For about half a year now, I’ve been reviewing contents for two electronic publications for e-learning, and while both have been on my reading list, I’ve had a comfy insider’s view of some of their policies and editorial practices.

The truth is that for most publications, they would not be able to survive financially if they had to commission the works that they run. An article can take many many many dozens of hours of research, writing, surveying, and digital image captures. Just getting the APA citations right (or close to right) takes a lot of time and energy.

These publications rely on the secondary benefits that the writers think may be coming—in terms of “prestige” or a line in a tenure report or curriculum vitae or professional satisfactions for various writers and researchers.

Both publications have their own rubrics for critique. Both emphasize substance and newness of ideas. Both emphasizes creative uses of digital media. Both have high standards for originality. One is more academic; the other is more popularist and glitzy. Both are global. Both contribute enormously to the field.

Recent Experiences

I was thinking of this recently because of two contrasting experiences. One was that one of the journals just returned critiques to me for two articles (one co-authored and one solely authored by me)…and while so far at least one has been accepted, the latter has to go through a secondary review after revisions. And I got thrashed on a “pet peeve” of a reviewer related to APA citations (Okay, folks: Do not include page numbers for in-text citations that do not include quotes. I got it!). While there were encouraging comments, there were lamentations about my uses of quotes. Anyway, the changes were made in fairly short order. The mss. is back, and I think it’s has a chance of landing. One can never truly tell.

By contrast, a day or two later, I acted as a reviewer for the other publication…and the editor there is consistently nicer than me. She’ll make all sorts of allowances for her writers. She explains that she solicits a lot of their work. She’s balancing the academic with the popular. She cares about the writers more than their writings. It is a refreshing contrast.

Messiness vs. Shutting Down

That creativity piece must involve some messiness. While ideas are finding articulation, structure and form, there must be a protection of the thinking processes and the doodling and the shifting of ideas. Professional writers know how to do this—to nourish themselves and keep up the creativity while hitting high standards in terms of output (eventually).

I’m all for solid critiques. I’m all for academic writing, and I’m even for some elitism (sorry—if I’ve offended some), if that elitism is about fresh learning and findings—not if it’s about posing. Anyway, a third event happened that brought this posting into being.

It was this. A colleague of mine sent out an email soliciting interest to co-author a chapter for a manuscript in process. He had no experience in the field but wanted to piggy-back on a publication. He had not published before. And as I thought about how tough and grueling the publishing field is, I wasn’t sure if I would encourage him to go forth…at least not without some fair warning. And his secondary benefits would be truly minimal.

I think it’s better for those who’ve gradually published and experienced the scrapes and bumps on that road in order to gradually build up the toughnesses necessary to compete in this arena.