Journals and Manuscript Submissions

1. Journals and Manuscript Submissions

2. Overview • Finding the right journal and the MLA Directory of Periodicals • How to write a cover letter for a journal submission • Where to find calls for special issues • What editors are looking for • Readers' reports:  types of forms, types of responses • How to respond to a "revise and resubmit” • Electronic submissions, bibliographic database software, and other technical matters

3. How do you find the right journal? • What journals are cited in the articles you read? • What journals seem a good fit if you read them regularly? • MLA Directory of Periodicals • http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/flatbrowse?sid=7aa79d47-6a3d-4855-a43e-4152ed10fbc8%40sessionmgr11&vid=2&hid=19 • AAUP Directory (for books)

4. Cover Letters • Address the editor. • Mention your title. • Write a sentence or two explaining the subject matter (and implicitly saying why it’s a good fit for the journal). • Provide contact information. • Thank the editor.

5. Where to find Calls for Papers and Special Issues • The U Penn list: http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/ • Specialized listservs: VICTORIA, H-Amstdy, etc. • Specialized websites: • HASTAC: http://hastac.org/ • SSAWW: http://www.ssaww.org • Modernist Studies: http://msa.press.jhu.edu/ • Twitter and Facebook

6. What do Editors Want to See in a Manuscript? • Get to the point. • Make a clear argument. • Show familiarity with previous work. • Describe how your work differs from that of other critics. • Good readings of the works but not JUST readings of the works. • Good writing style and organization. • Don’t double-submit. No simultaneous submissions.

7. The Editor’s Choices • Decides that the piece is within the scope of the journal, makes an original argument, and is solid enough to interest the journal’s readers - send out to readers • Decides that the piece is out of the scope of the journal’s mission, underdeveloped, simply a close reading, or not sufficiently original - send it back without sending it to readers • At some journals, only 2/5 get sent out to reviewers.

8. Readers’ Reports • What they see (forms). They do NOT see your name; you will be evaluated anonymously. • Editor will send it to a knowledgeable and sympathetic reviewer. • More journals are moving to online submissions and review. Example: Modernism/Modernity • http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/modernism

9. What will the editor’s letter and your readers’ reports tell you? • It’s accepted. Hooray! It may still need minor corrections. • It’s provisionally accepted but the readers may want you to address certain points. • It receives a revise and resubmit. (See next slide) • It’s rejected. Typical reasons: • Essay doesn’t fit the scope of the journal. • Journal has already published something on the subject recently. • Essay doesn’t make a sufficient contribution to the field. • Essay doesn’t engage sufficiently with the critical discourse surrounding the topic.

10. “Revise and Resubmit” • A “revise and resubmit” response is very common. • Read the reviewers’ comments carefully and the editor’s contextualization of those comments. • Revise with those guidelines in mind. • Send the revision back with a narrative or letter outlining how you responded. • “Revise and Resubmit” is a positive sign.

11. Submissions • Via email (as at ESQ) • http://libarts.wsu.edu/english/Journals/ESQ/manuscript.html Via central portal: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/exp • http://www.editorialmanager.com/al/ By postal mail: • http://www.press.uillinois.edu/journals/alr/alrsubmissions.html

12. Bibliographic Software Research citation (reference manager) software. • Research citation software isn't social networking or a communications technology, but it can make the process of sharing research citations easier for researchers collaborating on a project. • Most of these programs can format your references and generate a bibliography automatically. • If you're in a research field and haven't tried a reference manager yet, I encourage you to look into them; they will save you time. • Scientific journals will sometimes accept a reference library in one of these forms, but humanities journals won’t.

13. Citation Managers • Endnote and Endnote Web. Endnote can download citations and format them. It's a stand-alone product, meaning that you don't need to be online to use it. It's a powerful program, but it isn't free. WSU has a subscription to Endnote Web, • Sente is like Endnote, but for Mac/iPad. • CiteULike.CiteULike is a free medium for sharing references. • BibTex and LaTEX. BibTeX is used in conjunction with the LaTEX document formatting system; it requires more knowledge of formatting codes than the others.

14. Citation Managers, continued • Zotero.Zotero is a free, web-based citation and notes manager. This page at MIT will show you some of what it can do; here's a page comparing various forms: http://libguides.mit.edu/references. • Mendeley. Mendeley is free (like Zotero) and is optimized for sharing resources. See this article at The Chronicle of Higher Education by Julie Meloni, a WSU grad, or this one: http://libguides.mit.edu/content.php?pid=55486&sid=427307 • RefWorks.RefWorks is another web-based citation software package.

15. Questions?