Academia – Post-Graduate Proof-Reader Blog

Publishing your qualitative study: How to select a journal and nominate peer reviewers

Congratulations – you’ve written a paper based on your qualitative study, and now you’re deciding where to try to publish. That’s fantastic! Getting a few peer-reviewed publications under your belt is an essential step in the academic career path. However, if you’ve not done it before, the publication process can feel daunting. Don’t worry: PGPR are here to guide you.

NB: If you’re not quite at this stage yet, you might want to check out our previous blogs, How to write a qualitative paper, How to get your qualitative study read for publication and How to make your writing sing.

Congratulations: You’re ready to publish! Photo by Yen Vu on Unsplash

Selecting a journal

Make a list of journals that publish in your area

The process of reading existing research and writing your reference list will mean that you have almost certainly internalised the names of more relevant journals than you think. Jot those down, then look through your reference list for others you haven’t remembered. Ask your co-authors for their ideas. Do a Google search for ‘journal’ + your topic. This should result in a good list for you to consider.

Check which are open to publishing qualitative research

This is essential! There is no point submitting your study, beautiful as it might be, to a journal that has never published any qualitative work before. Doing so will waste both your time and the editors’ time, so do everyone a favour and search the archives of your longlisted journals for the word ‘qualitative’ in the titles of published articles. If there are none, cross that one off your list.

Ideally, you want to find a journal that often publishes qual work and has published at least some articles using your methodology. Of course, there are some qual-specific journals out there, such as Qualitative Research and the Journal of Qualitative Health Research. These will always be open to qualitative work, and their reviewers will have the expertise to provide relevant, helpful feedback.

Check your chosen journal publishes qualitative research before submitting.
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Make a table of each journal’s attributes

This table should include the journal’s impact factor – a number that indicates how often papers from this journal are cited and so how prestigious the journal is – their word count (you can’t publish three GETs from your beautiful IPA study in a journal whose maximum word count is 2,000), who the readers of the journal are, whether or not it is open access and so on. It could be that your co-authors have had good or bad experiences publishing in the papers on your list; if so, include that too.

Note that if you are choosing to publish in an open-access journal, your university will need to pay some rather weighty fees, so do check that they have the budget for that before pursuing that route.

Rank journals in order of preference, depending on your priorities

Looking at this information in table form will help you decide which journal to target first. If you have high ambitions for forging a lofty academic career (and why not?), aim for the high-impact journals first. Just be prepared for the potential of a knock-back, and be ready to move on to the next journal on the list. If your priority is to get your research seen by other qual researchers sooner rather than later, consider a less high-impact journal with a stronger proven track record for qual researchers. (Unfortunately, these two things often go hand in hand!)

For what it’s worth, I don’t think that impact factors mean much more than a plus point on your CV. I don’t know of any academics who find papers to read based on the impact factor of the journal. Instead, just as you very likely did, other academics use Google Scholar to look for papers in the relevant area, read them, and cite the best ones, often not worrying at all about which journal those papers are in. So I never really worry about impact factors. However, if you are more ambitious in that area, I doff my cap to you and wish you the best of luck.

Deciding which journals to target takes some thought.
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Read through the author guidelines of your chosen journal

Once you’ve decided on your ideal journal, the next step is to carefully read over the author guidelines and ensure your paper follows them. This might involve changing your references from APA7 to Harvard (not an issue if you’ve used referencing software – a right pain if you haven’t, I’m afraid!), cutting a few words or changing from UK to US spelling. Following the guidelines as closely as possible at this stage will save you hassle later on. I recommend saving a new version of the paper and adding the journal to the title so you can revert to your original if it isn’t accepted the first time.

Ensure you have cited any relevant papers from your chosen journal

This is self-explanatory! Do a quick search of recent editions of your chosen journal and include any relevant references. This will show the journal’s editors that you’ve paid attention to their publication.

Write a killer cover letter

Ensure you’ve written a confident and concise cover letter before you start the submission process. This is your chance to tell the editor why their publication and readership need to read your amazing research. Again, check the author guidelines for any instructions on what to include in the letter for your chosen journal.

Sadly, academic publishing involves some rejection.
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8. Be prepared for some rejection

Unfortunately, publishing academic work comes with its fair share of rejection, which can sting, especially when you’re starting out. Give yourself a day or two to feel the pain, then move on to the next journal. Keep working through your list until you find someone who recognises your genius and says yes!

If a journal rejects your paper but gives you some feedback, read that feedback carefully. If the reviewers have said anything you agree with, redraft the paper to smooth out those issues. If you don’t agree, move on. The good news is that the longer you do this, the easier it becomes to shrug off any difficult feelings that come with rejection and keep moving forward.

Submitting your paper involves filling out a long, complex online form and is often more frustrating than you want it to be! Give yourself a good hour or so to complete this process, and ensure that you have all relevant info to hand before you get started, such as your co-authors’ contact details and your cover letter. If possible, look through the form before you get started so you can spot anything you might need to ask your supervisor about in advance.

One thing you will need to do is nominate peer-reviewers; that is, experts in your field who you would ideally like to review your paper. Peer reviewers decide whether your work is ready for publication and, if not, what needs to change. It is extremely rare for a paper to be accepted with no revisions, so be ready to respond to your reviewers’ comments before publication.

How to nominate peer reviewers:

Have this discussion with your co-authors before you submit

It’s really frustrating to be 75% of the way through submitting your paper before you realise that you haven’t discussed potential reviewers with your co-authors, as that means you have to pause the process to have that conversation. Therefore, I recommend going into the submission process with a list of agreed-upon potential reviewers to nominate, along with their institutions and contact details.

Talk to your co-authors about which peer reviewers to nominate.
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2. Who can’t review your work?

For obvious reasons, you cannot nominate current or recent co-authors, someone at your institution, a mentor, close colleague or friend. Therefore, tempting as it might be, don’t put any of those friendly faces on your list.

3. Who should review your work?

As mentioned above, your nominated reviewers should be experts in the field. I believe it’s more important that these people are qualitative researchers (or at least open to qualitative research) than that they are well-versed in your exact topic. Otherwise, you run the risk of reviews from people who don’t understand qualitative research and will waste your time asking about generalisability or insisting that you should have reported data saturation in your three-participant IPA study. If you can think of people who are qual researchers and also experts in your topic, all the better. You can find people like this by looking at who wrote the work you’ve cited and asking your co-authors for ideas.

4. Make sure you’ve cited their relevant work

Once you’ve decided on a few names, check whether these people have published a relevant paper that you have somehow missed. If you find something important, cite it. Everyone is susceptible to flattery. Plus, if the work is relevant, the reviewers will certainly point out that you’ve missed it, so this saves everyone time.

Make sure you’ve cited your ideal peer-reviewers in your paper.
Photo by Daniel Thomas on Unsplash

5. If possible, list more than two people

Bear in mind that your nominated reviewers are not under any obligation to say yes. Academics are stressed, busy people and reviewing is not paid work. For example, I probably review only one in every five papers I’m asked to read. I say no to any quantitative papers or those I have no expertise in at all (so again, do everyone a favour and only nominate people who have the relevant knowledge), but also have to say no to some fascinating-sounding papers because I don’t have the time to read them. Therefore, the longer your list of potential reviewers, the better.

In my experience, if a paper is about a strong, important study and you are targeting relevant journals, you will only need to try two or three publications before you find the right home for your work. The more experienced you become at this, the more likely it is that you’ll find the right journal the first time around.

If you need any help preparing your study for publication, contact PGPR using the form below. We are qualitative experts who offer proofreading and feedback to postgrad students like you.

Seven ways PGPR can help you complete your qualitative project

Completing postgrad qualitative research is an adventure. It can be thrilling, enriching and rewarding… but it can also be arduous, stressful and exhausting.

Here at PGPR, we can help you through every step of your journey. Here are seven services we think will benefit you as you progress through your project.

The PGPR team is on hand to help you every step of the way!

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1. Interview schedule check

Collecting your data is so important. Asking participants the right questions can unlock access to the rich, lovely data which will underpin your entire study. We can look at your interview schedule and talk it over in a video consultation, giving you pointers for ensuring your questions are open, comprehensive and ordered in a way that is likely to generate rapport.

2. Feedback on analysis

Analysis can feel fun and fascinating – and it can feel overwhelming! Trying to conduct analysis without many qualitative colleagues or at a university without many qualitative experts can feel especially lonely and daunting. Fortunately, the PGPR team loves analysis, so we’re always excited when a client asks for feedback at this stage. We can offer written feedback or feedback via one of our video consultations. We’ll look at whether your data truly supports your conclusions, if there are areas where you can dig deeper, and whether your analysis fits in with your chosen methodology.

3. Feedback on word length and structure

Once you start putting the chapters of your thesis together, you might find that you’re several thousand words over your university’s word limit. Don’t panic – this is a common problem and is something we can help with. We’ll read your chapters and offer feedback which will help you tighten up your structure and delete those unnecessary words.

Feeling overwhelmed? We hear you!

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4. Correcting your spelling and grammar

While we love giving feedback, we’re also all huge word nerds here at PGPR, so you can come to us if you need any sections of your thesis proof-read. We’ll correct any spelling and grammar issues, ensure that you’ve used terminology consistently and offer suggestions to make your sentences read as smoothly as possible.

5. Checking references

Reference sections: can’t get by without them – but you CAN offload them to us! When you’re immersed in analysing your beautiful data or wrangling with that tricky discussion section, ensuring that your reference list is also perfect can feel incredibly onerous. Don’t worry; we’re here to help. Our proof-readers Hannah and Shannon particularly enjoy checking reference lists, so it’s likely that one of these two superstars will undertake this job for you. They find it soothing – clearly, we need to clone them!

Enjoy more time to relax while we proof-read your reference list for you!

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6. Formatting

Word has lots of features that can help you present your thesis in a professional manner; unfortunately, it often feels like you need a degree in IT to be able to get them all to work. We have several Word experts on the team who will be more than happy to create tables of contents, ensure that your headings are consistent and caption all your figures for you.

7. Conference check package

Once your research is complete, it’s time to share it with the wider world. If you have a conference coming up, PGPR can offer feedback on your slides and give you an opportunity to practice your presentation via video for a friendly audience. Just get in touch to find out more.

We look forward to hearing from you – just fill in the contact form below and we’ll get back to you ASAP.

How to make your writing sing

If you’re an academic, you are also, by proxy, a writer. Academics lives are full of words. Emails, feedback to students, grant applications, papers, theses – all of these require the careful placement of the one word next to another. As Prince once (almost) said, if you put the right letters together, you make a better day. And if it’s good enough for Prince, it’s good enough for the rest of us mere mortals.

However, while we university types are educated up to the eyeballs in our particular topics, we’re not often taught much about writing itself. Sure, we might have had an undergrad lecture about writing essays which follow the funnel structure, but other than that, we’re left to sink or swim. Which, given how much of our lives we spend trying to communicate complex ideas through the written word, is perhaps a bit of an oversight.

Humans have been communicating their ideas through writing since ancient times.

Photo by Kyle Smith on Unsplash.

With that in mind, here are some of PGPR’s top tips for creating words which stand out.

1. Read

Every writer also needs to be a reader. Fiction writers are experts in their genre, reading everything they can get their hands on by the writers they admire. The same counts for academic writing. Read as many papers and books in your field as possible. Spot what works and what doesn’t. Try to use the best techniques in your own writing.

Additionally, two great how-to books that can help every writer are Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style and Stephen King’s On Writing. I’m sure there are other great books on writing which haven’t been written by someone called Steven, but those are a great starting point.

2. Plan

That funnel structure lecture you sat through in undergrad was actually pretty useful. Good academic writing should always follow a structure. This might feel boring, but it makes it easier for others to read, which should always be your aim. Think carefully about the points you want to make. How you order those points will influence how the reader digests your ideas, so plan carefully before you start.

A good plan is worth its weight in sticky labels!

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3. Write tight

As we’ve said in a previous PGPR blog, a key tenet of writing is to ‘omit needless words’ (Strunk, 2007). Effective writing is concise. We all write in longer sentences when we’re drafting something, so look back over your work and get rid of those filler words (‘that’ ‘very’ ‘really’) which aren’t needed.

Another tip for writing tighter prose is to avoid repetition. We all have favourite phrases which we use over and over again without even noticing. Try to spot yours and find new ways of phrasing. This will keep the reader’s attention.

4. The Curse of Knowledge (Pinker, 2014)

This concept, which Steven Pinker discusses in detail in The Sense of Style, is especially relevant to academics. When we’re an expert in any topic – be it phenomenology, attribution theory or fuzzy logic, it can be easy to forget that our readers don’t share our knowledge. This can mean we don’t provide essential explanations, leaving the reader lost. This is a tough nut to crack, but if you ask for feedback from a non-expert friend or colleague, they will be able to help you spot the holes that need filling.

A good friend will always help you out of a tight spot!

Image by Anja🤗#helpinghands #solidarity#stays healthy🙏 from Pixabay

5. Read your work aloud

You might feel like a bit of wally doing this, but it is super helpful. There’s something about reading aloud which helps you spot the awkward clauses or overly long sentences you might otherwise have missed. You could read to a friend or family member, or just to yourself in your locked office – whatever you choose, release your words into the ether and you’ll spot lots of areas to improve.

6. Impactful words should be at the start and end of sentences

This is a neat trick. If you are using words which pack a punch – and let’s hope you are – try to place those words at the start or end of the sentence, and your writing will immediately improve.

Let’s look at an example. Perhaps you’re writing up some qualitative findings from your fascinating study about eating tasty cakes. You’ve drafted the following sentence:

It was reported that the chocolate cake was the most delicious out of all of the options.

The three best words there, I think we can all agree, are ‘cake’, ‘chocolate’ and ‘delicious’. At the moment, while there’s nothing technically wrong here, those words are a little lost. Our hacky human brains might therefore jump over them, in our rush to skip to the end.

What might work better?

Most delicious, reported participants, was the chocolate cake.

The chocolate cake was reported to be the most delicious.

Chocolate was found to be the best flavour.

There is no one right answer. When you’re faced with a sentence like this, play around. Is ‘best flavour’ a more impactful way of saying ‘the most delicious’? Several needless words were omitted in the edited versions. Which sounds best to your ear?

Keep an ear (or two) out for those unnecessary filler words.

Photo by Kyle Smith on Unsplash

7. Employ PGPR

If all this sounds like far too much hard work, just get in touch with PGPR via the form below. We’ll be happy to help your writing be the best it can be.

How to get your qualitative study ready for publication in five easy steps

Are you a postgrad student with a comprehensive, beautifully written qualitative thesis? You know your research deserves to be read by a wider audience, but after looking at journal word lengths, you’ve realised you’ll need to cut your gorgeous study in half (or maybe even quarters) to be eligible for publication.

How on earth can this be done?

Don’t panic! This blog will outline five easy steps to help you cut your study down into a bite-sized, publishable piece without losing any of the nuance you’ve put your blood, sweat and tears into.

1. Select a journal Think about audience, word-length and style

Before you even start thinking about making cuts to your precious study, the first thing to get straight is which journal you’re writing for. Who is your ideal audience? Do they have a key publication? If so, that could be the one for you. Run a quick search through your chosen journal’s archive to ensure they are open to qualitative publications; it will be a waste of your time and theirs to send your gorgeous IPA findings to a publication which only deals with stats.

Wow your audience with your awesome findings
Photo by Wendy Wei on Pexels

Once you’ve found your ideal journal, search their website for their instructions for authors, and note down their word length and style guidelines. Some journals might ask for a certain number of pages rather than a word length. Most will have requirements for font, point size and spacing, which you will do well to adopt from the outset so you don’t get a nasty shock when it turns out you have to double space the article you’ve spent hours getting down to 30 single–spaced pages.

2. Re-read your study What are the novel points? What will be of particular interest to your chosen journal’s audience?

Once you’ve selected your ideal journal, go back and re-read your study. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to fit all the findings from a master’s or PhD study into one paper, so think about which findings are the most novel, or which will appeal most to the audience of your chosen publication.

3. Choose two to three themes Which would work as an individual paper?

*Feeling overwhelmed by words? The Post-Graduate Proof-Reader can help!*
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You might have to make some big choices at this stage. Have you got five themes? Perhaps there will only be room in this paper to present two of those. Don’t worry – it could be that you could put the other three into a second paper for another audience. Maybe there’s just one theme that you feel is really hard-hitting. That’s fine too – you can pull that out of the study and present it alone.

4. Re-write your lit review and discussion Tailor these to your chosen themes

Once you’ve selected the theme/s you want to focus on for this paper, you’ll need to tailor the introduction, method and discussion sections to fit. Which papers from your lit review are relevant just for these fewer themes? Add a short section in your method explaining that you have (for example) selected two themes from a wider project, and explaining why you’ve chosen to do this. You might also want to include some recommendations and reflections towards the end of your discussion section.

5. Send your paper to the Post-Graduate Proof-Reader

Your study should be looking much more like a publishable paper now. It will be shorter and more tightly focused towards a specific audience. Congratulations! But… you may still be a little beyond that elusive word limit. Could you make your points more succinctly? Perhaps you don’t need all those limitations you’ve humbly included in your discussion section! Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes is needed at this stage. Visit http://postgradproofreader.co.uk/ and I’ll be happy to help you get your piece down to the correct word length and help you share your fabulous research with the wider world.