How hard (intellectually) do you find writing journal papers?

[wonkywheels]

Hi all, I have posted here before but just changed my name. This is possibly a strange question but I was wondering how hard you find it to write journal papers?

I don't mean just in terms of the sheer slog of doing it, I mean intellectually. I am in the social sciences and I find it SO HARD. I also feel as though I am getting worse at it rather than better - it's almost as though in my early career I just wrote and didn't worry so much about reviewers and editors. Now I spend so much time second-guessing the (generally awful things) they are going to say, that my papers somehow end up being a bit tortured and making less sense. I think.

Fundamentally, I sometimes wonder whether the effort involved for me and the numerous quite brutal rejections I have had recently mean that intellectually I am really just not up to it. Anyone got any thoughts?

Hello OP

I started my career off in the social sciences and now I teach in the sciences. It's a bit of a long story but I have experience trying to publish in the social sciences.

When I was firmly in social sciences I could've written your post. I used to find writing social science papers incredibly challenging because of the level of theoretical engagement that was required. Obviously I was mostly on top of the theory in my area but I found it so hard to boil the huge range of theoretical insights down to discuss them effectively in a 2,000 word literature review in a paper. As you said, incredibly intellectually challenging.

I also didn't really get the point of it, to be honest. It very often felt like naval gazing, citing the right people just for the sake of it, and leading to quite unadventurous and uninteresting papers (because you pin your data/thoughts, basically, to what others have said before rather than thinking creatively about data you might have).

Like you, I too found myself getting worse at it as I progressed because I would second guess reviewers and keep going back over my work. It took a lot of work to train myself out of that habit.

Since moving out of the social sciences (I do still try and publish in social science journals but I don't have to), it's a different world. Where I am now doesn't require the same degree of theoretical engagement; you obviously have to review what's gone before but this doesn't seem to be as parochial as in the social sciences. I guess my papers now are more "descriptive" than theoretical and wouldn't hold much weight in social sciences but that's the way I enjoy writing and communicating my work.

Remember that the peer review process is completely shit too. The anonymity means people people are free to be as horrid and dismissive as they like. This is, in part, because peer review isn't paid so people are trying to squeeze this in around their other tasks and don't have time to think about what they're saying and how it may come across. Plus, academia is also full of arseholes who like being mean. I also think editors are terrible nowadays at failing to desk review papers (i.e. sending stuff for review which then gets torn apart- WHY? Just reject it straight away with some broad suggestions for improvement), and failing to control reviewers (i.e. telling reviewers their comments are too harsh). Again, I think this is partly because editorships are being done around other work commitments. I actually found it really helpful to follow @shitmyreviewerssay on Twitter, which is where academics basically share the awful things reviewers have said to them. It helped me feel less alone and less dumb.

I also found it very helpful to co-author where possible. Bringing other people onto papers not only shares the load of writing and editing but I also feel like it shares the misery when I get rejected and shares the responsibility for doing something about it. When I co-author, I get a lot of confidence from sending rejections to co-authors and them not saying "well, yes, of course it got rejected, you're shit". When they come back with "Ah, that's a shame. Why don't we try Journal of Such and Such next?" I feel like the rejection is kind of neutralised. OTOH, when I get a rejection on a sole-authored paper, I internalise it and dwell on it massively.

Can I ask what stage of your career you're at, OP?

Are there any mechanisms for peer review at your institution?

Don't forget too, that if these rejections are recent, there's a massive REF panic going on and journals are being a lot more selective in what they're putting through.

DirtyDennis I think I love you.

The theory/literature review section is very largely nonsense and hat-tipping of senior people in the field. We spend a lot of time defending our subject from the defunders and nutters, and yet on the inside so much of it is unprincipled and network-dependent.

@Constantlyonthelookout Why thank you!!

In my science subject now it's totally different, you take work which is useful/informs your thinking and genuinely write about how/why it's useful to the particular paper you're presenting.

In social science it just felt like checking off the names of "he who must be cited". Fuckers.

@DirtyDennis, thank you so much for this response.

It is so helpful to hear what you have to say. I have the same feelings about lit reviews - I was also told the other day by a reviewer that a lit review I had written was difficult to follow and although he/she was almost certainly right I also wanted to respond, 'YES! Like 80% of the sodding papers I have read to get to this point'.

We are under such pressure to make a theoretical contribution - but often my data doesn't add anything unbelievably original to theory although it is nevertheless empirically interesting and I think important in a practical sense too sometimes. I see other papers getting published where the theoretical contribution is so incredibly niche it is (in my view) almost worthless and in trying to demonstrate it, the paper often becomes substantially less interesting and just less useful I think. It really is pointless.

When I try to identify something similarly niche it doesn't seem to hit home! It also not enough in our field to take an established theory and apply it to a new empirical context, even when doing so could tell us something interesting about both.

I do recognise this probably sounds like sour grapes and I might not feel quite like this if I found it easier to get published. In terms of stage - I am about ten years in. And absolutely nowhere near where I should be in terms of papers. I have a huge weight of shame around this and it discourages me from seeking co-authors - I am ashamed of them seeing the quality of my work or judging me on this basis. I have neglected publishing recently in favour of impact work and consultancy in my area and I have a good-ish reputation here. But I always feel I can't assume the identity of a 'true' academic which is what I really want, until I become more successful at publishing, and that seems a long way off.

In terms of reviewing - I do a fair amount and I make a massive effort not to be a dick. In fact it's not really an effort, it comes quite easily because being a dick is not my aim. But there are many other reviewers who obviously do not feel the same.

Gosh that was long! Sorry!

Sorry just to add .. shitmyreviewerssay might just save my (academic) life - I feel less alone already!

@wonkywheels Please don't feel shame about your publishing record. It sounds like you've been doing brilliant work impact-wise which can be much harder so you should be really proud of that. It's not like you've been doing nothing.

I totally get what you're saying about not wanting people to see the quality of your work. I very much felt like this when I worked in social science departments but it was incredibly isolating because I felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall but I didn't want anyone to know I was.

In the end, I was forced to start opening myself up a bit for two reasons - firstly because I was part of a collaborative project so I had to show the co-authors my work; and secondly because we had a period of 2-3 years where everything had to be internally peer reviewed before journal submission and was given a REF score (this was to try and bring quality up for REF).

At the time, I hated it and I was waiting with baited breath for emails to come back with reviews. I fully expected them to say "One star, just about. What the fuck is this? Why did we employ you?". But of course, they didn't - they'd come back with comments and suggestions but nothing hideous at all.

I'm ashamed to say but at this time I also discovered that there was a mechanism in our emails where we could see all the attachments that were going around the Department so I was able to see other people's reviews. I was happy to see that I was very much sitting at the top of the middle in terms of comments/scores. This was a whole world away from how I was perceiving things.

What I'm saying is that things might not be as bad as you think they are.

But, yes, I completely agree with you about theorising in social sciences. It's a real shame that the academic publishing model dominates in social sciences because I think there are very few people producing actually new findings but everyone's trying to push their data (which is just repeating what's been known for years) through the lens of existing theory and trying to advance it ever so slightly. I think there's real scope for more exciting, engaging, public-facing publication/dissemination methods to share interesting, but not particularly new, findings.

In terms of reviewing, yep, I'm exactly the same. I try and be kind but not everyone feels the need to do the same.

Very hard!

I also feel a bit like a square peg in a round hole. My papers tend to go reasonably well at the journal stage, but REF-wise they don't fit the subject I to which I have to submit.

It all seems quite painful!

That said, I've been challenging myself to write a bit differently, like writing in a more direct style and so far it's working out well. There's quite a few books out there on academic style (and the lack of it). Would reading something like that help you switch it up?

I also love @shitmyreviewers say, I need it to offset the craziness of reviews. I agree, I think Editors do need to do a better job of desk rejecting where appropriate and also, speaking to reviewers about the appropriate nature of their comments. I am in the social sciences and can see your issues. REF is just making it bloody worse in my opinion.

I have been revising a paper this morning after a second set of comments from a good medical ish journal (IF v good) and it's so different compared to the social sciences review process. The actual manuscript submission system is a nightmare but the comments and how they are delivered is worlds apart from what I am used to.

As in a good way, it's just so much more straight forward! I realise that this may well be just good luck. I could tell you that this paper has been desk rejected twice and rejected post one set of reviews once. It's due some good luck!

@purplepandas Your experience sounds like mine. Same paper (broadly) would get hammered in a social science journal with completely ridiculous comments but would get some really helpful, direct comments from a science-focused journal.

As PP has said above, social scientists do a fuck load of work defending their (our?) discipline against criticism but I actually think they comments are very often justified.

So fascinating to read this. My discipline is relatively 'new' you could say. I think it is especially prone to justifying its importance by taking quite straightforward concepts and making them extraordinarily complicated. But I would say that - I might not if I could just learn how to do it too!

Yep, DirtyDennis, this experience was pretty eye opening. Just waiting for one bit of info from a fellow author and then will send second set of reply to reviewers in. Keeping it all crossed, it almost seems 'too easy' compared to the nightmare experiences the papers has had elsewhere.

Oh this is such a nice thread. It's reassured me in spades. Thanks for being so honest .

My papers are supposed to be very formulaic in structure, so not a lot to think about for most of it. I flipping hate theory & often struggle to write the Intro ("why this research should be done") section, tbf. And anything to do with theoretical implications in Discussion. I can write technical reports very quickly, in contrast. 8-16 hours to write a decent 2500-4000 word draft journal article usually, including the minimal conceptual aspects.