This post is an edited transcript of my interview with Katherine Firth in October 2019 to celebrate the publication of my Short Guide on Peer Review.
JoVE: Hello. So I am Jo Van Every, and this is Katherine Firth.
[Katherine confirms].
JoVE: I got that right. I kept thinking, is it Firth or Frith?
KF: Yes, it’s Firth! (laughs)
JoVE: And we’re just here to talk about research and writing.
KF: Yes.
JoVE: Because I was looking at like the kind of stuff I write and then the kind of stuff you and Inger and Wendy Belcher and Pat Thompson and all those people write. I’m like, I’m doing a completely different thing. (laughs) Like, well not completely different, but it’s sort of like, I think it’s complementing.
KF: Yeah.
JoVE: Rather than competing with what you’re doing.
So before we were talking I was thinking, so in terms of writing, academics, all phases, graduate students all the way up to full professors … It seems like there’s three issues that they’re facing.
One is practical stuff?
KF: mhmm [agreement].
JoVE: … like the book you guys … I’ve got it right here. [Holds up How to Fix Your Academic Writing Troubles] Like this, this book that you guys just wrote. This is really practical, right?
KF: Yep.
JoVE: You’ve got chapters in here like – where are we here? – like “Improving readability by managing extra words” or “Making your text coherent and fluent“, you know, structuring the thing, taking a stand, using what you know to make a case, right?
Like really basic, some of it is writing style stuff. Some of it is um, bigger like how to make an argument, like how to structure your thinking stuff, but it’s really about, this is the content of what goes in what you’re writing.
KF: Yeah.
JoVE: And then one of the other issues is about (pause) confidence.
KF: Yes.
JoVE: I think all of us are addressing the confidence thing, just in different ways.
But part of it is about having the confidence because one of the things about, there’s a, there’s a practical thing about being able to make a claim in an article, and then there’s just like having the guts to do it. (laughs)
KF: And it’s terrifying. I’m currently at exactly that bit where you’re like, have I read enough to be able to say “This has been dealt with excellently elsewhere and I’m not going to read anymore.” And, I am tied up in knots about it and I’m pretty conf…. generally pretty confident. Like it’s a really, it’s a hard thing. Absolutely everybody faces that, that challenge of getting up there and going “I’ve done enough to make a claim.” Um. Yeah. So.
JoVE: Well, and it’s not just “I’ve done enough” but it’s like, “I’m going to make this claim”, “I’m going to say this thing.” Like if you’re making a contribution to knowledge, you’re basically saying something that is in some way, new. I mean, it doesn’t have to be completely new, but it’s like a new twist or a new… right? Like you’re saying, look, I’ve read all this stuff and here’s what I think going forward. That requires incredible confidence.
And yes, the earlier you are in your graduate, in your, in your academic career, the harder it is to … because you don’t have any experience of doing that and it does feel really scary. But even full professors face that, right? Like, can I really say this? Like, yes, no, maybe. Right. So there’s that confidence thing and then, but then the other piece, which I think is the piece I’m most interested in, is the context. Right? So this new one that I’ve done and oh, I even have it, I don’t have all of them on my desk, but I have this one.
KF: I have it on the computer. Yes.
JoVE: Look at that! So this is, this was just because I had to order a proof copy to make sure that it printed out all okay. (laugh) But, um, so, the thing about this is really about, what I see a lot of people, I see all kinds of things where I think people don’t understand the context of what peer review is supposed to be doing. Right?
KF: mhmm [agreement]
JoVE: And, and that knocks their confidence, but also it has all kinds of practical implications, I’m sure. But, you know, so there, there’s a lot of fear of judgement, right? As if, “If this doesn’t get accepted without revisions, then it means that I’m not good enough.”
KF: Yes.
JoVE: Which is absolutely not true. Like never. Not true at all.
KF: No.
JoVE: Um, it’s, you know, so, and, and, and that, the whole thing about peer review somehow, is, is, it’s just some kind of hazing ritual or something. I don’t know what people think it is. Like, right. It’s.
KF: Oh but the jokes they make are, literally, that reviewer two is like, thinks it’s a hazing ritual. Um, that’s, like that’s the way the discourse works about it.
JoVE: Yes. Yes. And actually that’s not true.
KF: No
JoVE: And then the times that you get, and although you do sometimes get people giving those kinds of comments, it’s not anywhere near as common as people think. And um, and that sometimes a lot of times journal editors do, or editors from presses if we’re talking about a book, do actually address that and make sure either that you don’t get to see it or that if you do, you get some reassurance that the hazing ritual part is uh, unacceptable.
But, um, but I think people really just don’t then understand, well, what is the point, right?
And I think, so I think a lot of what I’ve written there and in the one about scholarly publishing
KF: Yeah.
JoVE: it’s really more about like, okay, if you want to learn how to write an article then use the Thompson and Kamler book, or use the Wendy Belcher Writing Your Article in 12 weeks. That’ll take you step by step. Here are the pieces you need to do. Here’s how to … write your new book, the How to Fix Your Writing Trouble will help you with some of the specific kind of pieces you might struggle with around making an argument or whatever.
But if you don’t understand, like, if you, if you approach submission as “I’ve been told I need to submit in high impact journals. Here’s a list of high impact journals in my field. I’m going to that one and send it” and then you get desk rejected.
It’s ’cause you missed a piece of context. It’s not because you’re writing wasn’t any good. It’s ’cause you missed something about what it means to be a high impact journal, but also what journals are trying to do.
KF: mhmm [agreement]
JoVE: And that was what I was trying to do in the short guide to scholarly publishing and also to say, you know, because sometimes people are like, well why is it, is a journal article considered better than an edited? Like a book in an edited … or chapter in an edited book and I’m like well … I know the answer! (laugh)
And a lot of people, it’s funny because a lot of academics, have gone on without really thinking about the answer, I think. And they don’t communicate it very well to their colleagues or other people. They’re just like, you know, this is … right? This is what we need. We need this, you know, tick this box and… right? And it’s like, but I don’t, and if you’ve never struggled with it, you might never have had to think about it. Right?
I think about when I was, when I taught my daughter how to ice skate, like the first time I put her on ice skates and I’m like, “Oh, now I have to think how I do this.” I’ve been doing it since I was four. She’s now four. I’m trying to teach her and all of a sudden I’m like, okay, so how do I stand? Like where is my weight when I’m standing on these things so that I don’t fall over?
And most of the time I don’t think about that because I’m really used to doing it. And I think that’s what happens for a lot of people when they’re publishing.
It’s like they don’t really think about those things anymore because they sort of know which conversations they live in and they know. And so when they say “high impact journal”, they already have a sense of a group of journals that form, well what Thompson and Kamler call the discourse community that they’re mainly engaged in. Right? And they know which ones are higher and lower in that discourse community. And they might have a sense of their whole discipline and where they fit in that.
Um, but, so they don’t necessarily think about that piece, because that to them is the thing. So for other people it’s like, Oh, but, right? Like, why would I go here rather than here, or whatever. And I think the same with peer review. I think about, um, the stress of (sigh)
I read that book, um, Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski.
KF: Yes! I’ve just read it too. Awesome book.
JoVE: Awesome book. So you know that bit where they talk about, your monitor, do they call your monitor, your inner monitor? So there’s an example about “You decide to drive to the mall and you decided it’s gonna … You have in your head, it’s gonna take you 10 minutes, and then you get stuck in traffic”. And a lot of the stress is, uh, created by the fact that you’re now getting stressed about the fact that it’s going to take you longer than 10 minutes.
I think that happens a lot with academic writing. So.
KF: Yeah.
JoVE: (laugh) So like you’re writing this thing, and it’s like “why is taking me so long?” And part of it is that your expectation is totally unreasonable. And, and so you know when you’re thinking about, well I’ve submitted it. Thinking of submitting it as finished as opposed to thinking, “I’ve finished it for now I’m going on to something else. It’s on somebody else’s desk. It is going to come back with expert comments from peer reviewers and I will do another round of revision.”
KF: Yep.
JoVE: So if you frame it that way instead of “I’m done now, I should be at the mall by now”, (laugh) right?
KF: Yeah!
JoVE: Right? Then, then, then I think what happens is that when it comes back, you’re still going to be frustrated. Right? Still might be angry. You still might be upset. You still like there might be any number of things happen, but the fact is you’re not going to additionally feel like, “I’m doing all this work I shouldn’t have to be doing. I was finished.”
KF: And for me, I, um, did that in percentages and I, so I was um, you know, I’d given my all and then a little bit extra to get it to submission stage. So I had, for me, that was like 110%, and then everything extra on top of that was like more than 110%, which was just, you know, sort of ridiculous.
And then I started to go, okay, now actually I’m going to be submitting things when they’re 80% done. So they have to be excellent. Um, but it has to be at 80%, because there’s going to be feedback from, you know, two reviewers, from an editor, from a copy editor. The layout person will do things that I need to care about.
So actually all of this is there to get it to a hundred percent and 100% is published. 100% is not sub… You know, if it’s 100% at submitted, that’s just, it just can’t, that’s not how it works. Um, and so when I started to do that, that also meant that I approached the peer review process with, I’d got as far as I could get on my own, but I know it’s not finished.
And then I was grateful for people to come back and go, “That whole section 2, needs totally restructuring.” I’m like, good, yes! Now I know what to do! Okay!
And it just changed my whole attitude to it, but it was really necessary to rethink that because, before, and I think it’s a student to scholar shift.
JoVE: Yeah.
KF: When you get things marked? You put 110% in, you put it in, it’s done.
JoVE: Yeah. Right.
KF: And the only time you get to revise things is right at the end of your PhD. It’s only when you submit your PhD and get revisions that you actually get a second chance of doing things. Like that was the first time in my whole studies, and I’d been at university for seven years.
JoVE: I know. Yeah.
KF: Suddenly you’re like, “Oh, and then to go, “this is normal”. This is, what everybody does. That, for, peer reviewing for the rest of my life. Okay.” But it was a really big shift.
JoVE: It is a big shift and I think that’s why I really wanted to approach it as, an editorial process.
KF: Yes.
JoVE: Right? That, that, this is about. And then, and then what that made me realize though, is that, the reason that we have, peers do that editing, is all related to academic freedom.
KF: Yes.
JoVE: Which, it’s really interesting that nobody talks about. (pause) Like I don’t hear a lot of people talking. Like I hear a lot of people saying, “Oh, tenure is important to protect academic freedom.” I don’t, I don’t hear a lot of people saying “peer review is important to protecting academic freedom”.
And yet, that’s what I realized is as soon as you look at it as this is an editorial process, it’s basically saying other experts in your field are the ones that are telling you what needs to happen here. This is not influenced by, the commercial logics of the, uh, press. This is not influenced by, you know, what will sell or what will, you know, any of that stuff.
KF: Or indeed how your internal politics around promotion, or who your boss is, or what your boss thinks is important academically. Yeah.
JoVE: No.
KF: That it’s, it’s that you are freed …
JoVE: Yeah.
KF: … from a whole load of, um, things that perhaps your board of the university think are important, or the government of the day thinks is important.
And instead what we’re doing is we’re saying no, the people who can judge this, are other academics. It’s very liberating.
JoVE: Yeah. And in our field, right? So that isn’t to say those other pressures aren’t still there. Right?
KF: Of course.
JoVE: And it isn’t to say, right? Like that, that you aren’t still choosing what you’ve written based on what your head of department or your board of whatever, thinks is important. Um, or that you aren’t, you know, or that the whatever.
But, but it, it is really about an editorial process, that is about, and it’s also about, (pause) uh, and I think this is a really key thing for all of these things, is that there’s this huge tension, between scholarly activity as essentially a collective activity …
KF: mhmm [agreement]
JoVE: … of knowledge production, (pause) and a culture that is very competitive.
KF: Yes.
JoVE: And the competition side is very individualizing.
KF: mhmm [agreement]
JoVE: Right? And, and to a certain extent that competitive culture has been increasingly seeping into academia. And some of it is just because, you know, there are scarce resources, right? There are only so many jobs. There’s only so much funding, there’s only, right? All that kind of thing. And so we are competing for those, but we’ve also then created these idea of stars and you know, the idea and the way people talk about individuals being brilliant, or whatever.
And uh, just today, I don’t know if you’ve read it yet, um, Helen Kara published a thing about, on her blog, she was talking about citing your friends.
KF: Ah. No, I haven’t read it yet.
JoVE: Yeah. And she raised some really cool points, right? So she’s talking about, you know, on the one hand feeling like she’s been reading all this work and these are friends that she’s made because they work together, right?
So they’ve done all this work together and then, but now she’s writing this book and she’s been reading the work they’ve written and now she’s citing them, and that, and how, and she was talking about how that feels and how it feels very, (pause) you know, like uhhh loving and you know, like collaborative, right? Even though she’s writing her own book.
Um, and then she talks about, sort of ideas around, you know, you should be citing the best work, or whatever. And it really made it clear to me that one of the issues is that it is a collective thing, and citation isn’t about about, um, this is good or not. Like that’s not why you cite things. You cite things to put your claim that you are, like trying to be confident enough to make (laugh) in the context of a conversation.
And, and in that, in my guide to scholarly publishing, that’s why I use the term “conversation”, right? It’s like, yeah. And sometimes, right, like what Helen is talking about is sometimes you’re having a very informal conversation. You’ve all gone to the same conference and you go out for dinner and you, you talk about personal things, but you also do talk about your work with these friends.
KF: Yep.
JoVE: Right? Um, but sometimes we only talk in, you know, until today you and I mostly talk by reading each other’s work. And then, I mean, we do have conversations on Twitter, but, right? So.
KF: But it’s never actually a verbal, I think this is the first time we’ve talked as a conversation as opposed to an email exchange or a Twitter exchange or yes. Or you know, writing to each other. Yeah.
JoVE: Yeah. And those writing, you know, some of those are formal, more formal and are conversational, but you know what I mean? Like it’s just a, you know, but also I think when you think about it, it’s like, those articles are a conversation you’re in conversation with… And yeah, like some of these people you’ll never meet, some of them are already dead. Um, (laugh), right? And also your work is going to be there for people who are not in that conversation yet, to engage with in future. Right? So it’s, it’s almost like it gives you this sort of time travelling ability to talk to people in different times about your particular knowledge.
But, but the way that works is that collectively through those conversations is how we build knowledge, so like, your article isn’t supposed to be, “Oh, I’ve read all this stuff and I’ve done this and now I know the truth.” Right?
KF: No.
JoVE: But it’s more of like, here’s my, here’s how we can build all this together.
KF: Yeah.
JoVE: And so the idea that, you know, somehow this one, is the … you know, so like the whole thing around Nobel prizes or any other kind of, you know, it’s nice, but, in a way it kind of obliterates the idea that even that individual is standing on this huge pyramid of other work, right? (laugh)
KF: Yes! Yes.
JoVE: But, and that citation is actually not meant to be showing … It’s meant to be showing what … who you’re engaging with and who has influenced your thinking. Right? And if you spend a lot of time with this group of academics, and yes, you’ve then also become personal friends with them, but, right? You do a lot of work with them. Well why wouldn’t you be citing them more?
KF: Yeah.
JoVE: But what made me realize is that when a reviewer says to you, “You need to cite X”, (laugh) what they really mean is … you need to be talking to that. You need to bring them in, right?
KF: Yes.
JoVE: This is relevant to what you’re saying, you haven’t been influenced by it, but I think you should be. You need to be reading this work. You need to think about how this work, impacts on yours. And then you will cite. So it’s not a simple technical thing of “you need to add this citation”. It’s, it’s a, “here’s some stuff you could be thinking about” …
KF: Yep.
JoVE: … which I think relates to. So one of the reasons that I did the book the way I did, the peer review book, is that reviewers are also confused about this because of course, they’re the same people! (laugh) Authors and reviewers are the same people, right? Just different time periods.
Um, and so, when you’re a reviewer you need to think about it in terms of not, you’re not like, this is good enough, this is not, you are giving editorial commentary and you are, so um, so one of the conversations I saw on Twitter the other day was somebody just sort of moaning a bit about, about a reviewer comment that just had said to them. Um, there is a whole literature on this that this article would benefit from engaging with…
KF: but no list of the literature?
JoVE: Exactly.
KF: No keywords to search. No, ’cause I did just review an article, uh, that started off with, “there is nothing out there about doing literature reviews”. And I went “there is a huge and contested literature, about doing literature reviews. Let me give you some places you should have gone. Let me give you some techniques you should have used…”
JoVE: That was precisely the point in this Twitter conversation. The person that moaned about it said, don’t say that, if you’re not, then going to, you know, it seems like you’re assuming, I know it’s there and I’ve purposefully ignored it.
KF: Yeah.
JoVE: 99% of the time it’s that, I haven’t found it, and I’d love to know what it is. So if you know what’s there, please tell me, you could start with these two, or you should try searching on or, exactly, right? You’re trying.
So, but when you think of the whole process as being a collective process, rather than this individual, I need to prove how smart I am process, (laugh), right? Then if you think of it as a collective process, then what you’re doing as a reviewer is contrib- … is collaborating with the author.
KF: Yes
JoVE: So what you’re doing is saying, “Oh, from where I am, I can see this different bit that maybe wasn’t obvious to you. I think you would benefit from…”
Now, as an author, when you receive that, you’re going to be like, “Oh damn, I thought this was almost done and here’s this whole literature I missed.” And you might actually feel like, “Oh, I feel really stupid and they think I’m stupid and how could I be? And I’m not really good at it.”
Like it can trigger all of that vulnerability. But really what it is is just saying, you know, “There’s lots of literature out there and, um, here’s some clues about how to find some that will be really useful.”
And you know, one of my clients had that recently, she had a, she had a revise and resubmit that by hanging over for a long time. I mean she’d had some maternity leave. And so she had not looked at it for a while. So she came back to it and she’s just like, she was really frustrated with the first part, because it said you would really benefit, but it had said you would really benefit, here are some things to read.
And so then she’s saying to me, “Oh, I’ve been reading that stuff and it’s so amazing. And now I’m really much clearer” and I, this has made it so, right.
Initially it’s like, “Oh, this isn’t just, I have to fix a few things. I actually have to do more reading and rethink and whatever”. And, and, and then when she did it, she started getting excited about it, right? Because it was relevant and because they did deepen her analysis, and she did end up feeling like she had a stronger paper.
And also once she’d done that, some of the more abstract comments some of the other reviewers had made, um, made a lot more sense. Right. Because one of them was, “I think the theoretical framework needs strengthening”, but they didn’t really suggest how, and maybe they didn’t know, they just felt like it was weak. Whereas the other one was like, “Oh, I know about this area. Yes, it needs strengthening. Here are things you need to read to make that stronger.” Right?
And so all of a sudden everything started to come together and she felt a lot better. And she ended up learning a lot and actually being excited about this literature she’d been introduced to, which might then, and so that’s the sort of thing you sort of feel like, you know, it’s all about… Right?
KF: And, and sometimes when you read it and you realize that it isn’t actually useful, it’s extremely useful because it’s very, very helpful to be able to say, this is different. This sounded like it was the same and so you got confused, Reader, but actually now that I’ve read this other literature, I can differentiate myself much more clearly. I won’t use this confusing terminology that’s used in both. I will, you know, be much clearer about.
And then people reading it know what it is that you’re going to say. ‘Cause people have to guess, like reading is really hard because you haven’t to guess what’s in other people’s minds and the more that the … the more that a peer review, and peer review is such a great opportunity to kind of see what other people guessed you were trying to do.
JoVE: Yeah, exactly.
KF: And the ways in which they guess wrong are, in fact, as useful as the ways that they guess right, and show you how to do that better, or confirm that you’ve done a good job. Actually, this person totally got the wrong idea about this whole article. Perhaps I need to write a clearer introduction, maybe.
JoVE: Yes, exactly. And so, and that’s the other misunderstanding that I think is what where the context helps with the context and the confidence and the practical thing, right, is because if what you think is that these people are telling you whether you’re good enough or not, and then what happens is a lot of people feel like “I have to do all these things they told me to do … even though they clearly didn’t understand what I was talking about.”
It’s like, no, you need to address all their comments. And that is not the same thing. So you need to have the confidence of what you were trying to say and then be able to say, “Oh, I was clearly not as clear as I thought I was, because they got completely the wrong end of the stick” and trying to imagine, well how did they end up thinking that was what I was trying to say? What did I do in my introduction in that you gave a couple of good examples, right? The introduction, the terminology I used, whatever it was. What is it that I did, in the practical part of the writing, that gave them the impression that I was doing that, and how can I prevent other people from going off in that completely wrong direction and getting upset about what I said? Right?
And some people just don’t read closely and they didn’t … right? you didn’t do anything wrong and they just, right? And so then you can address the comment by saying, this person has completely misunderstood what I was trying to do and this is not relevant because, right? And that’s your response. Right?
Um, but I think, I think that’s the thing is when you realize that it is this collective process and that it’s an editorial process and that their purpose is to make what you’re doing better and clearer … then you approach it very differently than you do if you think of it like, this is my teacher marking my work and I only got a B.
KF: Yeah, exactly. Or indeed that gatekeeper, uh analogy that you use in this, in this book, um, this is, they said no… and they slammed the door in my face.
JoVE: Yeah.
KF: And so, you know, they didn’t understand what I was doing and I am outside the gate, I am anathema, I am cast out into the outer darkness. Whereas it’s like actually, just you need a slightly different key. We need to slightly negotiate this. We sent you to the wrong gate.
JoVE: Yeah.
KF: Like what, what is it that we need to do? Um, and thinking about it being much more porous and negotiable.
JoVE: Yes, yes, absolutely. I think that’s, yeah, because I also know people who are reluctant to review because they see it as that kind of gatekeeper slamming gates and they don’t want to do that because they’re, they are much more about it as this open collective process and, and so they’re they don’t, you know, so they publish in different way, you know. So there is a whole kind of thing where I think there is a broader kind of understanding, but I actually really, I really like the idea of peer review, but I think it needs to be treated much more as this part of the collective process of advancing knowledge and creating knowledge. And also, um, a way that we as a collective of scholars are keeping control over what counts as valid scholarship.
KF: Yeah.
JoVE: Right? That it isn’t somebody else telling us this is valid, this is not valid. And one of the issues there, because sometimes you know, you submit something to a journal and they don’t, you get a lot of really, you get it rejected or really negative comments because your methodology and they’re telling you your methodology isn’t valid and you’re like, but it is a valid methodology and then you realize well in this discourse community they tend to, mostly use these other methodologies. Right? They’re not … right? And so you need to be making sure you’re talking to the people who…
KF: Think your research is valid. Like there are other communities out there.
JoVE: Yeah.
KF: That’s the other thing is you know, choosing your, um, choosing your journal, you need to be choosing the journals that publish your kind of research. ‘Cause you send something qualitative off to a quant journal and they’re going to say, “This isn’t scholarly.” Like I’ve had that said to me and I was like, this is philosophical inquiry. This is pretty s- … Oh, you meant I didn’t interview any students. Um,
JoVE: yeah, or I didn’t do a survey. I don’t have any numbers. There’s no stats in here. Right? And I think, but that’s, and that’s it, right? It’s like you need to think about, so that’s, that’s back to that thing that I was doing in the other book, right. The scholarly publishing one, which is like, here are, here’s what you’re trying to do. And I think also, that Thompson and Kamler.
KF: Do, yes.
JoVE: They have a really good chapter at the beginning about, um, which chapter is it? Hold on until I find that, um, no, now, it’s not, they don’t use that term in the heading titles. So.
KF: um.
JoVE: … chapter on the reader. So they talk about the reader, Chapter Two, and they talk about the discursive community of the journal and they give you some really clear steps for here’s how to parse what, how to, how to take an actual journal and figure that out. Like they give you some really clear steps about how to figure that out.
And I suspect Wendy Belcher does as well. And um, she also, she’s also got, I noticed yesterday because she tweeted the link, she’s also got a whole site with reviews of all kinds of journals…
KF: Oh!?
JoVE: I will, I will share that with you. She basically, a bunch of her, I think it’s mostly her graduate students or whatever, but they do like, so they take her process from the 12 Weeks to Write Your Journal Article, the process she talks about in there about how to pick a journal, and they basically go, they’ve now got a list of reviews of a whole bunch of… now I don’t know what the disciplines covered are. There sort of in alphabetical order and I know there’s a lot of humanities and social science ones, but basically looking at them in terms of that. Right? Like what are the conversations, what kinds of resources they publish, blah, blah, blah, that kind of thing. Right?
KF: Amazing.
JoVE: And including things like, you know, what kind of sections do they have? Right. Because some journals publish things other than standard academic articles. Right. They publish short contributions. They might publish poetry. There was one, I just glanced at it, it said something about poetry, right? (laugh) And in a humanities journal, right? Like they might consciously mix those things and.
KF: So like, um, uh Higher Education Research does mostly peer … does sort of your standard academic thing. They do some little short like opinion pieces or do reviews. Like it’s pretty common that there’s, that there’s a, a variety of kinds of um, contribution and not all of those count, um, in the same way towards research outputs. But, they do sometimes get your thing out there.
So that’s the other thing is sometimes people’s research doesn’t fit, and it doesn’t mean that it just has to … sit forever in a drawer. It can go out into the world and be influential and be cited. It just doesn’t necessarily, you know, get you a four in your research excellence…
JoVE: …the whatever. Yes.
KF: Yeah. Yeah.
JoVE: Which is one of the things I tried to talk about in the scholarly publishing book. I tried to, cause that’s it, right? Like if you’re thinking about the conversation, then you might be like, doing one of these short things is a really good idea.
If you’re thinking about how is this going to look on my CV, and am I going to get a job, or am I going to get funding, or am I gonna like get a promotion? It may look very different. And I think we need to like balance those two.
And you need to think in terms of most of the … sort of what I ended up calling the validation uses of publishing, right, (laugh) that most of the ways that it sort of validates they’re a person we can promote or we can give funding to or whatever. Um, they’re looking at a body of work and so having one or two of these little doesn’t really count pieces. Um, can actually like isn’t maybe gonna make a big difference, but you do need to have some of the stuff that does make a difference.
KF: Yeah. But, um, but also sometimes if all you’re thinking if it needs to be in a highly ranked journal then you don’t necessarily realize that doing that, even if it’s a highly ranked journal, that section of the journal is not what they want you to publish in. They want you to uh, right? Like you need to understand… “publish in a highly ranked journal” does not mean “send in a book review.” That yeah, is never what that means.
JoVE: Exactly. Right. Um, and so, so that’s how you, right? Like that, that’s kind of like there’s all of those.
KF: On the other hand, doing regular book reviews or little conversational pieces helps you build a relationship with a journal, so that when you’re thinking about peer review…
Um, I’m currently co-authoring with somebody who has, who works in a field where they all know each other, they all go to the same conferences and it is normal, to have a relationship with your journal editor. And to sort of soft pitch the journal article before you do it. So there’s this kind of little chatty thing that goes on, where they kind of shape stuff. And then the last thing we wrote together, we actually sent it off when it was like, it was a baggy mess and we’re both like, it’s a baggy mess. It needs to be about half this. What, where should it be? So we literally sent it to them and went, “What do you think we should keep?” And they’re like, “We love this bit. We hated that bit. That bit’s terrible.” So like we got like the revise and resubmit bit well before we were ready to submit.
And I was like, is that a thing? ’cause it is not a thing in my field. Um, but you know that actually some of these fields, doing those smaller parts of the review of, of publishing help you be part of the process, the context of peer review, that thing that you’re talking about.
JoVE: Yeah.
KF: Building those relationships, finding out how the journal works, you know, all of those kinds of things.
JoVE: Well, and sometimes that’s not even really a real submission. It’s that, you know somebody that’s on the editorial board that says to you, “Um, you know, I really liked your conference paper and uh, feel free to like send me if you need any help getting this ready for submission“. Right. Like “I’ll be happy to give you comments.” Right. So it’s not actually the formal part of peer review. It might be…
Because I have some clients that some business fields seem to work that way a bit. Right. And, um, you know, when sometimes they feel like, but that was like this really high ranking person that just chatted to me after a conference. Can I really bother them with my time? I’m like, well, if he said then see, I mean the worst you can say is no, he doesn’t have time, but if he has time, right?
And so sometimes that, you know, you’re right, those like lower status things like conference papers or writing reviews or whatever are a way to kind of build the relationships. Because this whole thing is a collective process. Right? And so there is that sense. And I think one of the issues is that for a lot of people … it’s hard because you’re trying to work out what the social … rules are, which, you know, some of us find easier than others and …
KF: … and some disciplines are very open about what their rules are, and some disciplines are not?
JoVE: Yes.
KF: I think, is the other thing, that there are some, and that’s where Psychologists, are sweeties and um, English literature people are wolves in a knife fight. So you know…
JoVE: (laughs) nobody should give wolves … No, yeah…
KF: Yeah. Wolves have enough knives of their own. They don’t have enough knives.
JoVE: Yes. (laughs) But you know, but that’s the thing. But also there’s probably little sub pockets within that discipline that are not like that.
KF: Absolutely.
JoVE: Right. And so sometimes, and that’s one of the things that happens. Sometimes you’re at a conference and you’re used to your group, and then you kind of end up going to a session and you’re like, who are these people? (laughs) Right? But, but also you can generalize from how your group is to the whole thing. I think there is a tendency to think, “Oh well, how does it work in academia?”
And that’s a problem I’ve had to address ’cause I don’t make … this isn’t discipline specific. I don’t have a lot of experience with, you know, a lot of disciplines and, and it does work just really differently in disciplines. It works differently in different institutional contexts. Right? And it works differently in different national contexts.
KF: Yes.
Um, so like being an academic is, you know, and so there are a lot of things we have in common and to a certain extent you’re involved in these international debates, but sometimes you aren’t. Sometimes you’re involved in debates that are very specific to particular kinds of places. Um, especially if you do policy work. Though the policy work also includes a lot of comparative stuff, but when you move from your national context to the comparative context, you end up, like the debate is different, right? The journals are different and the people, you’re going to be talking to different people and, you know, like it all works. But I think there is that …
KF: But that’s why international law is a totally different field from national law. Like international law people or international relations people are just, they’re not even in the same discipline as the other people who are doing also law, but in the, you know, like it’s a different thing. Yeah.
JoVE: Yeah.
KF: I think I think that that also though it doesn’t invalidate the effort of writing something that is generic because what it does is it makes, um, I think it’s Barbara Lovitts who has the, the book Making the Implicit, Explicit. Um, and by making something explicit, you make it possible to engage with.
JoVE: Yeah.
KF: So implicit. It’s invisible. You don’t even know where it starts. You have no idea about what the rules might be. Um. And then you read something that makes it explicit and you go, “Is it like this here?” Because also when you ask, you know, “How does peer review work?” People are like, “Oh, you just send stuff in and people will send stuff back and it’ll all be fine.” Literally.
JoVE: (laughs)
KF: And whereas you say, “In this book I’ve just read, Jo says that peer review does this. But when I recently, um, submitted something, I had this happen what’s the difference?” And then they’re like, “Oh, in our discipline, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And you know, like it’s actually when they’ve got something specific to respond to that you start to get those specific answers.
Whereas when I ask those general open questions, people give you these like really useless answers a lot of the time. And so, um, having these generic, but explicit pieces of work are really useful for starting conversations in the local.
JoVE: Yes. Yes. And I think that’s, you know, and that’s one of the reasons I try to include so many questions and, and also to, to set out some general principles, right? Like, like these are the general principles and if you don’t agree with the general principles, if you’re working from different general principles, then clearly you’re going to have different things go on. Right? But I’m gonna make explicit what I think some general principals are based on my own experience. Um,
That context piece is really kind of where my focus is. And then I think that’s where like, the work you do and the work Pat Thompson does and the work Wendy Belcher does, and presumably any number of other people that I am not naming here, but that sort of work then sort of fits with that. Because once you’ve made those big con- contextual things, it’s like, well how do I practically do this? But also like you say, it gives you questions to go to your supervisor or your mentor or you know, just a colleague. Like if you’re, if you’re like an established academic,
I mean we’re always doing new things, right? So if you start off on this other little track from where you are and you’re thinking, “Oh, I think I’ve got things to say to this other group here”. It’s helpful to sit down with people you know, in that other group there and have coffee and be like, “Hey, so how does stuff work, in these journals?” Like which journals do you rate? Um, what do you know about them? Uh how. What, what kinds of things, right? Like here’s what I’m thinking about, right? Even if it isn’t one of those disciplines like you were talking about, they will kind of do this whole informal pre thing. It’s useful to get a sense of the culture.
This book is just really about peer review in publishing, right? And so it kind of goes with the one about scholarly publishing. And then the one about the process.
[end of interview]
Thank you for listening and thank you Katherine for agreeing to chat to me about academic writing and a bunch of related things. Now that I’ve finished editing, I’m just adding a little bit on the end.
Katherine can be found at Research Degree Insiders, which is at researchinsiders dot blog.
I can be found at Jo VanEvery dot CA and the books that I’ve written can be found from that page, but it’s JoVanevery.ca/books. They are available on all your favorite book selling platforms. You can also get your local bookstore to order them in paperback.
If you found this interview interesting and, um, helpful in terms of reframing the project of scholarly writing for you, then I would recommend that you get those books. They are very short so that you can kind of read them and then get on with writing and so that you can refer to them as you need to and use the questions and the prompts and the specific information that’s relevant on that day.
Thanks a lot.
Related Media:
Learn more about the Short Guides.
Katherine blogs at Research Degree Insiders and can be found on SoundCloud here.
How to Fix Your Academic Writing Trouble: A Practical Guide by Inger Mewburn, Katherine Firth, and Shaun Lehmann (2019, Open University Press)
Writing For Peer Reviewed Journals: Strategies for getting published by Pat Thomson and Barbara Kamler (2013, Routledge)
Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks by Wendy Laura Belcher (2nd edition, 2019, University of Chicago Press)
The list of reviews of journals that Wendy Belcher organises can be found here. It currently only only includes humanities and social sciences.
The article on originality in the humanities and social sciences is “What is Originality in the Humanities and the Social Sciences?” by Joshua Guetzkow, Michèle Lamont and Grégoire Mallard (2004) American Sociological Review. 69: 190. DOI: 10.1177/000312240406900203
Helen Kara’s post about citing your friends.
Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski (2019, Vermillion or Random House)
Making the Implicit Explicit by Barbara Lovitts (2007, Stylus Publishing)
This post has been auto-transcribed from the original video call interview, and edited for ease of reading. It has also been added to the Spotlight on Peer Review, October 2022.
