The peer review process refers to the procedure through which a manuscript is assessed by editors and peers (a panel of experts such as university professors, authors and practitioners in the field) to determine its suitability for publication. While acceptance criteria for manuscripts might vary across different publications, typically, peers evaluate submissions based on criteria of originality, methodological rigour, writing quality and the importance of the contribution (Carr et al, 2018, p. 606).

Is my work publishable in a peer-reviewed journal or book?

Before preparing your manuscript or searching for a source to publish, you need to determine whether your project is publishable. There are many factors that can affect whether the project is publishable. Two factors that can affect whether your paper will be favorably received are: novelty and methodology. By novelty, we mean, is the paper advancing new knowledge? Is it making an original contribution to the field through either empirical findings or theoretical and methodological advances? Many undergraduate projects are assessed on your ability to to utilize existing methods and theories, analyze and interpret findings and drawing conclusions. There is often little requirement to make an original contribution to the field. Hence, a great honours thesis might not be publishable in a traditional academic journal (unless it offer new insights into an existing problem). For example, let us assume that you are researching international students’ friendship making ability in host countries. You might have surveyed 50 students on your campus and analyzed their results in a sophisticated way. But, if this is merely replicating the hundreds of studies already published on this topic, peer-reviewed journals will likely have little appetite for your work. Hence, it is important to think about the advice offered in Chapters 1 & 2 about finding your niche and ensuring that you are making a contribution. While it is okay to replicate existing studies, you must be able to demonstrate that the replication is adding to existing knowledge, i.e., you must be adding new insights. This could mean comparing different social contexts (e.g., is there something unique about your study population or the environment? Are you making use of a theory in a new way? Are you utilizing methods that have not been used before? Have you made discoveries that were not known?). Your research needs to be filling a gap, otherwise, you are unlikely to impress editors and peer-reviewers.

Second, having a novel research does not automatically mean that your project is publishable. Your research needs to be supported by suitable evidence. Hence, how you collect the data, the size of the sample and methodological concerns are important. For example, going back to the study of international friendship formation. Let us assume that you are investigating intergenerational effects (i.e., parents’ own international students experiences) and no such work exists. Certainly, this is exciting, and editors and peer reviewers might be excited about this work. However, if you interviewed only 5 of your friends, while this might be acceptable for your undergraduate thesis, editors and peer-reviewers would be less impressed by the small sample size. Your work might be dismissed for not being rigorous enough and for lacking sufficient data to produce robust findings. Likewise, if you utilize census data on a relatively small group e.g., St. Vincent international students studying in Fort McMurray (say n=50), even if your findings are impressive, the small sample size will not allow you to perform rigorous statistical analysis e.g. regressions. Hence, methodology must support the novelty of your research. Answering these questions can prevent you from wasting time preparing an article for a peer review journal.

Please note that peer-review is not the only option for publishing your findings. You might also consider writing a research report for a community organization of concern, writing a letter to the editor of a paper (or Op Ed), blogging your findings etc. Certainly, there are other questions that you must answer before you decide to pursue the peer-reviewed publication route (we discuss some of these later in the chapter); however, we offer these two as foundational questions to help guide your decision making.

References

Carr, D., Heger Boyle, E., Cornwell, B., Correll, S., Crosnoe, R., Freese, J., and Waters, M.C.  (2018). The Art and Science of Social Research. W.W. Norton & Company Inc.