Getting your research published can be a difficult and daunting task. We asked our editorial team to draw on their experiences as editors to offer some advice to scholars. In this ongoing series, we will compile, summarize, and relay our editorial team’s thoughts and observations with the goal of helping prospective authors as they prepare to submit their work for publication.
Tip #1: Engage with the Literature
Several members of our editorial team emphasized the importance of engaging with the existing literature. The works featured in PSJ are theory-driven pieces of policy research that often build upon one another. It is clear that the authors published in PSJ have incorporated the developments and key questions presented in the journal into their own work. It is imperative that researchers ask new questions and supply the community with new ideas; however, one must ensure that the questions and ideas presented fit into the scholarly conversation. As Associate Editor Gwen Arnold put it, “…it has to be a real conversation, not a monologue.”
A quick way to gauge how well you have participated in a journal’s academic conversation is to check your bibliography. For an article to sufficiently engage with the intellectual essence of a given journal, it should reference several works published in said journal. This will, of course, only give you a surface-level evaluation of how well the piece has incorporated the relevant literature. Associate Editor Holly Peterson points out that manuscripts can do a good job at drawing on previous developments and adding to the common themes and topics, but a particularly strong manuscript “builds these themes into the very thinking of the piece, not just in the framing of the research, but in its foundations, conceptualizations, and substantive findings.”
In summary, while drafting your article, consider how well you engage with a journal’s existing literature. Try to make this engagement obvious. Readers should be able to plainly see how your work adds to the ongoing conversation and understand how your research contributes to its progress. “Making the findings of the article clearly connected to ongoing conversations in the journal,” Associate Editor Aaron Smith-Walter says, “is an excellent way to elevate the chances that the piece finds a home in its pages.” Keeping this in mind before submitting your paper can help your work stand out and give it the nudge it may need to be on its way to publication.
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