Open Polytechnic Online Repository

Cossham, A.

How to get published.

Krtalić, M.

15/08/2024
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The pleasures and pitfalls of 
publishing your research
Amanda Cossham 
Maja Krtalić
What makes research, research?
The term ‘research’ is used to encompass anything that a practitioner-
researcher might have done including
formal research projects conducted by one, two or more people; 
evidence-based practice; reports of workplace development and projects 
(e.g., digitisation, outreach, user studies); case studies; analysis of 
existing data; critical reflections on programming, collections, services; 
expert opinion; surveys; position papers; 
Market research, academic research, 
characteristics of ‘research’
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Why write up your research for publication? 
● Your research remains hidden or is lost if it is not documented. Publishing is 
one of the best ways of documenting it.
● Self-interest and personal benefits
● Professional and altruistic reasons
● Other reasons
Why write: self-interest and personal reasons
• Publicises your work and research, helps establish you as an authority or expert
• Recognition of effort (often effort beyond and above that required for a job)
• Generates enthusiasm and motivation
• Helps improve your writing skills 
• Expands your knowledge, keeps you up to date
• Focuses your research goals, supports future research projects
• Enables feedback on the validity of the research through peer review
• Career advancement
University of Otago (n.d.)
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Why write: professional and altruistic reasons
• Shares your knowledge with other LIS professionals
• Fosters collaboration and engagement with other researchers
• Expands the profession’s knowledge base, builds a body of research to support 
the profession
• Sets your research in context, leads to further research
• Provides New Zealand cases and examples
• Reduces duplication of effort profession-wide
• Motivates others to research and publish
Why write: other reasons
• Creates a more permanent record of research in the field (e.g., conference 
presentations are peripheral)
• Promotes your organisation or workplace (depending on the research)
• Promotes your field of library/archive/information work, 
• Communicates the research to the wider community 
o Demonstrates its value to society and to other fields/disciplines 
o Demonstrates its value to management of the organisation e.g., council, university, school
o Improves discoverability (even if behind a paywall)
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How to get started
● Expand or edit something you have already written
○ Assignment, blog post, etc
● Convert a presentation into a paper
○ Starts from what you’ve already communicated, reformats for a new audience
● Write up a workplace project with others
○ requires collaboration and planning, shares the writing load, may be more informal
● Write up a research project
○ find a mentor, join or start a ‘shut up and write’ group, get some training, read LIS articles
● Create a book proposal
○ Check possible publishers’ websites for proposal forms; see what else exists, aim to fill a 
knowledge gap
What contribution your paper brings
• Knowledge about the NZ context
o Explaining NZ, both its unique value plus enough scope that an international audience understands.
• Knowledge in a particular area
• Raising awareness of problems and offering strategies or solutions
• Providing examples of best practice
o Balancing organisational context with organisational privacy
• How to write about your contribution, explain it in the introduction section 
• Clarify what makes it an original contribution, think outside the immediate context
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Selecting a journal: points to ponder
• What kind of research is it? 
• What is your ideal audience?
• Are you planning a short piece (up to c4-5,000 words) or a full research paper 
(up to c8,000 words) or a magazine style or an opinion piece?
• If you have written a conference presentation, is there a publication strategy for 
the conference? (e.g., a special issue of a journal or a selected proceedings)
• Do you want to publish open access or behind paywalls?
Selecting a journal
• Who/what have you cited? 
o where were those authors/papers published? Could you publish in the same journals?
• Check lists of journals
o Directory of Open Access Journals,
o lists by discipline in Emerald, EBSCOhost, and other journal databases
o SCOPUS sources (gives ranking as well)
o ABDC journal lists 
• Ask research-active colleagues for recommendations
• Consider journal impact factors 
• Does speed of publishing matter to you?
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Selecting a journal: when you have a short list…
• Read a journal’s ‘about’ page: does your paper fit?
• Check the editor(s) and editorial board members
o Have you heard of any of them? Do they have a good reputation if you haven’t?
• Consider a geographical focus
o Is the journal really open to publishing NZ papers? Does ‘international’ really mean ‘from 
anywhere’? Do you want a more Australasia / South-East Asia / Oceania focused journal?
• Do they have a peer review process? Do you want one? 
• Does your ideal audience read this journal?
Selecting a journal: pitfalls
• Are there author processing charges?
• Plenty of publishers do not ask for APCs to publish your paper.
• Some publishers offer Green or Gold open access to those paying 
• Check copyright in advance if possible
o Who holds copyright?
o What can you do with the paper or its pre-print?
• Avoiding predatory publishers and journals
o Think, Check, Submit http://thinkchecksubmit.org/ helps you to 
identify these as does https://www.openacessjournal.com/blog/predatory-journals-list/
o Many charge author processing charges – find a journal without them 
o If you think something’s ‘off’, it probably is.
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Outline of a paper
• Different purpose, different types of paper, different outline
o research article (short or long), magazine/newspaper article, opinion/essay, blog post, etc
• Outline of a research article
o Title, abstract, key words, introduction, literature review, methodology, 
findings, discussion, conclusion, references
• Keep in mind
o author guidelines, journal keywords, journal audience
o ratios of sections
o Leave room to make changes post-revision (don’t write to the word limit!)
• How to cope with revision requests and how to phrase your response
You have published a paper! What now? 
• Celebrate!
• Improve findability
o Promote through your and employer’s social media
o Add to your email signature
o Talk about it in the workplace (is there a PR team?)
o Let participants know it has been published
• Consider presenting at a conference or to a professional association meeting
• Network with other researchers
• Add to institutional repository
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Practitioner perspectives on publishing
● Michael Fauchelle is a Reference Librarian at the Wellington Medical and Health 
Sciences Library, University of Otago. His article ‘Libraries of Babel: Exploring library 
language and its suitability for the community’ was published in 2017 in Library 
Review, vol. 66(8/9). https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/LR-04-2017-
0034/full/html He starts a new role at National Library as Te Puna Specialist on 
Monday.
● Caitlin Adams 
Pleasures and pitfalls - final summary
Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself. 
– Terry Pratchett
● Pleasures: Publishing your writing demonstrates your achievement, 
contributes to knowledge, is professional development for you and others, 
improves your professional profile and reputation
● Pitfalls: your paper may not be accepted first time, 
it’s time-consuming, may be slow to see impact
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Questions
What did we not cover that you want to know about?
Ask us later
Maja.krtalic@vuw.ac.nz
Amanda.Cossham@openpolytechnic.ac.nz
Additional resources
● ABDC journal lists https://abdc.edu.au/abdc-journal-quality-list/
● Academic Consulting https://www.academic-consulting.co.nz/ supports researchers and 
provides research training
● Allen, J., & Turner, S. (2020). Nine free resources to promote your research. 
Elsevier. https://www.elsevier.com/connect/authors-update/nine-free-resources-to-promote-your-
research
● Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). https://doaj.org/
● SCOPUS sources https://www.scopus.com/sources.uri?zone=TopNavBar&origin=searchbasic
● Search publishers’ websites for author guides
● University of Otago. (n.d.). Research publishing and impact. 
https://otago.libguides.com/research_publishing_impact
● ResearchSIG has a Research Toolkit https://lianza.org.nz/research-toolkit/ and 
experienced researchers and mentors you can talk to
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