Journal Publishing

Since I’ve decided to write an article based theses, I’ve been thinking about how to organize it. I think that the articles, deriving from the same material, should build upon each other, but should not ovelap too much; They should complement one another and show the empirical material from different points of view (?)


Like a path, my study cuts across different landscapes: early childhood education and early childhood teacher education, visual arts, language development, multimodality, imagination and creativity, learning through play, studies of learning environments, sculpture and three-dimensional materials, and arts-based qualitative methods of inquiry. Since it is hardly possible to find a journal that covers all of the areas, I plan to publish in different journals, addressing different audience. I will have to work on careful planning which contents to present in each of the articles, and which kind of narrator voice to apply. In order to do that, I should need to know what my current audience (for each of the journals) would need to know more about (what they are not familiar with) and what I should need to write much about (so that they will not get bored reading about something they already know). I should take a good look at the landscape and imagine my audience…


At the Sixth Congress of Qualitative Inquiry I attended panels where journal editors presented their work and gave advice to writers. Here is what I learned from them:

Some of the journals presented on June 28-th were not specialized for qualitative studies, while others would publish qualitative studies only – A writher should know which kind of journal his study would fit best into. Some journals were method journals (like for instance the Journal of Mixed Methods Research), that would not be relevant for publishing articles that present contents of a study. Readers of method journals would rather like reading which advantages the specific research methods had in order to understand the problem that has been studied.

Dorothy Becvar (Journal of Family and Therapy) said that she is devoted to the qualitative method and wants to make sure the method is well presented. Ron Chenail (Qualitative report) encouraged writers to write in first person and in active form (not “the informants were interviewed” but “I interviewed the informants”).

Ian Shaw, University of York (Qualitative Research Work) presented his applied qualitative research journal and explained that “applied research” is about “meaning worked out in particular contexts”. When one is preparing to publish in an international journal, the article should be written in a way that it speaks across the boundaries of different contexts. Before submitting one should ask the question: Would the theme be relevant for audience outside the specific contexts? (Some things migt be relevant, others not. One should be careful where and how to step...)


Harry Torrance (British Educational Research Journal) explained that one should know that growing journals would reject the most of the articles. Donna Mertens (Journal of Mixed Method Research) gave advice that writers should always refer to articles earlier written in the journal one wants to publish in (at least two references). One should also try to find out what the editor’s, and the board member’s, research and write about. She explained what one should do when receiving two different (or even opposite) feed-backs from board-members. This happens and can be confusing. The writer might take the position of one of the reviewers, but she/he would still have to respond to the requirements from both of the reviewers in order to get published.

Janice Morse gave an editor’s perspective on how to get qualitative research published. Her angle was to present usual rejection reasons and questions to be checked before submitting: Does the article fit to the mission of the journal? Have you writing who you are (student, researcher etc.)? Is the topic exciting for others? Do you write with confidence? Do you write with enthusiasm? Do you have too few, or too many, references? If the presented project is conducted together with others, did you make explicit how much of your study ovelap with other projects? (And make sure that the people you have collaborated with are mentioned.)