and other experienced colleagues. Next make sure that you revise
the paper to prevent the same criticisms recurring elsewhere.
Then pick a journal lower down the professional hierarchy and
submit the revised paper to them.
While you are working on your thesis it is usually a good idea
not to try and start work on any paper which does not derive
from and form part of your thesis. Writing one of the shorter
pieces discussed above may not be too serious a diversion from
your main work. But working on a full paper on a topic differ-
ent from your thesis is definitely to be avoided, because of the
long time lags and concentrated effort entailed, and the poten-
tial for encountering demoralizing rejections or criticisms along
the way. So stick to trying to ‘paperize’ your best and most orig-
inal thesis chapters. It is a good idea to work on a single paper
at a time. But because of the lengthy process, once you have
one paper under submission, it can also be helpful to start
straightaway on another one, so as to get a small ‘production
line’ of papers progressively under way. It is better to have sev-
eral publication efforts at different stages of development at any
one time, as most established academics do, rather than having
a single, lonely effort out there on which all your hopes rest.
The chances are high that one paper, like one lottery ticket,
may not progress.
In addition, many universities now expect research students
with a completed doctorate (or one that is near-finished) to have
at least one or two short pieces published if they are to consider
them for appointment, a trend strongly reinforced in Britain
by the government’s research assessment exercise (RAE) process.
The RAE effectively requires all academic staff to publish at least
four pieces of research every five or six years, or risk being
categorized as ‘research inactive’. So departments are very reluc-
tant to appoint anyone who has not shown concrete publish-
ing capability. Similar approaches have been introduced or are
being considered by governments in some other countries. So
having a small portfolio of publications already in place when
you graduate is becoming more important for PhD students
than in previous periods.
New authors are often not aware that there is a very strong
norm against submitting the same paper to more than one jour-
nal at a time. Academic journals are by and large still voluntary
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