Directory of Communication Related Mental Measures

Jason Wrench, Doreen Jowi, and Alan Goodboy have coauthored a new directory of over 500 mental measures published in communication journals. This new volume has been written for the National Communication Association's Non-Serial Publications Series and should be available Summer 2010 for purchase. More...

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CommuniCast

Jason Wrench has initiated the field's first branded podcast series, CommuniCast. CommuniCast are interviews with the top scholars in communication today. More...

Publishing Your Original Research

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The last topic we want to discuss with you in this chapter and in this book is the process a manuscript goes through before it gets published. Most manuscripts will probably have been presented at a conference or convention before they get published. Occasionally, a manuscript slips through the publication process faster than the conference process and is actually published before it gets presented at a conference, but this is a rarity. One reason manuscripts often go through the conference process first is so the authors can receive some initial feedback on their paper before sending it out to a journal for publication. Most original research projects that get published in communication are likely to be published in academic journals rather than in book form. However, some original studies like Lisa Tillmann-Healy’s (2001) book Between Gay and Straight:  Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation are published as academic books. Nevertheless, the majority of original research in the field of communication appears in academic journals. In fact, this process is quite similar to the process an individual goes through when submitting a paper for presentation at an academic conference or convention.

At the completion of any research project, the author(s) is very glad that the project is over and probably doesn’t even want to look at the manuscript any longer. Unfortunately, writing the draft that gets sent to a journal is just the first step in the long process towards publication. Before one submits the manuscript for consideration to a journal editor, the author needs to think about which journal is the best suited for her or his specific research study. Often there will be numerous journals that would be interested in a specific research study, and other times the topic is so specific that only one or two journals would be interested in the topic. Authors also need to be aware that some journals only publish pieces from one of the methodological traditions discussed in this book. The list at the bottom of this page is a fairly updated list of journals that regularly publish communication research. You’ll notice that some of the journal titles have superscript numbers next to them. The key at the bottom of the figure indicates whether the journal primarily accepts qualitative, quantitative, or rhetorical/critical research manuscripts for publication. For example, each research method has specific journals that only publish manuscripts that utilize that specific method: qualitative (Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, Qualitative Research, etc.), quantitative (Communication Research Reports, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, etc.), and rhetorical/critical (Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, etc.).

Once you have picked out the journal you think is best suited for your manuscript, you will want to read the journal’s call for papers. Just like conferences and conventions have calls for papers, journals do as well. Often these calls will specify types of research published, maximum length of papers, manuscript style requirements (APA, Chicago, MLA, or their own), types of computer files accepted, author contact information wanted by the editor, and how to submit manuscripts. Again, some manuscripts must be submitted through snail-mail and others can be sent or uploaded electronically, so carefully reading a journal’s call for papers is extremely important.

Before you send your manuscript to the journal’s editor, you will need to compose a cover letter to the journal’s editor. This cover letter must include your contact information, the name of your study, and the name of the journal you are submitting. Furthermore, when addressing the cover letter, it is best to directly address it to the editor of the journal. Sometimes finding out who the journal’s editor actually is may take a little legwork, but using the internet makes this process much faster than it used to be. Some journal editors will also ask for specific information needed in the cover letter in the call for manuscripts. Some editors may want to know the history of the manuscript (has it been presented somewhere?), others will want a clause stating that the manuscript has never been published in any form, others will want full contact information for all of the authors on the paper. Again, it’s always best to carefully read what an editor wants prior to submitting an incomplete manuscript.

Once the editor receives your manuscript, the editor will generally perform a cursory overview of the manuscript to determine whether or not the manuscript is appropriate for the specific journal. For example, if you attempt to submit a quantitative experiment to Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, the editor will just outright reject the manuscript because the manuscript is inappropriate for that journal. We've attempted to label the journals below in a way that demonstrates which journals only publish critical, qualitative, or quantiative research. Once the editor believes that the manuscript could be appropriate for the journal, the editor will assign a series of reviewers to the manuscript. Typically, an editor will assign two reviewers to a manuscript and only utilize a third reviewer if the first two reviewers are completely split on their decision to publish or not publish the manuscript. Generally, the reviewers are both subject area experts and methodological experts on your research study’s topic. The use of experts in the field helps to ensure the quality of the manuscript during the review process. Most importantly this review process is considered blind, so the manuscripts the reviewers receive will not contain any of your contact information on them at all. The purpose of blind review is to make sure the manuscript is of the quality necessary for publication. When reviewers know who wrote a manuscript, their individual biases for or against an author or team of authors can bias their ability to judge the manuscript’s quality. Realistically, this process is not perfect. In fact, you can occasionally tell who wrote a manuscript by looking at who was cited in the references or works cited or by examining the author’s writing style.

After reviewing the manuscript, reviewers will provide a detailed explanation of their reasoning for accepting a manuscript, asking the author to make revisions to the manuscript, or rejecting the manuscript. If both reviewers believe that a manuscript should be accepted, then the manuscript would be slated for publication. Generally speaking, manuscripts are rarely accepted outright. Instead, manuscripts are more likely to receive a “revise and resubmit” designation from the editor. When an editor asks an author to revise and resubmit the manuscript, this designation is an indication that the reviewers and the editor thinks the manuscript has promise and might be publishable. Many authors get really dismayed when they see a revise and resubmit notice from an editor, but this is considerably more common than getting an accepted notice from an editor. Whether you are asked to revise and resubmit or rejected, you need to seriously look at what the reviewers have either asked you to change or have found problematic. If you are asked to revise and resubmit, you will be asked by the editor to provide a letter to the two reviewers that address all of the concerns the reviewers had with your manuscript. If your letter to the reviewer’s clearly addresses their concerns and your revised manuscript clearly changes based on their comments, the reviewers will be more likely to accept the manuscript, which is the ideal way a revise and resubmit should work. However, often a revised and resubmitted manuscript will actually demonstrate major problems that were not clear in the unrevised version, which will lead to a rejection.

Ultimately, even a rejection isn’t the proverbial “death nail” in a manuscript’s coffin. More often than not, rejected manuscripts probably deserve to be rejected. As an author, your job is to determine whether you can make the changes necessary to the study to make it publishable, or is the study completely unsavable with even the best revision. Sadly, many authors who get rejected just immediately assume the latter and never really sit down to see what should be changed before sending the manuscript to another journal. Not every study is realistically salvageable, but most are. Ultimately, publishing is about being rejected, and those who publish the most often have also been rejected the most often.

List of Communication Journals

1) Interpretive Research Journals
2) Scientific Research Journals
3) Critical Research Journals