Publishing Pedagogical Research
Publishing pedagogical research is an important contribution to the University, adding value to both our teaching and research. Through the process of peer-review, it adds rigour to pedagogical research and enables it to be citable in other work. This guide provides some key information on publishing pedagogically informed research and is intended to be of use to both researchers from other disciplines who are new publishing educational research or those who are new to publishing altogether.
Where to Publish
There are many options for publishing pedagogically informed research. If you don’t have an idea where you would like to publish, you might want to think of the following options:
- Higher Educational Research Journals, which include general journals such as Studies in Higher Education or Higher Education as well as those more relevant to pedagogy such as Teaching in Higher Education. If your findings have implications for policy and management in higher education, a journal such as Perspectives: policy and practice in higher education.
- Discipline-specific education journals that focus on education within their respective fields, for example the Journal of Engineering Education (in Engineering), the Journal of Biological Education (for Biology), or Academic of Management Learning and Education (for Business and Management).
- Interdisciplinary Journals such as PLOS One or Computers in Human Behaviour.
If you are unsure where to submit your work, check your bibliography. If you are citing a lot of work from a journal, that could be a good place to submit! Another option is to write your research as a chapter in an edited book, which would require finding an appropriate book being done in the area. Academic societies may circulate calls for chapters. Similarly, if you don’t want to publish in a peer-reviewed outlet you could consider writing a blog post or publishing in The Conversation.
You may need to adapt your analysis to meet typical practice for the journal and/or field in which you are studying. Read a few articles first, and the Bristol Doctoral College’s guide to NVivo is a good place to start if you are new to thematic analysis. Also, keep in mind that you should obtain ethical approval from your School or Faculty before collecting data.
Reviews
Most journal review processes involve some editorial screening before articles are sent for peer review. If your article is sent out for review, expect to wait three to six months for reviews! When you receive reviews, keep in mind that anything other than complete rejection is good news. Reviews can often sound harsh, but if the editor is asking for you to submit a revised version of your paper that means there is a good chance it is publishable, and most published papers have been revised at least once. If you are not successful, try to learn from the process and consider submitting somewhere else.
Publication is a challenging but rewarding part of research. The only thing we can be sure of is that papers that are not submitted are never published, so find the time and energy to submit your work.