5 Strategies for Publishing an Article

It’s no secret that writing articles for publication outlets is a challenging and highly competitive activity for many researchers, academicians, and scholars, especially at the start of their careers. However, if you take a proactive approach to your research activities prior to submitting, you’ll have a better chance of success.

Learn about how your finished article should look and see five strategies for publishing an article.

Very important: this isn’t an article about how to write a better manuscript to get published in a journal (we wrote about that here); rather, it’s about which strategies you can take to be more proactive to have a bigger impact and avoid rejection and disappointment when submitting your work.

How Should Your Finished Article Look?

There are several types of articles, and they include:

Short communications
Case reports
Literature reviews
Conference materials (proceedings or presentation abstracts)
Data notes
Research articles.

Whether these research articles are based on qualitative or quantitative methodology, it’s best if researchers and scholars start writing in the early stages of their careers. This will perfect your writing and help you understand other factors related to the publication process.

For example, it’s crucial to understand that journal rejection is entirely normal, and there could be several reasons for the rejection. Additionally, it’s best to know that the peer-review process is an essential part of publishing, and without it, you wouldn’t see what you can improve in your writing or your approach.

You’re reporting new work if you’re writing a research article (the most common type of journal article). Typically, these articles include an abstract, intro, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. Aside from each of these sections, you’ll want to re-read your article at different points and times to identify any potential shortcomings in your writing or data.

Always check the spelling and grammar in your article and get the formatting right. Pay attention to all the little details. Furthermore, you should request feedback from colleagues or researchers in the field. Essentially, how your finished article looks is not as important as the strategies you take to get there.

While learning about the five strategies for publishing an article or paper, remember that you can publish at any stage of your research career, whether you’re an undergraduate, master’s, Ph.D. student, or beyond.

However, undergraduate students find it harder to publish due to a lack of supervisors or research and writing experience. If you’re an undergraduate student and have the drive and possibility of publishing an article, do it! It’ll help you immensely if you plan on continuing your studies and not only.

Talk to your professors and advisors, join a lab, get on a project, or talk to other colleagues to get advice after following the below five strategies to properly set up a research project or plan to publish.

1. Carefully Conduct Research to Choose a Publication Outlet

Spend some time on Google Scholar after choosing a research topic (but before perfecting your writing). Talk to a supervisor, advisor, or colleagues to get their expert recommendations for selecting a journal or Open Access repository. You’ll want to know the writing instructions for authors and the aim and scope of each publication outlet you’re interested in.

Get a feel for what your journal(s) or outlet(s) of choice usually publishes by reading several of their articles. You can also check out the “most cited” or “most read” articles on Scimago Journal and Country Rank to see if your research topic fits the values of that publication outlet.

If that’s not enough, check out our step-by-step article on how to find the right journal for publishing.

2. Find Communities and Special Interest Groups Interested in Similar Topics

You wouldn’t only want a specific community or group to read your article, right? After all, you’re in this field for a reason - to further knowledge and share ideas. Therefore, get involved in communities of like-minded people studying similar topics as you.

Most researchers and academicians love talking about their current projects or what they’re working on, so don’t be shy. Ask others about journals, publishing tips, and research writing hacks. You’ll gather a lot of quality information and make friendships that may last a lifetime in the process. Who knows, you may even get inspired to write about something you learn about.

3. Attend Conferences

You can’t deny the power of an academic conference. If you want to learn about the latest research findings before they’re published in journals, encourage your peers to provide feedback, discuss your research topic’s strengths and weaknesses, and exchange ideas, a conference is the place to be.

Additionally, you may be invited to join research projects, and you’ll get a chance to work on important soft skills, such as communication and presentation skills.

4. Don’t Try to Write Everything at Once

You have a lot of ideas; that’s great! However, choose one and save the others for future articles and projects. There’s nothing worse than trying to fit all of your ideas into one article. You’ll confuse your readers, and your research topic won’t be clear. Not to mention that rejection might occur more often than if you spent time writing a good article accordingly.

Consider writing multiple articles that you can plan on publishing later. Improve each one as you receive feedback from reviewers and perfect your writing process.

5. Triple Check Your Work Before Submission

After you’ve read, re-read your article, and received feedback from reviewers, ensure your research objective is in line with the aims and scope of the journal, that the article is formatted and structured according to the layout, and that it satisfies the journal’s expectations.

If you’re citing others in your article, triple-check your references and citations to ensure they’re correct; otherwise, your article may be rejected. Your reviewers may be people you cited in the article.

Furthermore, ensure you’re addressing reviewer comments carefully. Address all the comments to avoid oversights, ensure you submit the revised article by the deadline provided by the journal, and keep in mind that the revision process might comprise multiple rounds.

Orvium Makes Publishing a Piece of Cake

Regardless of how difficult it may be to strategize before finishing an article, conduct research, and write according to someone else’s expectations, we wanted to let you know that Orvium is here to make everything easier for you.

You can improve your article with trusted peer-reviewers (or become a reviewer yourself to understand the process), whom you can also reward (yay, incentives!). Additionally, you can access a global community of authors and like-minded individuals with our Cloud solution, manage your publication process, and much more! Try our platform today. And for additional help with your article or paper, take a look at how to write a scientific paper and how to read a scientific paper