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Common mistakes that everybody knows and everybody makes
There are many textbooks on how to write for academic purposes and how to write and submit to academic journals.
There are also many tips on the Internet: publishing houses,
blogs, specific sites for scholars and diverse online resources offer advice to anyone who knows how to use a search engine. Some of these recommendations are just common sense.
But curiously, when it comes time to submit an article, authors frequently made little mistakes that jeopardize their chances of being published.
Here are some of the most common blunders: Too school-ish submissions or articles formatted as a dissertation. Sometimes papers look like mid-term papers or school research projects, with subtitles such as 'Aims and scope' or 'Hypothesis.' Others even present a bulleted list copy-pasted from a PowerPoint presentation, without any editing. In some cases, authors believe that a dissertation chapter (or an abstract), a research report, or a conference paper just needs a few cosmetic changes to become a journal article. Everyone has heard that five dissertation chapters can easily become five articles. Although this is possible, and it is always a good idea to disseminate your dissertation in the form of journal articles, each paper should always be written from scratch.
Consider the specific journal you are submitting to, and don't just copy-paste an excerpt from the introduction and an excerpt from the conclusion. You can't just give it a stir and voilà! For referees and editors, this kind of rehashing is always painstakingly evident and, if not rejected, in most cases you will be asked for a major revision.
Therefore, you'll save time on the review process by properly preparing the first draft of an article, and also increase your chances of getting published.
Descriptive articles without a comprehensive sociological question. Most textbooks on academic writing highlight this because it is a common problem. You have presented your research, explained the methods, shown the results, and compared them to relevant literature. However, your article should still provide a proper answer to the question: 'So what?' Make sure your manuscript answers this question by bringing out the links to core sociological issues.
Not adhering to submission guidelines (or word limits!). As authors, we are usually very protective of our texts and we believe that our ideas need more space to be developed.
In Current Sociology, I receive requests to exceed our journal's word limits almost on a daily basis. In a few cases, this request is valid - especially for review articles,
which is why the Current Sociology Review has doubled the word limit for its articles.
And Current Sociology tends to be flexible in cases when, during the revision process and considering the concerns of the referees, we find more space is required. But generally, limiting word counts is just a question of editing, eliminating redundancy, and staying focused. The reference style, notes, images, tables, and general layout should also keep to the journal's indications. Before submitting, read the guidelines: it will save you time and frustration because editors tend to simply reject submissions that do not comply.
Submitting without being aware of the journal's remit or its editorial policy and treating the submission steps as mere formalities. Almost every journal has clear editorial policies, aims and scope, and guidelines for authors available on its website. There you can also find the name of the editor or the editor-in-chief, to whom you should also send a cover letter. This cover letter is your first contact, not with a metaphysical journal, but with the real people who work for that journal. Even though most submissions are now made through online platforms, there is always a human being on the other end. Normally, that person is the editor, who will decide whether your paper goes in for review. If you just address a letter to a random 'sir or madam' sending your paper to the editor's very prestigious journal,' editors may assume this is a random submission - and they're generally right. If you care about your submission, at least check to see who edits the journal,
and address your cover letter and email to the person in charge. It is not just about etiquette: it demonstrates that you are genuinely interested in publishing in that specific journal. The editors and the editorial staff will appreciate it.
An abstract is just a copy-paste of the introduction - and you can throw in some references here. Most problems of academic writing stem from the indiscriminate use and abuse of copy and paste, based on a strange notion that nobody will know the difference.
An abstract is a short text in its own right and deserves time and effort to be properly written.
At the submission stage, an abstract is even more important than the manuscript, since it is the only piece potential referees would read when they are invited to comment on your text. The better you write your abstract, the more likely it is that your article will be selected by referees.
This will reduce the time needed for revision; consequently, you will get published earlier. Therefore, taking time at the beginning of the submission process to write a good abstract from scratch is a good investment.
An abstract must be clear and straightforward, considering the journal's specific audience, and the main point you are making in your manuscript. It must immediately convey your text's main contribution, aims, and conclusion to the editor, the referees, and readers.
Beyond the specific case you are analyzing in your article, the abstract must clearly state the sociological question it is seeking to answer and at least clarify how answering this question will advance some field of sociological debate. Emphasize the originality of your contribution, and how you have built it –through specific data, methods, literature reviews, etc.
Abstracts should only include issues that are analyzed in the paper - but not include rhetorical questions, quotations, or references. Because it is the first impression on readers and helps them to decide if the article deserves to be read, you should also pay attention to include keywords so that your article can be found through online search engines once it is published.
The same paper can be submitted to different journals at the same time. Here we have a major problem. On the one hand, all of us operate under the 'publish or perish mandate, sometimes because we want tenure and in many cases, because we simply want to keep our job.
This pressure has caused a great amount of unethical behavior, from plagiarism to 'salami-slicing.' In this framework, simultaneous submissions don't look so serious. But it is, since it threatens the deeper core of academic publication, and neglects the silent and necessarily anonymous and unpaid work of referees.
For each article, there are at least three persons, two referees, and the editor, who are working with you and for you, for free, to improve your manuscript. And all three are expecting that at the end of the process, you will be published in that journal. Evidently, authors are entitled to withdraw their submissions but considering the hard work that editors and reviewers put into each submission, it is regrettable when they are forced to do so just because the paper has been accepted elsewhere.
