All entries for Tuesday 03 December 2024

December 03, 2024

(Re)Defining the Kinds of Articles We Love to Consider for Publication

Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/about/submissions

The Chief Editor takes a moment to unpick the broad range of articles which the research journal is keen to consider – and tackles the question of interdisciplinarity too.

An oft asked question by prospective authors, is the kinds of articles we like to receive. The simple answer is ‘pretty much any well-written research, research adjacent or practitioner paper which appeals to a cross-disciplinary audience.’ Drawing guidance from our own policies page this has long been expressed as a submission policy as follows:

The journal normally accepts high-quality research and review manuscripts, alongside less formal and shorter interviews and critical reviews. Accepted manuscripts will be published on the understanding that they are an original and previously unpublished piece of work…manuscripts should be written with an expectation they will be read by a broad academic readership, rather than a niche, sectoral subset. Consequently, authors should assume less conceptual familiarity than when writing for audiences within their own disciplinary traditions. Submitted manuscripts adjudged to address topics for too narrow an audience, may be declined.

Let’s unpick that a little, and highlight some of the key points about making your manuscript ‘Exchanges worthy’:

Formats: Firstly, we consider work submitted under a number of formats – principally peer-reviewed research articles, and shorter editorially reviewed articles. There’s a variance in the basic word count to note here, but also in terms of the speed to publication and degree of editorial scrutiny different formats undergo. Editorially reviewed pieces also offer a wider freedom in terms of authorial voice, and are an excellent way to kick off a dialogue without contrasting your writing into a prescribed style. Many special issues comprise them heavily too, as the faster turnaround to publication is often seen as very desirable. Incidentally, many of our most downloaded and cited articles come under the editorially reviewed heading each year. However, we love peer-reviewed pieces too, and while they take longer, do let us work closely with authors over a longer period in hopefully refining their work for final publication suitability.

Scholarship: Secondly, we expect articles to hit a certain level of professional scholarship. While we consider papers from researchers, we also have and continue to be happy to take papers from professionals, practitioners and people working in research adjacent roles. We’ve also published papers from taught students too from time to time, although they’re not normally the community we target as potential authors. All articles though will be scrutinized and as much as possible held to the same quality bar. This does mean we turn down (decline) some articles which in our opinion don’t meet this requirement, but we always proffer advice on how they could be improved, reworked or rewritten to overcome any deficiencies. I am pleased to say many of our declined authors do return new versions to us for consideration at a later point.

Originality: Thirdly, yes originality matters too. We take a view that ‘previously formally published works’, falling under the ‘Ingelfinger Rule’ are out of contention. However, if you’re reworking a blog post, thesis chapter or similarly shared but not editorially scrutinized piece into a new article, chances are we’ll be fine with that. Although, as all new submissions are scanned for originality, there might be the odd question from me before we can move forward. I probably get more excited by articles which tackle topics we’ve never seen in our pages before, or which resonate with earlier publications, but that’s more a personal taste issue. Provided your piece is original and scholarly, you’ve a very good chance we’ll consider it. Minor hint: if it is a reworking of a thesis or dissertation chapter, be prepared to adjust the language and writing so the manuscript stands along as a discrete piece of writing. And please make sure the opening line doesn’t read ‘In this chapter…’ as a number of pieces I see each do!

Readership: Fourthly, there’s readership, and I confess this is probably one of the two most nebulous conceptions. Exchanges has always been published to address the interests of a broad, academic or well-informed, scholarly audience in all disciplines – not just one. Many of our authors, especially early career researchers, are finely trained to write…but to write exclusively for their disciplinary peers. One of the most common reasons papers are declined early in the editorial cycle is because they are too tightly addressed to a small range of scholars.[1] Naturally, any tight-topic focus can be a bit of an issue for the potential success of the submitted manuscript, given we expect articles to be read by a broad academic audience. Now this doesn’t mean that, say, an article on quantum loop gravity needs to be understandable to a historian, but we’d expect others in the sciences and even numeric social sciences will be able to gain knowledge from it. Generally, we tackle this during the review phase, but authors can help us to help themselves by ensuring they unpick any key terminology. The words of advice I most commonly offer to prospective authors in this regard is ‘write as if you were addressing a university wide research conference’ as a way to overcome this challenge.

Interdisciplinarity: Finally, there this is the other nebulous concept which is implicit in our title and one which I suspect actually puts off some of our potential early career authors: interdisciplinary. Originally, back in 2013, Exchanges was keen for papers which were explicitly interdisciplinary or which adopted interdisciplinary methods, methodologies or working practices. Or for those which drew on a team of authors from multiple, potentially non-adjacent, disciplinary traditions, by way of contrast. Don’t get me wrong, we still adore seeing papers like this submitted for our consideration [2], but as time went by a de facto policy became an explicit one once I came aboard to consider any paper from any discipline – so long as it is addressed to that broad readership (see above!).[3] I’m working on a more clearly defined statement to this end to appear on our policy pages in the coming months, as I feel while it’s something I’ve espoused to many would-be authors, I don’t think it’s really clear enough on the website. Perhaps another way to state it is ‘we will consider any credible, original, scholarly article within our chosen formats – and especially those displaying interdisciplinary thinking.’ Thus, if you have an idea for an article, which fits in the other criteria above, but perhaps doesn’t feel ‘interdisciplinary’ – chances are we would be keen to consider it. [4]

So, there you are in short, to provide us with an article which Exchanges be more likely to take on for review consideration as an author make sure it (a) fits our formats, (b) is scholarly and original and (c) is written for and appeals to a broad audience. If you’re an early career scholar, all the better, but this, along with any interdisciplinary aspirations of the piece, aren’t prequisities. Writing and submit a solid, accessible and engaging piece, located within a single discipline is as likely to be taken to review, as much as a piece from multiple disciplinary traditions will.[5]

You'll find our submissions page here#mce_temp_url# - and as always, get in touch with any specific questions or comments, but in the meantime, happy writing.

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Endnotes

[1] Economic papers in particular to this sort of issue - oddly a phenomenon seems to be something I hear other interdisciplinary journal editors experience, so we’re not alone in this. Maybe it’s the mathematical approach? To my memory we’ve only ever had one mathematics papers to Exchanges, long ago, so the sample is too small to consider if this is at the root of the issue.

[2] Even if they can prove a bit more of a headache to locate, recruit and assign to willing reviewers. Afterall, if a paper is interdisciplinary, who exactly is the right person to review it other than the author(s) who submitted it in the first place? Answers on a neatly formatted review report please.

[3] I have always explained, it is our broad collection of articles, from a range of disciplines, which today forms our interdisciplinary assemblage – rather than the discrete individual articles. I feel this gives authors an easier time in creating thought provoking and informative writing for us. Perhaps if we were overwhelmed by articles we might rethink this approach. However, I don’t foresee this being a potentiality any time in the next few years.

[4] On a macro level, the range of special issue topics while themselves more disciplinary niche (but fulfilling the broad-readership goal) form their own loci of interdisciplinarity when read as a collection.

[5] Even if the latter might gladden my editorial heart just a tiny bit more.