 Hi, everyone. My name is Yunzi. I'm a fourth year PhD student of film studies at SOAS. And I'm also the editor-in-chief of the SOAS Journal of Postgraduate Research. So the SOAS Journal editorial team. Oh, Mariano, hi. We have Julia here. She will also talk about she will talk about book review later. And we have Emily here. She's our co-editor of event. And we have Mariano here. He is the co-editor of communication. Yeah. So thank you for joining us. Right. So let me share my screen. Can you guys see it? I need to get my note. Right. So today's structure is I will talk about where to publish, what makes a paper publishable, and the review process of a journal. And then Julia will talk about book review. And because book review is a very good way to start academic publishing. And then we will have a Q&A time. So where to publish? I will say at the beginning, try not to aim too high because you're not looking for a job in academia at this stage. So try to get your name out first. If you want to apply for a PhD, you can start academic publishing after you start your PhD. You do not need to worry about it right now. But if you want to try academic publishing, then of course you can try. I think these are some easier ways to get involved. So the first one is student journals. And also blogs. Here I'm not saying try to create a blog by yourself. I'm saying try to go to those established ones in your subject area. You need to get your name out first. And then is academic journals in different language. Some journals in Europe, especially if the journal's main language is not English, they really want to take English pieces. So you can have a look at them so it might be easier for you to get in. Is someone posting the chat? Eunzi, you continue. We'll take care of the chat. Okay, thank you. How do I remove the chat? Okay. So what makes a paper publishable? First, you need to have a, here I'm talking about academic papers. So you need to have a clear and innovative argument. Innovative, here I'm not saying you need to create a completely new argument. That's almost impossible. So what I mean is that try to find a gap that not so much scholarships have covered. And then your paper needs to make contributions to your subject area. It is not an assignment anymore. What a journal want is research contribution. So usually the structure of an academic paper is you need to have your introduction and literature review methodology. In some areas, for instance, maybe because I'm from arts and humanities, I'm from film studies. So in some areas, maybe economics or, I mean, or finance, it is very important that you include your data and how you collect it. And also maybe anthropology, you need to include your methodology in your paper. But in some, for instance, in media or film studies, you do not need to include your methodology if it is just text analysis, like reading. And then case studies, and then you need to have a conclusion. So usually the most difficult part to write in the academic paper is literature review. So I will just briefly talk about it. So try to direct your literature review with questions. For instance, you can guide your, you can structure your literature review by answering these following questions. What contribution can my paper make to the subject area? Try to be as specific as you can. What are the, what are the focuses of all the scholarships in this area? Why my research is important? What gap will my research fill? Why my angle or perspective is special? So try to justify the importance and particularity of your research. And then it comes to the review process. Here I want to briefly introduce the review process, which is based on the model of the SJPR, the Solace Journal of Postgraduate Research. So apart from the content, what are our academic journals' expectations for writer? A very important thing is apart from the content, you need to have a great content. Apart from it is show that you're serious about the journal, not just us. I mean, all the journals, all the journals you want to submit to your, submit your paper to them. You need to, for instance, you need to follow the style guide, such as the font, the reference style, the word account, because we receive a lot of emails every day. There are a lot of people asking us, well I think I talked, there are a lot of people asking us, like, can we change to your reference style after our paper got accepted? I mean, that is fine. Usually that's fine, but it is better that you change to our reference style before you submit to us, because that would be easier for the reviewers and also for the editors to work on your paper. There are also people asking, my paper is around like 4,000 words, it is from a, from a module. Can I maybe extend it afterwards? Or maybe some people just, they just send us their MA thesis, which is 12,000 words. So I will say, this is not an assignment anymore. If your paper is written for a module, then you will need to extend it, revise it and make it more critical, make it fuller. So an assignment is, the difference between an assignment and an academic paper is, an assignment is a training, an academic paper is a research contribution. So you need to be aware of that. Just submitting your assignment is not enough. And our requirement for a full article is 6,000 words. So before submitting your paper to us, you need to, if it is below 6,000 words, then you need to extend it. If it is like over 6,000 words, then you need to shorten it. And also one important rule is you can only submit to one journal at a time. This is, so the journal after they publish your paper, they don't want to see your paper elsewhere. So that's, yeah, it's not good to do that. So the review process, the first, the first step is quality check. Papers which are obviously not qualified to get into the review process will be rejected. For instance, if it is too long or if it is too short, usually we, for us, the SJPR, we won't reject paper if it is, you know, if it is, it has a great content, but you know, just maybe reference and style is not ours, it's fine. But if it is a big journal or some very established blogs, then you need to be more careful about it. Because for instance, from my point of view, after becoming an editor in this journal, I feel like I would definitely be more serious about submitting a paper. I mean, the image that I'm trying to convey to the editors that I'm trying to show to the editors, I'll be definitely more careful about it. So try to think about the publishing from an editor's point of view. What kind of paper, what kind of image do you want to see from the writers? And then after the quality check, it comes to the first round of review, the papers will be sent to two reviewers. In our case, those reviewers are so as PhD students. And the possible results, oh, and also during the review, you wouldn't know who is your, who are your reviewers and the reviewers won't know your name, the writer's name. And the possible results are accepted with no correction. That's very, very rare. And then accepted with minor correction, then accepted with major correction and then rejected. However, some journals might be different. If it is major correction, they won't tell you if your paper is accepted or not, because they want you to revise it and then resubmit and then they will make a decision. So, and then after you got your feedback, you need to revise the paper. The writers revised the papers. You need to address all the comments from the reviewers. And then you need to write a letter to the reviewers, how you addressed the comments, how you took them on board, why you did not take some points. Now the arguments are stronger in what reasons? Of course, you do not need to apply all the suggestions the reviewers make, but you need to tell in the letter that why you disagree with the reviewers with a very polite tone. So try not to say, I do not think you have fully understood my work. Try to say, I disagree with you. I disagree with this point because and then display your reasons. And the letter should not be too long. Two pages will be enough. Otherwise, the reviewers wouldn't have time to read it. And then the revised paper and the letter will be sent to the reviewers for their final approval. And then it comes to the final adjustment. Copy editors may have some questions for you on maybe on the footnotes, on your reference, or maybe on certain typos. However, no major change is allowed at this stage. So that's everything from me. And if you have any questions, you can ask, you can ask me during the Q&A time. And now Julia, are you, are you ready? Yeah, ready when you are. Would you like to say something about book reviews in our journal? Yeah. So we don't, we don't provide our journal, we don't provide the books for you to review. So you need to, the very good way to access those books is you subscribe to the mailing list of publishers, or you subscribe mailing list of some like academic mailing list. Like if you're from Middle Eastern study, you need to, it is good that you subscribe to the Adobe art. Or if you're from film and media studies, then you subscribe the mailing list of books. So you get those books from the publisher. You email the publisher and check. Is there anyone? Sorry. Thank you. Perhaps I'll take it from here. Okay. Thank you. So picking up on what Yunze said, there are various ways to get books. And mailing lists are perhaps the best way to do it. Because people might send an email to a mailing list and say, we have those books. Is there anyone who wants to review them? Make sure that it's not the people who send those mailing lists do not ask you for a review to a particular journal because they may be editors of other journals and they're looking for reviewers for other journals. So just like with articles, you don't send the same article to a number of journals, the same goes with book reviews. They're also sort of journal specific, you would publish them in one. I'll deal with the chat. Yeah, take questions because there have been a few and we'll have a Q&A session at the end and we'll pick on all the questions you have in the chat. So keep them coming as they say. So don't be scared of that book pile on the side of the slide. It's not an accurate representation of the book pile that probably sits on the desk of each and every one of us. The point of a book review is to help the book to find its audience. If it's a book about a particular aspect of media, you want to write it for that audience that may be interested. It may not be just media studies, people. It may be relevant to people who study related topics to media. But the idea of a book review is a kind of a publicity for it, for the academic audience. What should be in the book review? A short summary of the book. So what is it about generally speaking? What, how and why? So what is it about? How did the scholar do the research? What kind of methodology did they use? Was there a particular set of data that they used? In which case it's good to mention that and also why do you think it was helpful? So taking the topic or the research in mind, why do you think that this particular methodology or this particular data set was useful for that research? You can use quotations, use them sparingly. But if you have something, a quote from the book that you think is perfect and very useful and good for the book and for the book review, then you can put it in. Just like with articles, academic books, point to their strengths and weaknesses. So what kind of things they do well? What kind of things they do a bit less well, but be careful with being too harsh. Because the book review is not a, by this stage, it's not a double blind review. You know, you have your name on the book review and the author of the book review will probably look it up to see, oh, someone wrote about it. So they'll know your name and you'll know their name. So be respectful. The other thing that is good to put in the book review, I'm not sure it's on my bullet points, is where is this book adding something new to an already existing field? Similar to a literature review in an article, an academic book also adds something new to an existing field. So pointing to that novelty is another point of a book review. And the last point is connecting the content of the book with the context, both general. So if the book might be interesting to people who are interested in that field but not academics, it's a good thing to point. And obviously for academics in that field or related field, also good thing to point. Usually book reviews are short. And you have a bit more flexibility with style and language than a journal article. But good practice applies for book reviews as well. Whatever you do, do it with attention and be kind to others, whether you write about others books or review other books. That's it from me. Short and sweet. Thank you very much, Julia. Book review is a good way to start in academic publishing, right? Yes, because it's short. You have already something to base it on. It doesn't need to have an argument or a supporting point. You review someone else's work. And reading someone else's work, interestingly enough, also helps your writing. One of the books that I reviewed was very, apart from being interesting, it was very useful to see the style of writing of other academics. And you can sort of hone your own writing by reading others' work. Yeah, thank you very much, Julia. So right, now it comes to the Q&A time. So let's deal with the questions in the chat first. There was one question about argumentative pieces on critical opinions, 2000 words, and what kind of guidelines do they follow? So where is the question? Argumentative piece, which is also called opinion piece. Usually, I would say argumentative piece is more like a case study. It is very good to find a specific case to support your argument. And then it's very much written an essay, like your assignment. So first you will have your argument, and then you will have your counter argument. And then you have your case study to provide an analysis to this argument. Yeah, does that answer your question? It's more like a case study. Yeah, I'm the one who asked the question. So I was just wondering, yeah, how does that differ from a regular essay? Like, is the argumentative part that I was kind of confused about, because an essay is already something that you're arguing for, that you're already situating in a current debate. So I was wondering, how is that specific? I mean, it's shorter than a dissertation or anything, obviously, so that's one specificity. But the part about opinion, how does that differ from other types of academic writing? If that makes sense. Yes, yes, yes. So basically, I think it is the case study part of the academic paper. So I just said there are introduction, of course, we need to have introductions, but as I said in the presentation, the structure of the academic paper is introduction, literature review, and then methodology, and case study, and conclusion. So it's more like the case study part, but you need to abstract the essence, of course, you need to provide some literature review, but very, very short, just related to your argument. So your argument also need to be very, very specific. So try to narrow down as much as you can, and then find a very specific case that need to support it. So it's more like a, it's really more like a shortened length, shortened version of the academic paper. And try to be as specific as you can. Julia, do you have something? I think argumentative piece will be something in between a long blog and an academic journal, and a long opinion piece in a newspaper, for that matter, and an academic journal. So it still has to have those structural components, it still has to have an argument and an introduction and a case study, but it's just a bit shorter, so you don't need to go to those extensive lengths of literature review and all the rest of those. Yeah. It's sort of an academic op-ed, basically. Yeah. Okay, gotcha. Thank you. No worries. There's another question of, do you have to be enrolled students, or can you be an alumni? You can be enrolled student, or you can be alumni. As long as you are studying at SOAS, or you were studying at SOAS, as long as you have some relations with SOAS, then it's good. You can be a year-old student, then you can also be an alumni. Yeah. And I remember someone was asking about the mailing list. Yeah. Yes. There was one about mailing list. Yeah. So I do not know about your subject areas. So different subject areas have different mailing lists and maybe a lot. So check with your tutor, check with your teacher. They will know. For Middle Eastern studies, there are adult, adult, and for media and film studies, so... Oh, there's also the, if it's regional, there's the H-Net network. They have various mailing lists of various topics in various regions. So there is an Asia one or Japan one, yeah. So basically it's more like they include all the information of arts and humanities. Yeah. H-Net. I put it already. So there is a question about high-impact journals. Talk a little bit about high-impact journals. Could you talk a bit? Oh, okay, high-impact journals. It depends. I know that it's the typical academic answer. It depends and it's not much of a help. But different areas will have different impact journals. A journal might be very good in a particular area, but published in others as well. Let's say you go for a journal of anthropology, which is a huge one, covers a whole lot of topics. It might be very good in a particular area and less impactful in another area. So it's not a clear-cut field. And the best advice that we always get and therefore we always say is that go for journals that you cite a lot. Because the likelihood of your topic being relevant for those journals is higher than sort of random others that are relevant on paper, so to speak. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree with Julia. I think it also comes to the question of how to choose the journal. How to choose a journal, right? So you need to, I think what Julia meant is that you need to, your paper needs to fit in, fit in the journal that you want to submit to. Like, you can check their previous issues, like what kind of papers, what topics they usually cover, and you can see, then you can see if your paper will fit in. And it's very, for high-impact journals, it's very difficult to get in. That's the first thing. And you will have a long wait, two years, usually two years. Is that? Yeah, please. Sorry. The more popular, the more high-impact the journal, the more people try to send their papers to, the longer the process takes. So it's a question of, do you need a publication quicker? And there it's better to aim for a slightly sort of medium grade of journals, but have a publication out, or aim for a high-impact one, but wait a long time with possibly not satisfactory results, because that's always an option. Exactly. I have a friend. He has waited for that paper to come out. I think it's the third year now. Yeah. So to be prepared if you want to submit to a high-impact journals, and also for those, I know there are ranks of impact factors online. There are different versions of it. I think what Julia just said is very important. Do submit to those journals that you always cite, because apparently it has a great impact on you and also your subject area. So those impact factor rankings, usually the medical journals, they will rank at the very top, and the arts and humanities journals will be like, you don't know where it is, maybe a thousand, at the southern or something. But within the arts and humanities, you also have the internal ranking. So go for those that you cite more, just because the likelihood of you fitting in within the journal is higher. Exactly. Next question is, how original does your work need to be? Try to be as original as you can, I would say. Yes, but on the other hand, there's no need to reinvent the wheel. So the originality can be a very small contribution that it can be applying an already existing methodology or theory on a field that wasn't studied. It can be fitting a new case study into an already existing field. It doesn't have to be something life changing. It can be just a small tweak to an already existing conversation. So think about academic journals like a right written conversation. Various people say various things. And you read those things and you say, okay, actually, I have something to add to that. That would be your original contribution. I hope that answers. Exactly, exactly. Try to fill a gap. I mean, the gap doesn't need to be large gap. It can be very, very small and specific. Just try to add some new angles or a new perspective to understand an existing issue or an existing topic or existing theory. Try to cover those topics that are not covered that much by other scholarships. Yeah. Next question is, how can we learn more about what student journals there are in our area? And can we as MAs only publish in student journals? Of course, you do not need to just publish in student journals. I would say about that, that usually what people do is if they publish something from their MA, it will be a reworking of their dissertation. Because that's the extensive work that you would do in an MA that will be suitable for a research journal. But not smaller pieces, usually. Exactly. Other student journals? Do check with your tutor, because we only know journals in our area. Even though journals in our area, I don't really know any student journals. Usually student journals, they cover, they're like us, they cover a lot of areas because they're organized by school, by the university. The university specific. And some journals, like us, they only open to their own university students. We only open to our own university students. So if you're a SOA student, or if you're SOA's alumni, then you can submit to us. But students from other universities, they can't submit to us. Yeah. Next one is, sorry. Next one is, how do we know when they are asking for an argumentative piece? Is it called that on journal calls, sort of call for papers, for a journal, will it be for looking for articles and argumentative pieces? Is that what they're looking for? Usually they will say it clearly in the cover paper. If they are asking for, if they want to, if they want argumentative piece, they will say it clearly as we do. Next one is, if my opinion piece is published at the SJPR, and I later build it, build it into an academic paper, can I submit the academic paper at a different journal? I don't really know that this is a very tricky question. Julia, do you know? No, but my suggestion would be ask the editor of the journal you want to submit to. Yeah. Because it all hangs on the question of plagiarism, basically, using something you already did. Just like at SOA, you cannot submit two papers on the same topic. That can be also a bit tricky. The best way is just to ask the editor of the journal, I've written this. What do you think if I can develop it into a larger one? It depends on how much new information you'll have in your journal compared to the opinion piece. Exactly. It's really just like, you know, monographs. Monographs that are developed from our PhD thesis, I think. If you had published 50% of your PhD thesis, and now you want to seek a publisher to publish a monograph based on this PhD thesis, then you need to be clear with the publisher. I have published 50% of it. Can I still publish it as a book? Usually, well, usually it depends on the publisher, to be honest. So you need to ask the journal. Next one is, when will the next call for papers for SJPRB? The current one is still here. I mean, the deadline is 19th of April, and we only have one issue per year. So the next one will be in spring, the same time, similar time range. Usually it will start at the beginning of February, and then end at the beginning of April. Yeah. Next one is about submissions. Are they paid or are there fees? We do not pay you. And you don't pay us. But I know for some journals, for instance, if it is, I mean, if at the final adjustment stage, when the copy editors are editing your work and you asked for so many changes, they will ask you to pay them. So just try to be prepared before the final stage comes. Try to make your paper as perfect as you want before the final stage comes. If you require too many, too much changes in the end, they might charge you on proofreading fee or copy editing fees. Yeah. But usually, no, there are no fees and you don't pay and you don't get paid. But as Yunzi said, if there are changes at the very, very less stage after the review process, they might ask you to pay for last-minute additions. Usually, they don't even allow changes at that stage after the review and after the proofreading copy editing. So try to get to the stage where this is you're ready to let it go and that's it. Exactly. Can you tell us about the process of suggesting a paper to a journal? Do we just look for a generic email for the journal or there usually is a specific email for paper suggestion? How is it with RSA, for example? Sorry, can you tell us about the process of suggesting a paper to a journal? Do we just look for a generic email for the journal or there usually is a specific email or paper? Right. I think in our case, the call for papers is on a topic, in which case, if you have a paper to suggest and to send for a consideration about that topic, then please do so. Me for us. Yes. Journals that are broader, that don't have a specific topic for an issue, you can contact the editor of the journal and say, I have this topic, will it fit? And usually the editors will answer whether they think that topic can fit or not. So just contact the editor and there's no specific email for paper suggestions, just the editor's email. Yeah. And it is better to write a sort of like covering letter. Yeah. To answer the questions like why you think your paper fit in. And talk about yesterday, why you think your paper fit in and how your argument is, how your argument can fill a gap in the subject area. Yeah, stuff like that. Try to write a short one page covering letter to accompany your paper, accompany your idea, and then email it to the editor. Again, if you think about writing as a conversation, you want to show them that you can join an already existing conversation in that topic. Just like when you're standing in a party or well, parties, we haven't had those in ages. But if you stand in a group of people and they're talking about a topic, you want to join in with something relevant to that topic. Same goes for journals. Exactly. Exactly. Is there a central place that sets out all the different journals? Oh, sorry, I think we have like some questions that we skipped. Oh, have a look. Our submissions usually pet on it. Where can we access previous SJPR issues? Someone put a link in the chat. So please have a look. Yeah, there is a website where you can access all of them. Yes, can Mariano, can you maybe post a link into the chat? There is one already, but I can post it again. Oh, there is one already. Yeah. Okay, good. Oh, okay. Where are we? Oh, yeah, yeah. Someone posted. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Brent. Sorry. I hope I pronounced your name right. We are with... Is there a central place that sets out all the different journals? Short answer? No. No. But big publishers like Routledge, like Paul Grave Macmillan, like what are those? Interconnect. All the university publishing houses, so University Press, Cambridge Press, all of those, of course, all the American universities will have a list of their journals on their website somewhere. So again, look which journals you cite, where they are published, and then just go on the website of the publishers. You'll find somewhere there a list of the journals that they publish. Usually, those big publishing houses have a lot of journals they cover. Exactly, but they only display the journals they publish. Yes. Yeah, so there's no central place for that. Is there a point when publishing becomes difficult if we don't have or are not yet working towards a PhD? Publishing is always difficult. Even though you're working towards a PhD, are you already like, you know, already an established scholar? You bought your PhD and are working the field for like many years. It's always difficult. You get rejections all the time. And even though I heard like in some, I heard from some very, very established scholars, they're professors already, like they submit a special dossier together, like a special edition together to a journal. And the professor's paper was picked out by that journal because they just don't want the kind of topic maybe. So it's always difficult. There is a question about the deadline. Yes, it's the 19th. And if you're wondering about the fact that publishing houses make money, but academics who do the research not, welcome to academic publishing. There are some open access journals, which then don't, their model is a bit different in terms of who is paying for what. But then the things that are published there are available. And there's no paying wall that you get sometimes with journals and thinking, okay, you can read this bit, but if you want to read the next, please pay. But it's a slightly different style of journal. Still, academic reviewed everything. But in terms of its financing and who pays for what is a slightly different one to the ones that we're usually familiar with. Is it just student journals that don't pay or is it every academic journal? Every academic journal. Yeah, they just provide a place for you to showcase your work. So they think that they're doing something good for you so they don't pay you. There's a question of, just to clarify, we mentioned earlier that master's publications are usually reworking for dissertation. Does this include student journals or would it be feasible to publish something outside of our dissertation in, say, the SOAS student journal? You can publish something outside your dissertation in our journal. That comment was mainly for the sort of high impact academic journals that are not student journals. So if you're aiming for the academic journals that are not student ones, that would usually be a reworking of your dissertation. But for our journal, you can take any other topic or essay that you've wrote and rework it. Yeah, the point is that you need to transform your assignment even though the, I mean, even the dissertation is a kind of assignment, although it's a more accomplished one. You need to transform your assignment into an academic paper to make a research contribution. Assignment is just a training, but the academic paper is a research contribution. How to differentiate between student journals and others. Others usually have a publishing house behind them. So you'll see Routledge, you'll see Oxford University Press, whatever else. Student journals are usually university specific. So it will be a SOAS student journal or whatever other university has one. They will say it, they will tell you. A brief follow up about publishing as a master's student. As Yunzi said, you get rejected whatever your academic rank is. So if you want to aim for those articles, those journals and publish, go for it. We all get rejected. They won't reject you because you're an MA student. Yeah. They will only reject you because your content does not fit into their journal or they think your paper needs corrections or, I mean, you need to make a better argument, stuff like that. They won't reject you because of your identity. Is the 6,000 word limit for JPR similar to other journals? More or less. More or less, yes. Yeah, some may be shorter, 4,000, but usually it's 1,000. That's more or less the average length of a journal article. Yeah, so they won't reject you if you don't have a PhD. They'll reject you only on the content and quality of the work. Exactly. It's not depressing. It's okay. There's a way to get used to it. Yes, but also I think there's something in the way comforting in the fact that everyone goes through this at least once and usually a lot more. So you're in good company. Exactly. How many submissions do you receive on average per journal in total? I mean, per issue, you mean how many submissions do we receive, right? Yeah, that's what I meant, yeah. Okay, last year it was 30. This year we don't know yet. So around 30. I assume you'll be around 30. Don't be considered a self-laterism even usually cool. I would be careful with this partly because of similar topics, but also because of timings. The article may not be out yet before you need to submit your dissertation, in which case you won't be able to properly quote it and reference it. Do check with your tutor, your teacher. About it. It's very, very likely that that paper is not out yet. And you'll have already finished your dissertation. A journal article of 3,000, yeah. You can change it to a you can transform it into an argumentative piece or you can extend it to a full-length academic paper, which is 6,000 words. 6,000 words if you want to submit to our journal. It does not include a bibliography. The 6,000 word limit does not include a bibliography. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Rachel. We feel we deserve more as well. Thank you for saying that. Right. I think that's all the questions, right? We still have three minutes. If you have any more questions, we're happy to take it. No more questions? Well, you sure no more? Well, if you do have more, you do know where to find us. So we hope it was useful. And thank you for joining us today. Yes. We hope have applications closed for, yes, assistant editors application have already closed. Try next year if you're still SOS. Sorry. Well, anyway, I think, yeah, thank you for joining us. I think that's everything for today, right? And we will post the recording as soon as we can after the afterwards. Yeah. So that's everything for today. Thank you very much. Oh, would you take a lumini for assistant editors? No, I'm sorry. No, we only take currently enrolled students as assistant editors. Well, bye. Sorry, I need to stop recording.