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What was it like writing your first publication?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, Struggling Writer asks, "What was it like writing your first publication?"

Here's my honest answer: it was a long, arduous, frustrating process that involved numerous failures before success. I almost published a few articles in good journals in grad school, but messed up several R&Rs. My mistake was in not seeking out enough help/guidance from mentors–as I saw other grads who did that effectively have a much easier time of it. 

So, if I had one recommendation for things to go better than they did for me, that would be it! 

What about you all?

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15 responses to “What was it like writing your first publication?”

  1. Michael Kates

    I had the exact same experience as Marcus. Tons of failure (including two unsuccessful R&Rs at top journals), followed by a big burst of success after I finally figured out how to navigate the publication process. Especially important in this regard was help by one of my mentors (who is now a close friend). I literally didn’t have any idea what I was doing (in particular with writing memos for R&Rs) and I was too stupid or shy to ask for help. When my first publication finally came, it was a huge relief above anything else.

    Reply
  2. academic migrant

    Insofar as your supervisor seems to have a good publication record, I recommend deferring a lot to the supervisor. It may help you comply with reason better than relying on your own judgement.
    As long as the comments appear to be an attempt to help you improve the quality of your paper, treat them seriously. Try to make all the changes, and in the “letter to editor and reviews” acknowledge their contribution. But more importantly, make it easy for them to see what changes you’ve made, preferably with the page numbers of the revised manuscript.
    And for me, having the first pub felt great. But I mistakenly thought one pub would make job seeking easy.

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  3. Paper writer

    My first publication was from a portion of my dissertation in progress. I wrote up a free-standing version of the chapter and went over it with my advisor. We went through it line by line, and he pointed out places that needed work. I made a lot of notes on that version and went away to rewrite it. I came back a few weeks later and we did the same. I got lots of feedback and went away to revise it. On the third read, he said he didn’t have additional substantive feedback and I sent it to one of the top journals in my area. It was accepted with minor revisions.
    It took some time before I was able to develop a feel for editing my papers without my supervisors input. After that initial success, I got several rejections but eventually figured things out.

    Reply
  4. H

    When I defended my dissertation (at a program in the 30-ish rank), I had versions of two chapters of my dissertation under review and I had a third under review within a month of my defense, but none were published when I defended. Nine months after my defense, I was working a (terrible) non-academic job just to get by when my first paper was published, which was the third dissertation chapter I had sent out. Two months after that, I got a full-time NTT position. (Causation vs. correlation is unclear here, but it certainly didn’t hurt!)
    I could have save myself a lot of time and likely performed better on the job market if I had really internalized my advisor’s advice: figure out what your original contribution is. If you can’t say it in one sentence, it’s likely not publishable. Since that first publication, any subsequent success I’ve had in publishing has been from honing my papers to make sure that my original contribution to the literature is clear.
    When I was writing papers and submitting to journals during my PhD, I was not good enough at determining what my original contribution was. I spent most of my effort trying to publish papers based on “People in the literature are wrong” or “This idea hasn’t been sufficiently explained in the literature.” Once I started making my own original arguments with the existing literature as a guide rather than as a dialectical opponent, I figured out how philosophical papers are actually evaluated. As Marcus and others have noted, getting published is going to involve a lot of toil and likely messing up some R&Rs, but the process taught me what philosophical publishing is about.

    Reply
  5. fluke

    My first solo publication was a revision of a seminar paper. I worked on it for another semester, getting more feedback from the seminar professor and another of my committee members who had published in the journal I thought would be a good fit for the paper. The paper was accepted rather quickly (less than 6 months, I think), with no revisions, just a really nice note from the editor.
    I did not attend a fancy program – no one had their thumb on the scale. For a variety of reasons, both faculty who supported me were surprised the paper was published at all. (So was I!!)
    Publications aren’t usually this pleasant. I did a lot of hard but rewarding work on the paper, so I won’t say this was “easy.” But it was straightforward and no one said mean things to me. (:
    Sometimes publishing is all terrible! Other times, things that seem like they shouldn’t work out, do. It’s hard to predict.

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  6. pubbed

    I had two chapters of my dissertation accepted for publication before my defense. That was very helpful. The key is to deepen the argument, and as H says above, really get clear on your contribution. Journals are looking for original work. For the record, I have written quite a few “x is wrong about y, and here is a better supported view” type papers. These papers are more straightforward to write, and they are worth writing. But there is something very pleasing about a paper that breaks out of that form. I recommend publishing as soon as you have something interesting and well supported to say – even if it is of the form “x is wrong …” It will get you into the publishing frame of mind. It gets easier, in one sense.

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  7. Shen-yi Liao

    My first paper came from a seminar paper.
    https://philpapers.org/rec/LIAWAC
    The idea is relatively simple. But I think getting it to publication was helpful for me to learn how that world works. I mostly sought feedback from the professor who taught the seminar (Andy Egan) who works on the topic. I think I’ve also presented it on a couple of occasions. But then mostly it’s going through the journals and figuring out which comments are addressable and which are ignorable. It then got accepted at the fourth journal I tried, after an R&R.

    Reply
  8. grad fellow

    Grad candidate here. My first paper has almost been published. I believe my experience was quite good. It began as a writing sample when I was applying to PhD (unfortunately I wasn’t accepted in any of the places I applied to). One of my favorite things about it is the adverse conditions where it was conceived: it was written during a really hot period here where I live (thermal sensations were above 45°C for days or weeks and no AC due to the electric bill price) but it took less than a month to finish the paper. However, it was built from previous considerations I had came to in MA Thesis, although it was not extracted from it. I sent to my MA supervisor to receive some feedback and he was very positive about my work. For some many reasons I ended up leaving this sample unpublished and only sent it to a journal in 2024. It took some time to receive the feedback, but fortunately it was promptly accepted (my second favorite thing about it).
    As someone on similar grounds as OP, I suggest you to trust your instincts if you have dedicated some resonable time to the literature/debate and be humble/open to criticisms from your advisor as this feedback is the first filter your work will receive. Even if you disagree with some of the criticisms your advisor presents, try to grasp why he/she is coming to his/her conclusions. A less charitable reviewer could take it to be enough to reject or R&R your paper.

    Reply
  9. Wayne Fenske

    I submitted three dissertation chunks in the Fall semester of my first sessional job with two new preps in the Fall semester and three new preps in the Winter semester. Early in the Winter semester two of the three were rejected with no invitation to resubmit and extensive criticisms. I had no additional time or energy to work on those anyway. There was no word on the third submission, but I assumed – reasonably, I think – that it would be getting the same response. Finally, in May, I got a letter informing me that it was accepted for publication without revisions. Great!

    Reply
  10. V. Alan White

    This was back when dinosaurs ruled the earth–over 40 years ago–but maybe my experience will still be helpful. I published twice during my grad career, one while finishing my MA, the other while finishing my PhD. Both of these were replies to published pieces. Mostly it seemed that focusing on what someone else has missed or mis-argued made concentrating on writing to that end easier. Though this certainly won’t have the punch of original work, I do think it makes the probability of acceptance higher.

    Reply
  11. Shay Allen Logan

    Got drunk. Read a paper while drunk. It annoyed me and I sat down and wrote a response while drunk. Over the next week I fiddled with it, then forgot about it for a while. Later, drunk again, I submitted it on a whim. It was published in a top specialist journal not long later.

    Reply
  12. Mike Titelbaum

    Not sure my story can be replicated in any meaningful way, but it does emphasize the importance of faculty advice. I took a grad seminar on egalitarianism and wrote a paper about Rawls. The professor for the seminar thought that of the various ideas in there, one of them was worth further pursuing. A bit later we had a visiting faculty member who taught a seminar entirely about Rawls. I asked at the beginning if he’d be okay with my paper for that seminar developing the idea from my previous one. He agreed, so every reading we did that semester I pored through for how it would relate to my idea. The resulting paper was much better than the original version, but still got plenty of suggestions for improvement. That eventually became my first publication.

    Reply
  13. Michel

    It was hard, but I had an early success: I sent it to a top specialist journal, and it got an R&R. I then spent ages reading all the new (to me) literature mentioned in the R&R, maing sure I’d properly understood it, thinking through the implications for my (difficult and counterintuitive!) argument, and tweaking everything. Eventually it was accepted.
    I think the impression that it was so hard was mostly due to my general unfamiliarity with the literature (I’d read a lot, but so much less than I have now), and my unfamiliarity with the process and, thus, not having a good sense of what to prioritize/when to stop/etc.
    It was a few years before anything else got published, though. To be honest, I’m not really sure why; I think what I sent out was mostly good enough, though it certainly improved over time. But once the dam finally broke, there was a torrent of R&Rs and acceptances.
    Once I had a small pile under my belt, I think I shifted from mostly thinking the problem was with me/my paper to thinking that it was with R2. It may not be true, but it’s certainly better for my morale!

    Reply
  14. Trevor Hedberg

    My very first publication was a co-authored essay with a professor. We split the workload pretty evenly, but he provided a lot of guidance on how to frame the paper so it would appeal to reviewers and how to tackle reviewer comments later on. We got it published in the first venue we sent it to.
    My first solo publication was a seminar paper that I later presented at a conference and revised extensively over the subsequent year. While it was ultimately accepted at the first journal I sent it to, I went through 2 rounds of detailed revisions responding to reviewer comments. So the process from initial submission to acceptance still took almost 15 months.
    Future ventures into publishing things have usually been more complicated than these two initial forays did, so looking back, I’m grateful that I had some initial success — it made future experiences less demoralizing.

    Reply
  15. Charles Pigden

    As with V Alan White it has been a long time (38 years) since my first paper but my story is a bit more like that of Shay Allen Logan, minus the inebriation, and with a little, but only a little, more input from a senior colleague. My first paper had virtually nothing to do with my dissertation, except in the sense that in philosophy the principle of universal incest applies (everything is related to everything else). I was reading around on a non-AOS, non-AOC topic. I saw what seemed to me an obvious flaw in the argument of a much anthologised paper by two famous names, and wrote up my response. As with Shay, annoyance was a factor. It got my goat that such an obviously defective argument had gotten so much credit for so long. My Otago HOD, Alan Musgrave made a few helpful comments but he did not suggest any major changes and it only went through a couple of drafts. There was nothing like the line by line revision that others have suggested. However, I did get some really good advice about where to send it. My then-colleague, Roy Perret had an uncanny knack for telling where to send a paper to get it published. He would pass his hands over a manuscript and by some mystic process would be able tell you which journals would be likely to take it. I asked him if it was like chicken-sexing, an unanalysable skill. He said, mostly yes, but there was one guiding principle that could be clearly formulated: if you don’t like a journal, the journal is unlikely to like you. Conversely if you DO like a journal the journal is more likely to like you. I sent it to Inquiry and it was published straight away.

    Reply

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