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How to Start Publishing in Economics as a Grad Student: A Few (Hopefully) Helpful Tips

Posted on by Abigail Devereaux / 1 Comment
In my third year of my PhD in economics, I wasn’t sure what to do with the considerable glut of first drafts I’d accumulated by writing papers for classes and conferences. I had something like eight papers I’d categorize as good first drafts, some rougher than others. I knew what it took to write a good course or conference paper, but I wasn’t sure what it took to get a paper published, and I had this sinking feeling that none of my good first drafts were good enough.

Worried about the dreaded rejection without a request for revision–which is practically useless in terms of improving a paper–I sat on that stack of first drafts far longer than I should have. I knew I had a publication problem, so I signed up for a workshop sponsored by the Koch Foundation and led by Josh Hall at APEE 2017, held at Maui that year. I like to tell people that it took going to Hawaii to get the publication process going, but really, all it took was taking a bit of common sense to heart. Hopefully, I can save a few of you the trip to Hawaii by imparting the wisdom that got the publication process going for me.

 
There were about a dozen of us in the workshop, mostly grad students, some young professors and independent researchers. We sat around a conference table in an air-conditioned room, beautiful Maui on the other side of a heavy door.

Josh asked each of us in turn what we believed our obstacle to publication was. Some people got stuck after publishing their dissertation, and didn’t know how to proceed. Others were doing highly technical stuff and wanted their first or second pub to be at a top ten. When Josh got to me, I was a bit embarrassed, because I wasn’t stuck–I’ve never had a problem generating ideas and writing, I can’t seem to write fast enough. I wasn’t re-re-re-rewriting that One Paper to Rule Them All. Trying not to look any more foolish than I felt, I explained that I’d not sent any of my eight finished papers out because, erm…they weren’t good enough and might get rejected?

Without missing a beat, the eminently professional Josh Hall replied, “Just send your best paper out, and let the review process take care of quality problems.”

Brain asplode. Of course! Why hadn’t I thought of that? Just start sending stuff out. Maybe do a last pass to make sure it’s tight. But, like, just send stuff out and use the publication process as an opportunity to improve my paper rather than seeing it as some hard and fast barrier. Josh reminded us that lots of journals took a lighter hand to papers submitted by grad students, and were willing to work with promising grad papers and papers submitted by young faculty.

When I got home from the conference I sent out my first paper to a good specialized journal where I was hopeful I’d be worked with instead of rejected outright. That first submission turned into my first publication, after three major revisions and basically a complete rewrite. I had a wonderful editor who let me submit a revision even though Reviewer #2 recommended a rejection, as long as I was able to fully respond to both the reviewers’ and the editor’s concerns. I did, though it took a lot of doing, and it improved my paper immensely.

Finally, I understood what Josh meant: the review process is part of the writing process.

Since then I’ve had three papers and one book chapter accepted for publication. I have two papers in R & R currently, two (soon to be three) submissions pending review, and two invited papers (most are on my SSRN). I have a backlog of 3-4 completed papers that need serious polishing before being sent out, but are otherwise very good first drafts. I’m currently working on my job market paper, the crown jewel of my dissertation, for which I’ll aim high.
 
That brings me to my second point: placement is a process, too. There’s something to be said for learning how to write good academic papers that can get top hits by writing academic papers meant to be submitted to good journals. That doesn’t mean you’ll start at a high tier (you might!), but it does mean that you’ve got a good chance to learn what it takes to get pubbed at that high tier through the process of rejection. If you aren’t failing at something, you aren’t challenging yourself enough.
 
Identifying what is “good” and “high tier” according to what you’re doing is half the battle. Use a rankings aggregator. To get an idea for related journals, use Google Scholar to see who has cited papers related to your topic in those “good” and “high tier” journals, and where they published.
 
But know that there isn’t one way of defining what it means to be well-published. It depends on what kind of work you want your publications to do for you. If you want to get a job at a first-tier university doing traditional economics, where do the young faculty in those places publish? Where were they publishing a couple of years ago, in grad school? That’s assuming you want to tailor your pubs to the job market (most people do).

To use myself as an example: JASSS is a good journal for what I’m doing, but it’s not a good fit for most economists. I’m very proud of my pub at The American Economist, but their ranking is not super-high. I’m really, really hopeful about my papers out at JOIE and JEM right now, but even they aren’t ranked super-high. Someday, I’m hopeful the kind of stuff I’m doing could be a good fit for Science. I could certainly envision a paper of mine at JEP, JPE, or JEL, though perhaps not at AER or Econometrica. I would love to have a top-tier pub by the time I’m on the job market and will endeavor in that direction, but I feel good about my mid-tier pubs, too.

The takeaway? It’s a magical thing to have editors and referees willing to read your (never perfect enough!) papers. You don’t get this opportunity in fiction writing unless you pay dearly for it. Utilize the system you have at your fingertips. If you’re really uncertain about a pub, send it to a fellow student who has a teeny bit more publication experience, or wheedle a friendly faculty member into taking a look. Spend time developing an understanding for “good” and “high-tier” journals before you polish your first drafts, so you can tailor them. Start higher-tier and work your way down if rejected. Take up the challenge of revision if offered, especially in the early pubs. See failure as the goal, not success, so that you’re always challenging and extending yourself. And don’t sweat it. There are humans on the other end of a review process, all who have been where you are now.

Good luck.

Abigail Devereaux

1 Comment

  1. It may or may not be funny but when i got a FB page (actually i have 2 for some reason ishi.crew and ishi.crew.9—i made a typing error so somehow i got 2 different pages ) i had to decide my ‘profile picture’.

    (I was told everyone should have have a FB page the way you should have indoor plumbing—i’ve lived a few places (as did my mom) where that luxury dd not exist (alaska, north dakota, and WV). Since i happened to be looking at JASSS on the web at the time i was setting up my FB page, I used their logo as my FB profile picture . (it comes up as ASS unless you click on the picture–its truncated—i consider that sort of funny, and even like it—enough to scare people off).

    I never been to Maui but I have been to Oahue and the ‘big island’. The mountains of Oahue on a map look similar to the appalachians of WV (an area i’m familiar with)—range from 2000 feet up to around 4000 feet. (The big island ‘Hawaii’ has much higher ones and volcanos–i was at volcano natl park–and stayed at some military retreat since someone we knew had been in the military and had a special pass). ) The mountains of Oahue are very deceptive if you look at a topo map; they look easy, but are amongst the most dangerous mountains in the world i’ve been on. Nothing to hold on to—very few trees once you get up high, and if you slip on the muddy trails you may fall 1000 feet. Locals who hike wear ‘cleats’ imported from Canada on their shoes—in Canada those are used to play ice hocky, in hawaii you use them for hiking.

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