David D. Perrodin
My dear fellow applied linguistics researcher friends…
At the end of Episode 14, I asked you to stay tuned for the next episode when I would share with you the challenges of dealing with academic journal editors and reviewers. So, away we go….
First of all, thank you for reading my monthly memoirs. As you know, I have been rambling on for months about the challenges of developing as a researcher. BUT nothing, I mean nothing, has been as soul-crushing as what I am about to discuss.
After months of study preparation, data gathering, analysis, and finally, writing, I submitted my first prized manuscript for publication. Only to have a journal editor reject my paper. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! (Feel free to replace my yelling with an explicative of your choice if you know the feeling.)
Understandably journal editors want to publish good-quality papers of interest to the journal readers. But for crying out loud, I knew I wrote an exceptional manuscript with groundbreaking data that would significantly impact my field of research. Or I thought I did.
So I made the revisions according to the advice of the reviewers. I submitted the revised paper to another journal. Only to get rejected again. So I re-revised my paper according to the remarks of these reviewers. Then once again, I submitted my re-revised paper to a third journal. A few months later, I received an email stating, “ACCEPTED with revisions.” Hooray!!!!
You see, it would have been easy to give up. To walk away because my dreams were crushed. But the reality is that my academic writing skills simply needed to be developed.
I took the hit and learned from my mistakes. I took all the remarks from the reviewers and adapted them into the subsequent revisions of my paper. In doing so, I became a better writer, and I learned how to better communicate my ideas.
The truth is that this story was many submissions ago, yet I am still developing as a writer.
Stay tuned for the next episode of ‘From the Mind of a Developing Researcher,’ when I will share the challenges of keeping IT altogether. What is IT, you ask? Stay tuned…
My Favorite References
Belcher, W. L. (2009). Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success (1st ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc.
Graff, G., & Birkenstein, C. (2006). They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter In Academic Writing (1st ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.
Rugg, G., & Petre, M. (2004). The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research. Open University Press.
Wan, C. D. (2016). Positional challenges and advantages of a PhD student researching the PhD. The Qualitative Report, 21(7), 1193–1202. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2016.2411
Wheelan, C. (2014). Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data (1st ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.
