understand the journals market in your discipline and form a
clear idea of what gets published in the discipline’s journals,
and what does not. Only then can you begin to effectively tar-
get an appropriate journal and to get your material accepted
and into print.
Understanding the journals market
Academics arrange orthodox print journals into a rough hierar-
chy of excellent, above average, average, below average, and
marginal journals. There are four major influences on journals’
long-run reputations: their methods of refereeing; their citation
scores; the journal’s type and its circulation (which are closely
interrelated); and the overall time lag from first submitting a
paper through to its eventual publication.
Refereeing systems. Peer group review is the central
quality-assurance process in the academic world, and how well
it is handled is crucial for a journal’s standing. A top-rank jour-
nal will send your paper to four diverse and well-qualified ref-
erees, and reach an editors’ decision on the basis of three
verdicts – quite a demanding threshold to surmount. It will be
able to secure the involvement of senior members of the pro-
fession in reviewing papers. In each discipline as you go down
the hierarchy of journals the publication requirements will get
progressively less strict. A somewhat less prestigious journal
may seek views from two or three outside referees and go on
two positives. It may not be able to attract the same quality of
people to look at prospective articles, bearing in mind that ref-
erees are not paid for their efforts.
Lower down in the hierarchy in most professions are those
journals which do not run proper independent refereeing.
Instead they may serve mainly as a vehicle for a ‘referencing cir-
cle’ around a particular clique in the profession. Similarly, more
‘ideological’ journals may single-mindedly plug a particular view-
point, without ever publishing critical work undertaken from
divergent positions. Some journals may referee internally only
amongst an editorial team, or perhaps the editors may somewhat
‘rig’ who gets to write the references, so as to attract positive
responses from their referees for material they want to accept.
228 ◆AUTHORING A PHD