Publication Literacy: Editors’ Advice on the Successful Submission and Acceptance of a Journal Article

Abstract

This article explores the growing practice of publication literacy and presents guidelines on how publication literacy can develop both writing skills and managing article submissions to a journal.  “Publication literacy” refers to editors’ contributions to a growing body of knowledge on writing for publication and the accompanied review and publication value chain. It covers the submission, review, and publication processes and confirms whether the “threshold standards” of a journal are met. The advantage of this approach is that it guides essentially what good writing is all about. Content analysis was used to code the review records of 152 articles submitted to a journal over five years. Conventional content analysis was used as the coding categories originated directly from the text data. The data was derived from the two review processes of the journal, namely the editorial review and peer review. The results suggest that publication literacy is a neglected approach in educating and training on science writing. Ignorance of any of these aspects will result in an article not being submitted for peer review, the rejection of an article for publication or the delay in the publication itself. The application of publication literacy within the research education curriculum is suggested based on three core stages.