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On 30 June 2008, I attended the ASAA Postgraduate Workshop. The guest speaker, Dr. Michele Ford (University of Sydney) gave useful publishing advice to graduate students. Here are the notes that I took that day:
- Strategy: Publish!
- There is pressure to finish the Ph.D. and publish. Both are time-consuming.
- Types/Different Genres: Monograph (book, which may be the dissertation or not), Journals (peer-reviewed preferred, online versus print issues), Conference Proceedings, Semi-Academic Publications (e.g., Inside Indonesia), and Special Edition Publications.
- General Advice: Don’t cannabalize your dissertation. Go to journals that publish your stuff/topics. Use Excel to organize your publishing commitments. Balance journal articles and chapters. Know that some places (e.g., U.S. institutions) care less about area studies, so balance your discipline area and area studies publications.
- Risky: article/conference paper –> chapter; try chapter –> paper.
- Universities want all rounders with multi-skills, not just eccentric geniuses. Publications are part of the mix.
- Once you have published, it’s there — don’t put your name to something that you don’t like or believe in.
- Look for a community of similar readers and writers.
- Citation rates: bibliometric (e.g., Google Scholar, Web of Science, others)
- University and government research environments: DEST reporting (new name now?), Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) — formulas for quantity and quality of publications and rankings.
- Names are important for co-authored pieces. Too many authors for one publication is not recommended, though this can be good for general collegiality, showing you’re a teamplayer, joint grants, etc.
- Don’t put everything/too much into one article.
- Get to know a journal very well.
