SOS

Ianqui's post on blind reviewing reminds me of a related question: what do professors owe their graduate students when they venture out into the thorny fields of journal publication? If we're going to encourage graduate students to publish, then surely we need to provide feedback before the students release their papers into the wild.  (Before I hear indignant objections--of course we do that!--can I just say that while you might, I've seen evidence that others don't?) I'd suggest the following, at a minimum:

• Presentation.  We all screw up our MLA or Chicago style now and then, but faculty should make sure that students adequately grasp the basics of footnoting, works cited pages, and so forth.  This goes double if the graduate program doesn't provide a formal opportunity for instructing students in the proper care and feeding of stylesheets. 
• Revision.  Like doctoral dissertations, even highly finished seminar papers are rough drafts.  Think about it: how many high-quality articles have you turned out in the space of ten or fifteen weeks--while, in all likelihood, writing two other articles at the same time? I read and write fairly quickly, but even so, I usually expect that it takes a year to finish a 25-30 pp. article.  Seminar papers often need pruning ("but I liked that factoid!") and massive reorganization before they can work effectively as journal articles.    Moreover, a journal article requires a different sense of audience than a seminar paper.  Faculty should be willing to assist in this procedure, whether by conducting large-scale workshops or one-on-one consultations.
• Additional research.  Seminar papers often have at least one thing in common with undergraduate papers: they frequently make "discoveries" that aren't.  Graduate students don't necessarily have enough background to distinguish between the odd and the commonplace in a given literary period.  And the semester and quarter systems don't provide enough time for students to find the relevant scholarship (or, sometimes, properly evaluate what they do find).  It may well be the case that a student needs to do several months' worth of reading before a brilliant seminar paper can be a brilliant article; it may also be the case that a brilliant seminar paper should not be an article.  Faculty should offer their students pointers for further reading--or, failing that, pointers for how to find further reading.
• Placement.  When it comes to choosing journals, it's appropriate, for once, to tell the student where to go.  There's not much point in sending a Lacanian reading of a Wordsworth sonnet to Representations.  Moreover, a smaller, more specialized journal might be a better home for an article than one of the behemoths would.  Again, this is the sort of call that requires coaching, not student intuition. 

Comments

[profsynecdoche]

Excellent post. I review for a journal in my field, and I read lots of articles that I feel are simply not ready for publication. While I can't always be certain, I'm often confident that they are by grad students who have not been sufficiently mentored. Of course, these may be graduate students who aren't receiving any substantive feedback at all.

As part of "placement," I'd also suggest that professors help students also understand that not every article can appear in a top-tier journal. Most successful academics have good articles that find homes in the specialized, mid-level journals of their field. No shame in that.

[profsynecdoche]

One more thing: Profs need to prepare their students for the fact that blind article reviews can be the nastiest pieces of writing that they will see in their professional lives. Not always, but sometimes blind reviewers can be just brutal. Knowing that before one opens the envelope helps you deal with that as a grad student. (And of course here's another obligation: Profs should insist on seeing all reader's reports and helping the grad student parse them.)

[A. G.]

Fine post. I edit a peer reviewed journal, and sometimes get things that could have used such mentoring, like a recent article I rejected, and the author came back and said it was a grad class paper he had unearthed. We all have tried that, eh?

Aside: I just attended a beginning of the year party for our creative writing program. A literature professor there on the cusp of tenure said he was just about finished with his first book, in the nick of time. He said that he now thought he could write a book in two years, rather than the 6 plus this one took. That sounds right. So I wonder about a year to write a 30 page article, but I guess I don't want to second guess anyone else's work habits, just that it seems a loooong time.

Second aside: anonymous reviewing, better than "blind" reviewing, don't you think?

[Jason]

When I was in first year I had to take english. A first class I suppose is not an accurate representation of writing in the arts but the hardest part I found was the first point you mentioned: the style (we could use either MLA, APA, or chicago). As someone in mathematics I found a LaTeX (typesetting program) style for MLA and used that, and the format itself is completely automatic. Unfortunately there is little support for the arts department with LaTeX, but maybe that shall change in the future.

We also had a guidebook with the styles in it as well and I was kind of confused by one of the instructions: at least one inch margins...but what's the maximum? I think I used 1.5 and the TA said it was too much. It was annoying because I had to concentrate on the format for some time rather than writing the paper itself.

[Mano]

I wish you were my advisor. Great post.