3 P's of Publishing = Professorship--Keep Pushing On!

My son and I are on a trip in California from San Fransisco to Monterey to LA to Long Beach to San Diego. We visited the summer of love (1967) scene in San Fran yesterday when walking around Haight and Ashbury streets. What a great even that was. I will try to post some pictures in my FLICKR account when we return from the Pipe Dreams shop we stopped by. Currently, we are in Monterey. We heard REO Speedwagon's rock classic from the 1970s called "Keep Pushing" while driving into town from San Fran. This reminded me to post my 3 P's of publishing advice (for new professors) that I shared with a former student last week.

Keep 3 “”P’s” in mind:

1. Persistence: to get published, you have to keep making revisions that the editors want and detail what you did or find a new journal. Last week, Dr. Yun Jeong Park and I got wonderful reviews on a paper on Macromedia Breeze (now Adobe Connect Pro) which was rejected 2 times previously. But we did not give up. Since I decided to persist on all articles about 10-12 years ago, most, if not all, papers have been published.

2. Patience: to be published, one also needs some patience. (Note that I have a paper that took my 8 years to publish in the Journal of Accounting Education. It sat on the editor's desk for 3 years on 2 separate occassions. Many book chapters can take years to get out. Most of my stuff is publishing faster today than before since I know how to tweak the system a bit and which journals move quicker. But sometimes patience is needed—Vanessa Dennen and I just had a book chapter for Badrul Khan’s Flexible Learning book that took 4 years to come out. And now the publisher wants to publish it in another book. Our patience led to this appearing twice in print.

3. Push
a. push-out: try to get as much out as possible as more is more;
b. push back: know when to take a paper back and submit elsewhere (when the review process is dragging on and on)
c. push-on: move on when you sense you are at a deadend or the work is too extensive for the writing benefits.

Of the 3, push is important daily, though persistence may be slightly more important. If you persist, anything can be published (if it is unique or original in some way). Strive for something unique or original in each article. I always ask myself that before submitting for publication.

These lead to the 4th “P” of Publication and the 5th “P” of Professorhood.

And, no matter what, Keep Pushing, Keep Pushing, Keep Pushing On!!!
The internal person in your head will help you to push on! Push and you will succees. Good luck.


More REO Lyrics here: http://www.19.5degs.com/lyrics/Keep%20Pushin

Goin through all the changes i made so many mistakes, oh yes i did
Tryin to leave behind the heartaches
And sometimes i think i was a little bit crazy, oh yeah
Whoa, i keep pushin on

Keep pushin, keep pushin, keep pushin, keep pushin on

Keep pushin, keep pushin, you know you have got to be so strong
Keep pushin, keep pushin, well even if you think your strength is gone
Keep pushin on