Everyone's heard the dictum, "Publish or perish," but just how do you go about putting this prescription into practice? The question is especially timely in these days of reduced funding to university presses and waning support for scholarly enterprises--developments that have only contributed to the pressure to publish, since most institutions still view books as the ticket to tenure. Practical advice on how to deal with this conundrum is available in the Graduate Division's recently released Academic Publishing: A Guide for UC Berkeley Graduate Students in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
The 45-page guide--written by Anne J. MacLachlan, former UC Berkeley academic placement coordinator, and Debra Sands Miller, Graduate Division senior writer--draws from and expands on an October 1994 workshop on academic publishing. Sponsored by the Graduate Division and the Townsend Center for the Humanities, the workshop brought together editors of the Stanford University and UC Presses, faculty members in the humanities and social sciences, student editors of campus publications, and two recent Berkeley Ph.D.'s with book contracts to answer commonly asked questions about publishing journal articles and dissertations.
The resulting guide is a compilation of perspectives on and approaches to publishing--including the question of whether you should publish at all before you finish your dissertation. The answer is yes and no. Some professors see publishing before the completion of a dissertation as taking time and energy away from the key activity of the student's doctoral career. Others encourage students to think of every seminar paper and conference presentation as an eventual article that may give them a competitive edge when applying for faculty positions. The Graduate Division guide walks students through the range of viewpoints, then highlights publishing resources and opportunities available on the Berkeley campus.
The guide is divided into two main sections. The first, "Publishing Articles in Academic Journals," is extensively treated, since little else on this topic has been published. Part II, "Turning Your Dissertation into a Book," discusses the differences between dissertations and scholarly books and provides an overview of how--and whether--to turn one into the other. The guide's appendixes include a useful bibliography (including several full-length treatments of publishing a dissertation); sample letters of inquiry; a compilation of student-run journals; and a list of questions a student author might ask a prospective publisher.
Academic Publishing: A Guide for UC Berkeley Graduate Students in the Humanities and Social Sciences is available in the bins outside 325 Sproul Hall.
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