abide by the Publication
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Manual of the American Psychological Association, every journal
forces writers to adhere to their own byzantine citation standards.
In order to frustrate young scholars and encourage them to tear out
their hair, journal editors require a different treatment of author names
as well as a unique arrangement of periods, commas, colons, semicolons, italics, underlining, and spacing when citing and referencing.
Thus, submitting any article entails investing long hours in making
meaningless cosmetic changes. Feelings of frustration at this point arenormal, even for experienced authors.
After fiddling with citations, actually sending off the paper presents
the next step. Luckily, modern technology and email have helped
to make this step of the process much simpler. Unfortunately, somejournals, such as JACET Bulletin and Asia Pacific Journal of Languagein Education, continue to resist the 21st century and insist on as many
as five paper copies and floppy discs or CD-Roms mailed to the editor.
Others, including Applied Linguistics, puzzlingly require submissions
to be made as both an email attachment and multiple paper copies
sent through the post. Still others, like The Journal of Second Language
Writing, on their websites call for mailed, paper submissions butwill accept emailed submissions if you ask nicely. But, of course,
experienced authors know that the time and effort spent on mailingsubmissions is almost meaningless in the big picture.
After submitting a paper, the next stage in the publishing process
is waiting. And waiting. Then waiting some more. While most journals
quickly send a notice of acceptance upon receiving a paper, it generally
takes three or four months to receive the reviewers’ first critique,though one should not be surprised to wait more than half a year. If
the reviewers require revisions (and they almost always do), authors
should look forward to even more waiting after submitting a revised
draft.
Of course, even the lengthy waits described above remain a bestcase scenario, as almost inevitably some quirk delays the process75

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further. In fact, our laziest students could learn a thing or two about
excuses from journal editors. In more than a decade of academic
publishing, only rarely have I enjoyed a completely smooth process.
Personal experience includes papers delayed due to: editor computer
failure, lost submissions, slow referees, lost referee reports, journal
staff taking sabbaticals, errors at the printer, and an editor sufferingfrom a debilitating illness. Probably the only excuse I have yet to hearis that the dog ate it.
Receiving no reply at all also proves common. For example, after
submitting a paper to the RELC Journal it took ten months and several
unanswered emails before I finally received the reviewers’ comments.
Reading them provided no clues as to whether my article might everbe published since they came to a grand total of four sentences: threequestions and one observation. More than a year after the originalsubmission, and more unanswered emails, the editor still failed to
inform me if the article had been accepted. Only the fear of how muchtime it would take to start the submission process anew with a different
journal prevented me from pointing out that fourteen-year-olds ran myjunior high school newspaper better. Finally, a new editor took overand began to expedite the process. I am happy to report that the article
appeared on the second anniversary of the original submission. I am
unhappy to report that I have been waiting three months to receive mycomplimentary copy of the journal.
Finally receiving notification of acceptance for publication makes
all this waiting worthwhile. You will have plenty of time to cherish
and re-read the acceptance letter because the next step in the process
is - yes you guessed it - more waiting. It typically takes a year or two
after receiving acceptance before one’s article actually appears. For
example, in July 2005 I finally received notice from the ELT Journalthat my article had been accepted for publication: in June 2007!
Considering how long the process has taken (research began in thesummer of 2003), I can only hope the English language will not have76

OnCUE Journalchanged too much by the time fellow linguists can read the paper.
Of course, applied linguistics and TESOL are not the only disciplines
to suffer from a publishing pace similar to the movement of glaciers.
In most of the academic world the supply of publishable articles far
exceeds demand.
Another reason for the tortuously slow pace of the academic
publishing process is the need to protect a journal’s scholarly reputationby having two or more senior scholars review all submissions. Dealing
with these reviewers requires additional reserves of persistence.
Most journals use the double-blind system, authors never know thereviewers’ names and reviewers do not know the authors’ names.
That is, of course, until reviewers see the article in print. Not knowing
reviewer identities need not be intimidating as they are all pretty muchthe same. They seem to train by watching detective shows on TV andnearly always follow a similar good cop and bad cop routine. One
reviewer will be as encouraging as possible while pointing out theflaws in your research design or inability to grasp simple statistics. The
other will unleash excoriation as harsh and belligerent as possible,
destroying your will to live, let alone write again.
In addition to whatever purpose they serve in protecting academic
standards, blind reviews have the unfortunate drawback of encouraging
offensive and unwarranted rudeness. Elsewhere, reviewers have been
described as “pit bulls guarding the queen’s jewels” (Berkenkotter& Huckin, 1995, p. 75). For unexplained reasons, many reviewers
consider snide remarks an integral part of the critique process. Once,a reviewer (whose grammatical errors obviously identified them asa non-native English speaker) complained about “contrived” and“unidiomatic English” in a paper I submitted and advised me of thenecessity to have my writing checked by a “native English-speakinglinguist.”
A native English-speaking linguist colleague subsequently read thepaper and, after a considerable deal of thought, identified the problem.
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In an attempt to avoid tired clichés I had included a few unusual turns ofphrase, a beginner’s mistake. Lesson learned: inexperienced academic
authors must never forget to persist in following the accepted scholarly
standards. Referees and editors fervently replace any creative use oflanguage with the proper stifling academic conventions. Academic
journals feel it necessary to level the playing field this way to allow
contributions from scholars who tragically suffer from an inability toproduce readable prose. The success of this affirmative action policy
becomes obvious to any regular reader of academic journals.
Authors new to the academic publishing process must not feel bad
if the reviewers reject a paper or call for revisions. Rejection provescommon, and one observer of academic publishing estimates reviewers
reject between 80-95% of submissions to journals in the arts andhumanities (Swales, 1990). Reviewers’ demands for revisions prove evenmore frequent. Those serving on a journal’s review board rarely hesitate
to exercise their power to demand changes to a paper. Frequently,
these changes actually improve an article. Just as often, however,reconciling the reviewers’ comments leads to additional revision
steps in the academic writing process. Typically, different reviewers
will give completely different feedback as to how a paper needs to beimproved. This begs the question that if a paper’s shortcomings weretruly significant, would not all of the reviewers have noticed the sameproblems? Even worse, reviewers will frequently provide advice that
directly contradicts each other. Rarely does an editor pick up on suchinchoate guidance, leaving the author to interpret and incorporate thesuggestions as best they can.
To the uninitiated, academic publishing may seem intricate andintimidating. It is not. Virtually every journal follows the abovedescribed academic publishing process. Thus, the essential ingredientsfor academic publishing success become persistence, patience, andan ability to maintain an interest in a paper while waiting the several
years the whole process takes, from research, to writing, to revising, to78

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final publication.

References
Berkenkotter, C. & Huckin, T. (1995). Genre knowledge in disciplinary
communication: Cognition/culture/power. Hillsdale, New Jersey:Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and researchsettings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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