Rachel Crookes discusses our new courses on getting published

This blog is by Rachel Crookes, Head of SAGE Campus, about why we chose the topics of our new courses on getting published, what they cover, and who they will most benefit.

At SAGE, we know that early-career researchers have many, many questions about how to get published in a quality journal, including ‘what are editors looking for?’ and ‘how can I increase chances of getting published?’.

Over the years, our SAGE Journals and other SAGE teams have trained, coached and advised thousands of researchers on how to get published in an academic journal - and we continue to do so. But we know that webinars and training sessions are not always accessible to everyone who want to take part, and they don’t always fit with researchers’ publishing timelines. Importantly, we’ve found that having anytime-access to good quality resources to support researchers is vital for institutions.

With that in mind, SAGE Campus set out to create robust, structured online learning that’s accessible anytime, anywhere and tackles the key points of struggle that researchers face in their quest to get published.

The result? A collection of eight online courses designed for both early-career researchers who need guidance and more experienced researchers wanting to keep up with any changes in the publishing landscape.

But let’s go back in time a bit…

In 2019 SAGE created a short course on How to Get Published. It was popular: over 4,000 people signed up to take the course and the average rating by learners was 8.8/10. The feedback from learners and institutions told us that most people took the course in order to find out:

1. The real nuts and bolts of the publishing process

2. What kind of writing style they should use

3. How much editing matters

4. What advice published authors and experienced editors have to share

In response, we focused some of our new courses on answering these questions and mapped them against four main stages of the publishing journey.

Stage 1: Before you start

Before researchers dive into writing an article, it pays to step back. Our three courses aimed at this preparatory stage will help researchers:

1. Understand the world of academic journals functions, and to identify what they’re setting out to achieve (Introduction to Journal Publishing: Why Publish?).

2. Choose the right journal for them, because we know that submitting to the wrong journal can be a big barrier to success – and making the right choice from the start makes all the difference (Choosing a Journal).

3. Think about how to demonstrate the impact of their research and the importance of doing so (Publishing for Impact).

Stage 2: The writing process

Because writing your article well is so important, we are launching two courses on this part of the process, both of which dive into the detail and provide plenty of structured advice: .

1. How to Write a Journal Article Part 1 covers good academic writing, how to structure an article and what role editing should play in preparation.

2. How to Write a Journal Article Part 2 builds on this by showing how to transform a thesis into a high-quality article, and how to deal with things like data, third party and supplementary materials.

Stage 3: Submission

Often the most mysterious of stages, our two courses here focus on the different processes of submission for different types of journal publishing:

1. Submission and Final Touches clarifies what final touches are expected from researchers and what factors influence the likelihood that a paper will get through the first stage of desk review.

2. Peer Review, Feedback and Decisions walks through the different decision-making stages that papers go through, giving advice on how to deal with difficult feedback and tips for making sure revisions hit the mark.

Stage 4: Post-publication

Our final course, Article Acceptance to Promotion, will consider what happens once researchers are successful and get their paper published. What are the best ways to publicize a paper so it is well-read and cited? What responsibilities do authors have, and what creative ways are there to take published research out into the world?

The new courses are packed with 15+ hours of content and are publisher-agnostic; the information and recommendations we give are relevant to publishing with a range of academic publishers. We do include SAGE specific advice and information within each course, but this is clearly labelled as specific to SAGE.

try the courses now and get a trial for your institution

Three of our new courses on getting published launched this February and free modules are available to take today by signing up to our demo hub. The other five courses are launching in July and you can browse the full collection below.

SAGE Campus is available for institution-wide access via library subscription. Librarians can request a full 30-day free trial and faculty/researchers can recommend SAGE Campus to their library.