For those of you who have been waiting in anxious anticipation for the next installment of the 12-week to journal article project, apologies for the delay. This past week of travel and vacation-ing was too busy (sorry, Belcher, it really was!) for me to stay on top of things. Thankfully, Belcher does allow for this, and notes in the introduction that if you have to take a week off, that’s alright.

While the second half of Week 3 was quite busy for me with travels, the 20 hours of plane travel did me some good in getting through the tasks for the week. I spent at least 15 minutes almost every day of Week 3 writing and was able to do all of the activities, including reworking my paper around the argument. (I should note that I’m not totally done with this, and will continue to revise as I go through the process)

Week 4 is about selecting a journal in which to publish your article. As usual, the beginning of the chapter focuses on demystifying the article-writing process by talking about the various types of journals in which one can publish, including a discussion of the types of publications you should avoid. The rest of the chapter, and the week’s activities, is devoted to finding a fitting journal for your article, with activities that have you searching for and evaluating journals before choosing a journal and sending a letter to the editor of your chosen journal.

Week 4 tasks:

• Day 1: Read through page 112, do the activities on those pages, and start documenting your time usage for the week.
• Day 2: Read pages 112-118 and search for journals in your field.
• Day 3: Read pages 118-127 and evaluate the journals for appropriateness for your article.
• Day 4: Read page 128 and read articles relevant to your own article in the three most suitable journals (chosen Day 3).
• Day 5: Read pages 129-136, make a decision about which journal you’ll submit to, and draft a query letter to editors and send it.

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For all posts related to this project: Week 0 (Introduction), Week 1 (The writing plan), Week 2 (Getting started), Week 3 (Arguments), Week 5 (Literature review), Week 6 (Article structure), Week 7 (Evidence), Week 8 (Strengthening the intro and conclusion), Week 9 (Giving and receiving feedback), Week 10 (Editing), Week 11 (Finalizing the article), Week 12 (Send!)