Gina Wisker and Maggi Savin Baden
Getting published in the publishing shark pool: a conceptual threshold crossing
Writing is only the journey’s start. Getting published is essential, and as academics we are increasingly pressurised to publish more prolifically, in certain journals (international, highly-ranked, in English). Attempting publication, we face editors, reviewers, our own hesitancies, and the troublesomeness of wrestling ideas, research and writing into publishable form. Dissemination, beyond publishing, ensures reading , engagement and acting because of our work. Publishing seems a mystifying process , a ‘shark pool’. We argue that actually getting published resembles crossing a conceptual threshold. The writing-in-process, identifying publication outlets, submitting, responding to feedback, re-writing until it is acceptable and accepted are all crucial steps (Wisker, 2015) involving passing through liminal spaces encumbered with uncertainties, defamiliarisation, troublesomeness and the gradual forming of a finished, acceptable, accepted, publication. Published, we authors feel we have crossed a conceptual threshold (Kiley &Wisker, 2009; Wisker &Savin Baden, 2009).The work accepted, we are accepted, recognised, valued. We see it differently knowing we presented ideas, arguments, new knowledge well and will have a readership engaging with our work which goes out into the world!: a wonderful breakthrough moment of achievement and confirmation.
We use (i) experiences of published academic writers (using semi-structured open-ended narrative interviewing) ; (ii) our own experiences of writing and getting published (interviewing each other) exploring, demystifying that troubled process of struggling through liminal spaces until the words are printed. Finally we identify the extraordinary sense of concretisation, realisation and arrival produced by successfully navigating liminal spaces and crossing conceptual thresholds of being actually published.
Threshold Concepts 