The first time: how to publish in academia

Last week I was asked by someone relatively new to the academic game how they could start publishing. This being 2021, I rapidly realised that I should ask Twitter before answering. I wasn’t sure how far my own experience, back in the 1980s, was typical in Arts and Humanities subjects, let alone how it would play out now. My thanks to all those who’ve shared their experiences with me, from those of my own generation to current PhD students!

First, my own experience. My first edited volume was co-edited with my supervisor; Mortality and Immortality: The anthropology and archaeology of death came out in 1981, in just the second year of my funded PhD research. As my supervisor had suspected would be the case, I rather enjoyed editorial work, and as a student the bonus was that I was interacting with the various contributors as their contributions came together. My memory was that I did my first book review before my first original publication; at school I had wanted to be a book reviewer for a living. But this isn’t the sort of publication of which I keep detailed records, and it looks like I’m wrong about this. I’ve found my reviews in Classical Review for 1986 (on myth) and Journal of Hellenic Studies (JHS) for 1987, where I reviewed one book in French and another in German, one on medicine and one on women; which kind of sums up my interests. That’s a major advantage of doing book reviews – they establish what your range is. I suspect that these books were offered to me for review because while I was writing my PhD I essentially lived in the Institute of Classical Studies (ICS) library in London, and JHS was a journal which sent out books for review from the library holdings. Everything was connected. Small helpful tip here: if there’s a book in your field which has just been published, you can always write to a relevant journal offering to review it. In many cases, that will also get you a free copy of the book!

It looks like my first chapter in an edited volume came out before my first review. This chapter was the result of my first public seminar paper, given at the ICS. I had offered the paper to this seminar series because I was feeling a little guilty about spending some months of 1981 in Paris as a doctoral student and – while listening to lots of lectures and papers – not doing anything particularly creative in my own right. After the seminar took place, I sent a version of the paper to a journal, which rejected it. I was wondering what to do next, and the organisers of the seminar series wrote asking if they could have it for the Book of the Series. Sorted; “Bound to bleed: Artemis and Greek women” was published in 1983. My first journal article, “Sacrificial Blood: the role of the amnion in ancient gynecology,” Helios 13 (1987), came into being because my PhD supervisor hated it as a section of the thesis, so in a fit of indignation I sent it to a journal and it was accepted (my former supervisor denies any memory of this comment).

So, how far can we generalise from this, taking into account the various experiences kindly shared with me on Twitter?

First, the role of the PhD supervisor. Whether that’s involving the student as a co-editor or co-author, or suggesting an outlet for a piece of writing, spotting a promising conference or saying a section of the draft thesis is rubbish and making the student think ‘Hmm, I’ll show them!’, it’s clear from the wider discussions I’ve been having that the supervisor is often very important. I’ve even heard of the supervisor showing the student’s work to a journal editor and then the editor pursuing it with the student. Friends of supervisors can also be helpful in suggesting you as a book reviewer. Supervisors can also pass on to their student books they don’t fancy reviewing, or assignments offered to them which they have neither the time nor the inclination to complete.

Then there are networks. I was lucky being in London where the network around the ICS was very important; having tea breaks with fellow students and staff, attending at least one seminar a week, sitting in on some classes. I suspect Oxford and Cambridge are far more network-y.

But not everyone is at a university where any of that is possible, which is why conferences are so vital. Many people on Twitter said that their first publication was a conference paper. My supervisor was particularly good at conferences, sitting with me and ordering me in no uncertain terms to ask a question. Asking that question meant people noticed me (“Who is that woman with the obsession with ancient medicine??”) and would come up to me in the coffee break to explore my question further. What doesn’t seem widely appreciated is that anyone can offer a paper to a conference which has an ‘open call’ for papers. I’ve found that particularly useful for conferences way outside my specialism; just search for key words, find a conference, send off an abstract and wait… Of course, there’s also the issue of attending that conference, at least when conferences aren’t all on Zoom. It can be expensive, time-consuming or even impossible to travel. Some academic fields have a regular event and then publish some or all of the conference proceedings, so your paper can become a proper peer-reviewed publication (several of my Twitter contacts mentioned the Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference – TRAC – here, and it does seem to have played a very important part in many people’s early publication history). Even being at a conference without giving a paper, can mean you are ‘seen’ so that when someone’s looking for a person to write an encyclopaedia entry they think of you (“Oh, I met that woman with an obsession with ancient medicine – which university is she at??”). When people turn down an invitation – for example to peer review a journal article – they are usually asked for suggestions of alternative names for the job, so your name may come up because someone remembers you.

It’s clear that people have different strategies. Some want to focus on the PhD and think about publications later on. Some wait until they are nudged to publish. Others begin by pitching a book to a publisher; I would never have had the confidence to do that, so I am very impressed by those who do! Some start submitting articles to journals on their own initiative quite soon in their careers: others don’t. Much will depend on what other responsibilities you have, and what you intend to do with that doctorate. I went on the Oxbridge research fellowship circuit, with just one publication, and I’m well aware that today much more is expected even from someone who hasn’t even finished their PhD yet.

I’d be interested to know how all this is going to pan out in our pandemic world; more opportunity to attend conferences for those who have the time, but without the experience of having breakfast with a potential publisher, yet with opportunities to ask questions which may be less terrifying than waving your hand around in a crowded room. I’ve been particularly impressed by the Zoom conference role of ‘person who goes through the comments to put questions together and address the merged question to the speaker’, often taken by a postgrad, but it doesn’t give the audience any sense of what that postgrad is up to in their own work.

And what if you’re the only postgrad in your field at your university, or you’re doing a doctorate part-time, or you’re not in a university which has much face-to-face stuff happening? I think you still need a conference presence, but in addition I suspect part of the answer here is ‘social media’, which can create some strong communities and give real support – as happened when I asked Twitter for help writing this!