This blog is the second part of a mini-series taking you inside the process of bringing a PGR-led journal to life – a field guide, if you like, from someone still wading through the mud! Here’s part 1 if you didn’t catch it.
Opening the gate: when to launch the call
A formal call for papers is the traditional means of attracting submissions to a journal. The challenge for a postgraduate journal is to determine the point in the cycle of an academic year when our peers are most likely to have the bandwidth to consider a submission. Publishing in a journal like Exclamat!on is excellent experience (and a strong early career CV-builder) but we understand that it is a difficult choice whether to give time to working on an article for us or hold out longer to be ready to publish in a more ‘prestigious’ journal. We worked hard to develop the wording and look of our call to make the prospect attractive, but I suspect that our delayed start meant our call went out at a particularly boggy time of year.
Field note 3: No time of year is perfect but consider the wider context into which you are opening your call. Pick a moment that is ‘best-fit’ for your subject area(s) and likely authors.
Shepherding the flock: how to attract submissions
You have only to look at the headlines of Exeter’s Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences weekly round-up to realise that our postgraduates are spoilt for choice when it comes to opportunities to develop their ideas and share their work. We came up with plenty of ideas for how to cut through the noise to find our authors. But in practice it was challenging to deliver these, because of our team’s capacity and because of the volume of competing possibilities. A PhD is many things beyond your thesis itself: a postgraduate journal has to make a strong case to be one of them.
Field note 4: Line up your formal channels well (websites, newsletters, socials) but expect to activate them with conversations – use every research culture touchpoint in the networks of your editorial team as an opportunity to re-seed the idea of submitting to the journal.
Seeking quality: how to review submissions
Peer review is the process by which quality is ensured in academic publications and it is a fantastic opportunity to receive this as an early career researcher. From the journal production point of view, we found that some of Exclamat!on’s pool of peer reviewers had naturally become disengaged over time. Doing review work on top of everything else academic life entails is a hefty ask. This meant it took a long time and patient effort on the part of our team to source quality reviewers for each submission under consideration.
Field note 5: While you are still developing your call, discuss ways to re-engage and build your college of peer reviewers. You could invite opinions from recent reviewers on the theme under consideration, advertise for new reviewers, or offer training on what peer review entails. Once you are underway, polite, persistent patience is crucial.
Form the issue: acceptance
Emerging writers often want plenty of reassurance throughout the process of being selected for publication. Even though my own experiences as a creative writer have given me an embodied understanding of that, I was slow to recognise what level of communication authors under consideration wanted.
Field note 6: Plan and schedule the points in the journal cycle when you will communicate with your authors. If timelines shift, let them know – they may care more about the outcome than you realise.
Finalise the issue: copyediting, typesetting and design
As a team, we would have loved to reflect and innovate on the way that our edition is presented – the online publishing landscape is changing rapidly and the volume of creative-critical writers in this year’s team means that we are keenly interested in that space. Time, however, has not been abundant when it comes to actioning innovative thinking, so we are now working on bringing the journal to fruition in a good, robust form (and thankful for the templates laid down by previous teams).
Field note 7: Task a motivated sub-group in your editorial team with any area of the journal’s life where you want to bring innovation. Collect best practice examples so you can build on them rather than needlessly developing from scratch.
Reflect on the issue: editorial and future plans
Writing the editorial for a journal is a fascinating opportunity to reflect both on process and theme – I only wish I had longer to deepen my reflections. I am glad that we have been able to take multiple opportunities to consider the future for ExclamatIon in recent weeks including a team insights day led by our deputy editor Abbie Pink, discussions with our department and consultation with former editors.
Final field note:
Try not to fall over the final stile: however you have found the process, you now have experience and insights to offer future leaders of your journal. Postgraduate research culture thrives when we share what works and what doesn’t, and when we build on what has gone before.
Thank you to my wonderful team this year, and to all the previous editors of ExclamatIon for your recent insights and your hugely skilled labour of love over the years. I look forward to seeing what the incoming editorial team will do next!
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Ruth Moore is a second-year PhD Creative Writing Student, co-editor of this blog and Editor-in-Chief 2023-4 for Exclamat!on: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Her research examines the ways in which contemporary children’s authors are using time-playful fiction, particularly in relation to telling stories out of archival silence. The creative element of her PhD project is a ‘middle grade’ children’s novel which takes place on a troubled night at the National Maritime Museum in London. Her MA in Creative Writing was at Oxford Brookes University; she also holds an MA in Applied Theatre from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and has worked in theatre and in project management in higher education and the voluntary sector prior to commencing her PhD.