{"id":665,"date":"2010-08-10T01:08:31","date_gmt":"2010-08-10T05:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bohyunkim.net\/blog\/?p=665"},"modified":"2010-08-11T21:10:55","modified_gmt":"2010-08-12T01:10:55","slug":"getting-published-in-a-peer-reviewed-journal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bohyunkim.net\/blog\/archives\/665","title":{"rendered":"Getting Published in a Peer-Reviewed Journal"},"content":{"rendered":"

My very first scholarly article in a LIS journal is about to be published in the fall issue of the Journal of Web Librarianship<\/a>!\u00c2\u00a0 And I have two more articles submitted to two other journals,<\/a> the Reference Librarian and Technical Services Quarterly.\u00c2\u00a0 As you can imagine, I am very excited.\u00c2\u00a0 But on the other hand, I still find it difficult to believe that my article is actually getting published in a peer-reviewed journal.<\/p>\n

Getting published can be a daunting task for new librarians. Considering that a two-year LIS program may well fail to provide sufficient practice and experience for LIS students to gain confidence in writing a scholarly article, new librarians without prior experience in scholarly writing are likely to not know where to begin.\u00c2\u00a0 I am personally divided on the issue of the faculty status of librarians<\/a> and the resulting obligation of publishing.\u00c2\u00a0 But that certainly is not an excuse for avoiding writing.<\/p>\n

As to many others, the major problem to me was how to begin.\u00c2\u00a0 The pace of my work was extremely fast as I was working towards opening up a brand-new library.\u00c2\u00a0 My work life as a librarian seemed to leave no room left for scholarly writing.\u00c2\u00a0 Moreover, I\u00c2\u00a0 wasn’t sure what my true scholarly interests were and whether I knew enough to write about anything.\u00c2\u00a0 This is to say that, like many new librarians, I was not sure when or how I was ever going to get published “ever.”<\/p>\n

\"National<\/a>I was lucky to attend the ACRL New Members group meeting about “Academic Librarians and Getting Published”<\/a> at my first ALA Annual Conference that I attended in 2009. Not only did the three presentations given by Emily Drabinski, Lisa Carlucci Thomas & Karen Sobel, and Linda Hofschire offer excellent and practical tips for writing but also this session helped me realize that writing is something everyone struggles with and being rejected is part of the process of getting published.<\/strong><\/span> Even though we all know that writing is horrendous to many others, not just to us, we tend to believe that those who have been published are somehow quite different from us who have not been published.\u00c2\u00a0 This session effectively demystified this misconception of mine.<\/p>\n

In this session, one of the presenters gave this tip: “To get motivated, use deadlines, generate good ideas, write them down right away, set aside time to write\u00e2\u20ac\u201cget up 30 min. early everyday.”\u00c2\u00a0 Although I liked this idea very much, I just could not sit down everyday to write for 30 minutes.\u00c2\u00a0 I could not get up 30 minutes early and I could not spare 30 minutes before going to bed.\u00c2\u00a0 It could have been a lack of the will, a doubt, busy work, or numerous other things.\u00c2\u00a0 But the real reason was, I think, this crazy thought of mine that I would get published “once” I first figure out my interests, do some thorough research, generate some worthy ideas quite different from others’, and am convinced that I am ready to write an article of a journal.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Oh well, I can tell you as the first-time author who wrote for a LIS journal that things don’t work that way. Period.\u00c2\u00a0 But I used the most important part of this tip to get started: “Use Deadlines.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

This is how I started writing.<\/p>\n