Today, a little happy dance. For my article to an “A” grade music education research journal has been accepted!
I had been hiding from doing the revisions, mainly because I didn’t know where to start. It was when the assistant editor wrote a very polite third email – 6 months after the second – asking whether I was actually going to resubmit that I sat down to make sense of the comments.
In the end, it was a fairly easy revision process. The reviewers were very kind. They weren’t savage. They wanted the article to be published but one reviewer in particular saw that the article lacked structural clarity. So I created a table of revisions. My revised article was much, much better. The writing was clearer, the structure more sound, and even the way I explained and analysed my research was better articulated.
In the end, a blind peer-reviewed process is an excellent way to ensure a quality product. The process has made me much more aware of how I write for these types of journals. Tragically, it’s much easier for me to analyse the work of others than create my own. Damn you, musicology brain. Where’s composing brain when you want it?
And as I was doing the last set of revisions for the editor this morning, I even fixed the references. Not being a fan of EndNote, I keep all my references in a big reference list stored in the cloud (Dropbox, I love you). But they’re not always accurately cited, and sometimes journals want Chicago or something hideous like Harvard or MLA. Still, it’s not hard to fix, and doesn’t take all that long. I think my old fashioned approach is still better than buggy EndNote.
By the time I get my PhD I should have 10 publications to quality journals and publishing houses. A good start. So happy happy dance today!
I'm no superwoman. 