Fabio Rojas gives sociology grad students some good advice on publishing in his latest post on Orgtheory.net. Here are a few highlights:
What counts as publishable?
- Learn by reading books and journals in your area.
- Read what your adviser and professors publishes.
These tactics not only help when evaluating what is publishable work, but it’s also a good way to figure out where to publish. Before approaching anyone with a proposal, you might read a few of the books that a press publishes and see if your book has a similar style or handles a similar topic. If your work doesn’t fit in with what the press is doing, move on to a publisher that does.
With the ASA approaching, here’s another good piece of advice from Fabio:
Get a thick skin. Every academic has piles and piles of rejection letters.
Finally, Fabio writes:
Is it all an insider’s game? Academia, like any job, has its fair share of gaming the system. All older academics will regale you with stories of “such and such got published because the editor was a friend.” So what? That’s life. But academia is also remarkably open. In soc, we have our four lead general journals, about 5-10 high quality specialty journals, some excellent regional journals, and many more respected journals that don’t fit the mold (i.e., Theory & Society, Poetics, etc.) If you try really heard and put out your best work, I promise you’ll get good results.
Tags: orgtheory, publishing, sociology
