Introduction to
Scholarly Publishing
Brian James Baer
Kent State University
(ID-TS Workshop, Leuven,
Belgium, 29 August, 2014)
Scholarly Publishing
• Part I: De-mystifying Scholarly Publishing
• Part II: The Ethics of Scholarly Publishing
Scholarly Publishing
• Why to talk to doctoral students about
scholarly publishing?
• When to talk to doctoral students about
scholarly publishing?
• What to say to doctoral students about
scholarly publishing?
• How to talk to doctoral students about
scholarly publishing (modalities)?
Scholarly Publishing: Why?
• Enhances employment opportunities
• Allows students to take advantage of the
support of experienced authors and
editors, as well as peers (writing groups)
• Provides opportunities for constructive
expert feedback
Scholarly Publishing: Why?
• Increasing pressure to decrease the time
to degree
• Increasing pressure to quantify scholarly
output
• Increasing pressure to close the gap
between classroom performance and realworld proficiency
Scholarly Publishing: Why?
Broughton and Conlogue (2001) found in
their survey of search committees that:
“evidence of teaching ability outranks
evidence of research ability”
Scholarly Publishing: When?
• Some argue that early publication and
conference presentation keep students
from "developing long-term intellectual
projects and thus propagates intellectual
shallowness” (Guillory 4; see Spacks)
Scholarly Publishing: When?
• Excessive pressure to publish or attempts to
publish too early can have disastrous results:
–Writer’s block
–Unethical practices
Scholarly Publishing: When?
• Others contend that there is nothing wrong
with such activities as long as they do not
result in “inferior professionalization”
(Nelson 162).
Scholarly Publishing:
What to Say?
• Explicit discussion of scholarly publishing
should be one aspect of an overall
intrusive advising approach
Scholarly Publishing:
What to Say?
• Scholarly publishing should be discussed
together with other scholarly activities that
serve to transition students into the
professional world of academia
Setting Professional Goals
• The goals should be reasonable and
achievable
• Goals should not interfere with the timely
completion of the degree
• Goals should spiral up
Setting Professional Goals
• Memberships in regional, national and
international scholarly organizations
(listservs, newsletters, journal
subscriptions)
Setting Professional Goals
• Presentations at regional, national and
international scholarly conferences
Setting Professional Goals
• Publication of an article in a peer-reviewed
scholarly venue (listservs, journal
subscriptions, newletters)
– Co-authored with advisor
– Single-authored
Setting Professional Goals
• Spiral up (levels of scholarly feedback)
– Departmental presentation
– Conference presentation (reviewed abstracts)
– Publication in a peer-reviewed venue
De-mystifying
Scholarly Publishing
• Journal Editors
• Think of publishing as inserting yourself
into an ongoing conversation
Publishing as Conversation
• Grice’s Maxims:
– Maxim of Quality: Be truthful
– Maxim of Quantity: Be as informative as
required
– Maxim of Relation: Be relevant
– Maxim of Manner: Be clear
Publishing Tips
• CLARITY
• CLARITY
• CLARITY
Types of Review
• Peer review
• Blind (anonymous)
• Single/Double
• Editorial review (invited)
Assessment
• Accept as is
• Accept with minor revisions
• Accept with major revisions/Revise and
resubmit
• Reject
Assessment
• Students may need help deciphering the
decision, especially “Revise and
Resubmit”
• Students may need help deciding whether
to revise a rejected manuscript before
sending to another venue
Finding a Home
• Matching a manuscript with the proper
venue
Finding a Home
“When thinking about the best format in
which to publish, authors should consider
the wide range of available options and their
implications in terms of medium, audience,
accessibility, permanence, and peer review”
(MLA website, Advice for Authors,
Reviewers, Publishers, and Editors of
Literary Scholarship, accessed 8/20/14)
Finding a Home
• General topic journals in TS:
– Babel
– Linguistica Antverpiensia
– Meta
– Target
– The Translator
– Translation and Interpreting Studies
– Translation Studies
– TTR
Finding a Home
• Special issues of journals
• Specialized journals
– Translator and Interpreter Trainer
– Interpreting
– mTm (online)
– Translation Spaces (online)
• New journals (indexed?)
Finding a Home
• Mission of journal or organization
• Submission guidelines (length, style guide)
• Quality/nature of review (feedback):
Posted rubrics? Additional feedback for
new scholars?
• Length of review process/publication
timeline
Asking Questions
DON’T
BE
AFRAID
TO
ASK
QUESTIONS!!!
Finding a Home
Impact Factor
•Created by Eugene Garfield, founder of the
Institute for Scientific Information
•Designed to measure the importance or
impact of a scholarly journal
Impact Factor
Used my many organizations (universities,
granting agencies) to quantify the impact of a
journal and, by extension, the importance or
relevance of a scholar’s work
Impact Factor
• Calculated yearly starting from 1975 for
journals indexed in the Journal Citation
Reports
• The average number of citations received
per paper published in that journal during
the two preceding years
• Journals indexed starting with a volume
other than volume one will not get an IF
until they have been indexed for 3 years
Impact Factor
Calculated by dividing:
• The number of times all items published in
a given journal during the previous two
years were cited by indexed publications
during a given year
• By the total number of "citable items"
published by that journal in that two year
period
Impact Factor
• "Citable items" include articles, reviews,
proceedings, and notes, but not editorials
or letters to the editor
• Objections to the use of Impact Factor is
assessing an author’s scholarly output
Impact Factor
• It is easily manipulated by certain editorial
policies
• One hugely popular work can skew the
reading for a given period
• 90% of Nature’s 2004 IF was based on
only 40% of its citable items
• Fluctuates significantly across disciplines,
based on the speed with which papers get
cited in a field
Impact Factor
• Journal rankings constructed based solely
on impact factors only moderately
correlate with those compiled from the
results of expert surveys
• Many departments in the US will
determine which journals are considered
the leading ones in a given field, ignoring
IF rankings
Citation Index
• Alternative metrics that include article
views, downloads, and/or mentions in
social media (i.e., tweets)
• Article-level metrics
• Author-based metrics (total citations or
average citation count per article): h-index,
g-index
Citation Index
Citations determined using:
• Subsciption-based databases: Scopus and
Web of Knowledge
• Open databases: Google Scholar
• Strengths and Weaknesses of the
databases
Citation Indexes
Designed for the hard sciences, in which:
• Journals are the preferred form for the dissemination
of research
• Most publications are co-authored by members of a
research team
• Authors may publish several articles in a given year
based on the same study / data set
Other Venues
• Collected volumes
• Conference proceedings
• Professional publications (ATA Chronicle)
• Encyclopedias
Evaluating Other Venues
• Nature/quality of review process
• Review/publication timeline
• Has a publisher committed to the project
(contract)?
• Publisher/Editor/Series information
Where to Begin?
• Acquaint yourself with the journals, book
series, publishers in the field of TS
• Examine current calls for papers
(conferences, collected volumes): Identify
hot topics / key concepts
• Don’t think final paper—think future
publication!!!
How to Discuss Scholarly
Publishing
• Discussion of scholarly publishing can
take place in one of the following
modalities, or in a combination thereof:
– Make online materials available to students to
consult on their own time
– Disseminate information through a mentoring
system (Remember: mentors need training!)
– Hold face-to-face workshops with students
Part II:
Ethics of Scholarly Publishing
• Plagiarism
• Avoid multiple submissions
• Acknowledgements: Citation is free!!!
Defining Plagiarism
"Plagiarize" means to take and present as
one's own a material portion of the ideas or
words of another or to present as one's own
an idea or work derived from an existing
source without full and proper credit to the
source of the ideas, words, or works. As
defined, plagiarize includes, but is not
limited to:
Defining Plagiarism
(a) The copying of words, sentences and
paragraphs directly from the work of another
without proper credit;
Defining Plagiarism
(b) The copying of illustrations, figures,
photographs, drawings, models, or other
visual and nonverbal materials, including
recordings, of another without proper credit;
and
Defining Plagiarism
(c)The presentation of work prepared by
another in final or draft form as one's own
without citing the source, such as the use
of purchased research papers.
(Taken from the Kent State University Policy
on Plagiarism)
Causes of Plagiarism
– Pressure to publish / time pressures
– Lack of understanding as to what constitutes
plagiarism
– Different concepts of textual ownership
– Ease of plagiarism with the availability of
online material that can be cut and pasted
Plagiarism
• How does your university deal with
plagiarism?
Detecting Plagiarism
While new technologies have made it easier
to plagiarize, they have also made it easier
to detect plagiarism
Detecting Plagiarism
• Programs, such as SafeAssign and
TurnItIn, that are a part of your university’s
learning management system
• Programs, such as Grammarly and
PaperRater, that individuals can purchase
but that are less robust than the university
systems
Detecting Plagiarism
Detecting Plagiarism
Plagiarism School
In an effort to try to make a difficult situation
involving student behavior into a valuable
educational experience, Kent State
University developed "Plagiarism School."
Plagiarism School
When an instructor determines that an act of
plagiarism was more the result of poor
preparation for college or inadequate writing
skills and less the result of out-right
academic dishonesty, he or she can ask a
student accused of plagiarism to attend
Plagiarism School.
Plagiarism School
Plagiarism School is a one-on-one session
lasting about 45 minutes (a fuller description
is included below). While serving as a
means to reeducate and rehabilitate
students who plagiarize, students can also
mitigate the sanction applied by the
instructor.
Plagiarism School
For example, instead of failing the
assignment the student may be offered the
opportunity to resubmit the corrected
assignment (perhaps for a reduced grade) in
return for completing Plagiarism School.
Plagiarism School
In addition to diminishing the negative
results of being accused of plagiarism,
attending plagiarism school leaves students
feeling that they are better equipped to
understand and avoid plagiarism in the
future, turning a potentially devastating
situation into a more positive one.
(www.kent.edu)
Summary
• Discuss scholarly publishing as part of an
overall approach to intrusive advising
• De-mystify scholarly publishing for your
students
• Encourage students to review the mission
statements of journals and to ask
questions regarding the level of review
and the length of review
• Make sure students are aware of the
ethical issues involved
The End
Happy publishing!