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The endless hours of detailed planning, arduous data collection, eye-crossing statistical analysis, and caffeine-fueled writing sessions have finally paid off: you have written a complete research study manuscript. The hard part is over. Surely, journal editors will come knocking on your office door begging to publish your paper in their world renowned journal. All you have to do is sit back, bask in the copious accolades from your colleagues, and wait for that call from the Nobel committee, right?
Unfortunately, you still have to contend with the hundreds of other researchers across the world clamoring for their turn in the academic publishing spotlight. Surely your ground-breaking, earth shattering work will eventually be recognized, you just have to survive the academic journal peer-review process first. Here's what to expect:
1. Select the proper journal. Because you believe in the mindset of "go big or go home", this means selecting the top tier journal in your field. Other times, it means finding the journal with the greatest number of people you respect on the Editorial Board. Surely these individuals are likely to remember you from that question you once asked at one of their talks, that fawning email fan letter you sent during graduate school, or that time you think they might have seen you waving to them at the last conference you attended. If many of the people you like happen to be on the Editorial Board of the top tier journal in your field, then extra bonus points for you!
2. Draft a cover letter to the editor telling them why their journal is fabulous (even though you've never actually read it), why your paper would enthrall their readership, and how your work will drastically change the field as we know it.
3. Go to the journal's new "electronic manuscript submission portal" and supply all the information requested, including your name/affiliation/contact information, driver's license number, and adjusted gross income from your 2005 tax return.
4. The editor selects 2-4 blind reviewers (they are not actually blind, or else they couldn't read your manuscript, of course) who get a de-identified copy of your masterpiece.
5. Being mere mortals, those reviewers tend to be busy and harried. How they could possibly have more important things to do than reading your manuscript is beyond comprehension, but these things happen. So, the reviewers either file your manuscript at the bottom of their desk or use it to soak up coffee spills or throw darts at it or hand it off to some poor grad students who think that writing a manuscript review is a sure ticket to fast track academic success. Because they need time to soak in and ponder the complexity and enormity of your contribution, they never meet their deadlines and get two to three gentle reminders/exasperated pleas from the editorial assistant to get their acts together and submit their reviews already.
6. Some reviewers, crabby and unpaid for their time will want to vent all of their academic frustrations/phallic narcissism/early childhood trauma/professional jealousy into their reviews...generally writing in their reviews comments such as:
a) You need to go back to fix something in your methodology (which, unless you have a time-traveling Delorean or hot tub, is inherently impossible since you've already run your study).
b) Your statistical analyses are lousy, go back and run more of them.
c) Your sample is neither large enough nor diverse enough.
d) You don't cite my own work enough.
e) I figured out who wrote this paper, I met you once at a conference and I despise you and everything you stand for...you're a fool and I have no qualms about telling you so (as long as the reviews remain anonymous).
f) Who the heck cares about this topic anyway?
g) I have nothing important to say, but I think I can do the copyeditor's job and pick apart your grammar (despite the irony in the fact that their reviews are riddled with typos/misspellings/non-words/sentence fragments).
h) You forgot to include every limitation known to humankind since the beginning of social sciences research, even if those limitations have absolutely no research impact or clinical utility...e.g. did every questionnaire get filled out in the exact same order with a #2 pencil...because if one was filled out in pen your entire study is invalid and an egregious detriment to the field of academic psychology.
i) Did you consider that some of your therapists and patients may be members of the CIA and/or mob using therapy sessions as a way of covertly communicating messages back and forth? [True story].
7. The editor will receive these reviews, will take another length of time to make their own decision and write you a letter. Their letter will generally say one of three things:
a) We accept this paper, make a couple simple edits and we'll send to press. Such events do occur, but they are like Bigfoot sightings or double rainbows...rare and magical.
b) The reviews are attached; your paper is terrible, now go away.
c) We reject this paper, but would encourage you to thoughtfully consider the reviewers' points and resubmit. Quite often the editor will ask you to run more analyses, but make sure to cut the length of your paper in half.
8. There is typically up to a 3-month window for you to resubmit a revised manuscript. During that time, you furiously revise the manuscript, run new data analyses and write a response to every specific reviewer comment, saying either:
a) Dear Reviewer, you are a brilliant and admirable scholar. I made the requested revision.
b) Dear Reviewer, how do I put this gently? ...Your point is bogus and I'm not making the change.
c) Dear Reviewer...really? Where do you come up with this stuff? This isn't worth arguing, so I'm just going to nod, smile, and do what you ask.
9. Resubmit the paper with a cover letter saying why the journal is fabulous, why the editor is fabulous, why your paper is interesting, how awesome the Reviewers were and how their feedback improved the manuscript exponentially.
10. Lather. Rinse. Repeat steps 3-9 until either the reviewers or the authors raise the white flag of surrender.
11. If accepted, do a happy dance. If rejected, hold a grudge forever and take it out in the future on any manuscript that gets sent to you for review or any graduate student whose dissertation committee you are on.
12. If accepted, wait about 8-9 months for the proofs with copyeditor remarks/questions. At this point, you realize you don't know the difference between their or they're, forgot to include 18 citations, and spelled your own name wrong on the manuscript submission.
13. Wait another 1-3 months or so until your paper appears in print.
14. Search Google Scholar repeatedly to see who has cited your work. Brag to your colleagues. Enjoy the sweet, sweet taste of success...until you face tenure review.
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Jared DeFife, Ph.D.
