The big day has arrived. You look in your In Box and there is an email from a journal editor. You submitted your manuscript over 60 days ago and have been patiently waiting for their decision. The big day is here. You click on it. There is likely one of four decisions.
Good news no matter what the decision is! You are moving forward. Here is some advice for understanding their decision and what it means to you:
When you are deciding where to submit your next journal article manuscript, considering the journal’s publishing model is very important.
Disruption has been the norm in many areas of life. Scholarly publishing is no exception. In the 1980s, scholarly publishing seemed monolithic. Journals fell into two categories: first was traditional subscription publications. The accessibility of the content in these journals was limited to subscribers. Second, were journals published by learned societies or associations.
Your research is done. You have a solid first draft. Now, where will you submit your paper?
Authors will either have a quick answer or struggle to figure out which is the best fit for their work. I suggest you put nearly as much time into thinking through the best match for your work as you did in creating it.
Start to develop a list of possible publications for submission. Potential journals will migrate up and down your list as you learn more about each one.
Nothing is quite so sweet as seeing that block on your calendar that says, “Vacation,” or “Holiday.” Of course, it comes with some stressors, but oh, that time away.
One of those nagging items that accompany time off may be your writing. Hopefully, you have set a schedule or timeline for when your next milestone needs to be completed. The holidays in particular can present both opportunities and pitfalls. The key to determining which path you will go down is having a plan.
Many people once the time off starts will need a day or so to decompress and turn off the noise of work or the office. Completely understandable. But the goal is not to let a day turn into three days or into ten continuous hours of Netflix or….
How is your schedule?
If you are like the rest of the people I know, you either:
Feeling pushed to the max is the number one response I get nowadays when I ask someone about where they are with their writing and work.
How often do you talk to your computer?
Last month I discussed the growing sophistication of programs that read your writing aloud from word processing programs such as Word or Pages.
Now, let’s look at the programs that allow you to speak your words into your work without using your fingers. Some might be old school enough to remember the first clunky dictation software. It involved a CD-ROM and lots of instructions and commands. Well thankfully the industry has greatly improved while becoming infinitely easier to implement.
