How to Know When You're Ready to Publish (An Essay on Article Rejections)

As a graduate student, I rented the top floor of a house that had been converted into apartments. My unit had wood paneling, shallow ceilings, and an extra bathroom painted lime green by a previous tenant. But my favorite part was that the front door opened to a little foyer and staircase. The foyer wasn’t big enough for a cartwheel, but it was mine.

I could barely afford the rent on my TA stipend, but I believed I deserved it after spending a fortune and seven years in college and graduate school. Loans helped me pay for groceries and the odd new pair of running shoes. I was living on credit.

I was at the time developing a scholarly identity—it, too, on credit. I believed that a near-decade spent reading and writing lengthy academic papers had to be worth something, reputation-wise. So I submitted an essay written for class to a top education journal. The essay was already article-length, and it had nearly two pages of references. I decided it was exactly the sort of things journals would be interested in. 

But my essay was to scholarly writing what a Honda Civic Sport is to the motor speedway. Sure, it had a spoiler and some cool looking low-profile tires, but anybody who examined the engine bay or brake calipers could see that it would struggle to make it even one lap around the track.  

Months passed as I patiently awaited the journal’s decision. The patience came easily as I didn’t have anything else to do. While sitting in my pajamas and eating cereal in front of my laptop on evening, I read over all the essays I had written over the previous years and, impressing myself, wondered where I could publish them, too. I decided that I could have as many as eight publications before graduating.

And this fantasy was just a few dream steps shy of the list of prestigious universities that were going to want me on their faculty. I imagined the landscaped campuses and the mazes of bleached white concrete sidewalks connecting geometrically intricate buildings; imagined my corner office with windows and seats just outside for the endless line of hopeful students and one reporter anxious to get a few minutes alone with me. I imagined the dusty classroom chalkboard where I would hurriedly scratch my name, and the tweed coat and tortoise shell glasses I’d wear.

The inevitable sequence of events would mean the apartment I was sitting in would eventually become a historic site. “Wanna see something cool?” is what a stoned graduate psychology student would say to his companions on a late Spring day. They’d stop in front of a sad gray vinyl-sided building with matching garage. “Right up there is where Patrick Whitehead used to sit and write.”

“The Patrick Whitehead?” 

And so on. 

By then I would be living in a much nicer place, of course, but nothing extravagant. No oceanside mansions surrounded in scultures or ornate pools. Just a tasteful mini-mansion or brownstone within walking distance to Yale or NYU.

I refreshed my inbox to find the message, “Manuscript Decision.” I wondered if my submission would be accepted without any changes. That happens sometimes, I’d heard. Maybe the reviewers would be honored to have discovered the future of educational theory and grateful to publish it in their journal. And what’s to stop them from offering me a tenure track faculty job on the spot? I’d have to turn it down, of course. You can’t accept the first offer that comes along.

I opened the message and stiffened. The editor explained how the reviewers had found serious problems with my manuscript, and they weren’t sure they could recommend any other journals for publication. In the end, they hoped this would not keep me from submitting to them again in the future and wished me all the best.

I closed the email and all the open documents I had been revisiting, which I was now sure would bring me as much professional glory as wearing underwear on top of my pants.

Somehow it was already obvious to me that journals have a policy of notifying the home institutions about their failed authors. So, in the classroom a few days later, I believed that my fellow grad students and professors would know of my rejection. I expected class to begin with the topic, “How to Know You’re Ready to Publish,” and everybody would be extra careful not to look at me. What actually happened was worse: nobody mentioned publishing or journal rejections at all. I was humiliated.

I didn’t say anything that class period or the next. I assumed that any of the insights I had to share would be evidence of my stupidity. “What do you think about Merleau-Ponty’s flesh concept with respect to identity politics?” asked Professor Scott-Myhre. This was a softball, so to speak, lobbed in waist-high to help me get my confidence back. But I suddenly knew nothing about Merleau-Ponty or his obscure vocabulary. “I’m not sure,” I said, and chewed the end of my pen. “I’d have to think about it.”

It never occurred to me to share my rejection with others. I kept it a secret, as if that would mean that the rejection never happened. It would remain between the editor, reviewers, and myself unless I spoke it into existence someplace else, in which case the department would be forced to have a meeting about me and my future in the program.

It took weeks before I could bring myself to read the reviewer comments. I already knew what they’d say. They would have some version of, “The person who wrote this essay should kill themselves,” probably. Or, “Patrick: This writing—it’s… it’s… well, you don’t have any business teaching college students.”

What I found, instead, was the equivalent of three concerned elders who were looking on me and my paper with compassion—as they might with a sparrow they’d discovered after it ran into a glass door and collapsed on the welcome mat. The reviewers, delicately and careful not to scare me away, took turns identifying various mistakes I had made with organization, tone, grammar, and so, then making recommendations for correcting them on future papers. It was my own private master class on writing a quality academic paper. 

I felt… honored. Honored that established scholars in my field of interest had taken time to think with me about something I was interested in. Honored that they were willing to give advice without expecting anything in return. 

I invested myself in another paper, revising it myself by following the lessons I’d just learned. The new journal asked for substantial revisions, and even then they were unsure it would ever reach publication. But it wasn’t a closed door, and I would take it. Plus, there was new advice to follow that would, if nothing else, make me a better writer. 

Six rounds of revisions later, I was published.