As I worked on the first article I submitted for peer review, I was given the advice to submit my draft article to a journal to get more feedback. The logic was that I had workshopped the paper with several experts and it would be helpful to get fresh eyes on the paper. Submitting it to a journal for peer-review would provide additional feedback from a different group of experts in the area. I’m not sure how common this kind of advice is, but I’m sure some of you have heard this before. So should you use peer-review to get feedback? Ultimately, the choice is yours, but let me share a few things I didn’t know about the process at the time I was given that advice to help you decide what to do.
First and most importantly, getting rejected from a journal means that you have eliminated that journal for eventual publication of your article. Most journals have a clear policy that they will not accept rejected articles because of the volume of submissions that they receive. So if you submit to get feedback and receive a rejection, your article is permanently rejected from that journal. This is important to take some time to think about because there are only so many appropriate journals. For instance, I do research in urban sociology that is relevant for journals like City & Community, Urban Studies, and Urban Affairs Review. If those three journals are the best fit for my article and I submit to one of them and get rejected, then I am down to two journals left. Two journals may be plenty, but sometimes you need three (if not more) journals to find the trifecta of journal fit, editor support, and supportive reviewers to get your article placed. If the article you’re working on is speaking to a very specific audience and has very few venues, it isn’t ideal to eliminate an option to get feedback.
Second, even if you have a long list of journals in which you could publish your article, you may have preferences about what journal you would like it be published in. This means that you should think carefully about where you would like to send the article to get additional feedback and not include the journal(s) that you are most excited about.
Third, submitting to a journal does not mean that you will get peer review. Depending on the quality of the article and the fit with the journal, you could get a desk rejection, which provides you with little to no feedback on what you’ve written. In my experience, most desk rejections are form letters that basically say the article wasn’t a good fit for the journal. Occasionally, editors provide a little more information like “we don’t publish quantitative studies” or “the paper’s framing was too underdeveloped.” The former comment is less helpful for revising an article to improve it for the next submission, but the latter comment provides some (although vague) direction on what to work on.
Finally, it’s worth considering what other options you have for feedback. You may not be able to ask the person who suggested that you submit it to get additional feedback, but you’re likely to have some other options at your disposal. Consider sharing the paper with a workshop, a writing group, or other experts in the field. I use the word “experts” broadly to not just reference someone familiar with the literature that you’re in conversation with, but to also include the prolific article writer who is not an expert in your subfield. The prolific article writer knows how to formulate a journal article and can provide feedback on where your article does not follow important conventions you may not be aware of. Think of these kinds of other options and figure out if there are any that you haven’t yet exhausted that could be used instead.
At the end of the day, whatever choice you make should be what is best for eventually publishing your work. So weigh your options carefully in deciding when to click submit.
practical phd 