In graduate school, when I first heard the saying “publish or perish,” I remember it uttered as a dire warning: If you want to make it as a professor, you have to publish, publish, publish — and never stop, no matter what. It made publishing sound awful (at best, a miserable fate to be endured) and necessary.
Now, as an associate professor, it recently occurred to me that I don’t think that way anymore, and haven’t in a long while. I have come to think about “publish or perish” in an entirely new light. It doesn’t have to be a threat or a gloomy mandate to live or die under. It can actually be a spirited affirmation of a certain kind of academic life.
My first publications as a graduate student were a couple of book reviews. It felt good to see my writing out there — even in the modest format of a brief review of someone else’s more substantial work. Of course, when I sent out my first journal articles, I received terse rejections with blistering anonymous reader reports attached. But I kept at it and eventually found ways and places to get published.
Each publication seemed to lead to a new one — or at least the possibility of a new one. I also started my own blog: What is Literature. My blog posts are increasingly sparse these days, but I think the blog helped me get used to the practice of writing (and editing) short posts and essays that I could “publish.” I also used the blog as a place to post my conference papers and other written talks — things that never would have seen the light of day otherwise. And over the years I have culled posts from my blog for sections of my books.
I have benefited from the flourishing of online, interdisciplinary journals, sites, and magazines — and the wide audiences that can come along with those outlets. I had wonderful mentors who gave me publishing tips and encouraged me to send out my work. I’ve also been lucky to have my academic home at a university that does not police pretentious standards in terms of print versus online, top-tier versus so-called lower-tier journals. Not that I’m knocking scholarly journals with rich histories of gradually changing fields, or those cliquish edgy ones that come on the scene only to make important timely interventions. It’s just that there are so many great smaller venues now looking for good content, and if you’re not snooty, you can help those places by publishing recent work in an inviting, grateful atmosphere. You can also create a relationship that can result in future opportunities to publish more work.
Throughout my career so far, I can sincerely say that I have loved to publish. And by that I mean all the various processes and stages of publishing — writing and sending out my own essays, bringing book projects gradually to print, even helping other people to pitch ideas and get their work published.
Anyone who has worked on a book probably recalls that terrible feeling when you are so close to the project — to all the chapters, arguments, paragraphs, sentences, and words — that “the book” resembles a massive mound of mush in the brain, and it is inconceivable that it could ever exist as a simple bound thing that someone might read. But it can. What follows are my own thoughts on why we might embrace — rather than flinch at — the slogan of “publish or perish.” And they are reasons that go beyond matters of promotion or remuneration.
It feels good. At some point along the way in this profession, you were drawn to the idea of writing or documenting your work, right? Don’t forget that. It does feel good — even if the feeling is fleeting — to be able to send something you’ve published to friends, family members, and mentors, and say, “Look, I made this thing.”
If you are feeling low about your job, write something and send it out to be published. It may take three or 10 tries, but once the piece is published, you will experience a little relief. Your work is out there. You never know who will read it, but they won’t get the chance unless you get published.
It’s better than sitting in meetings. On a very practical level: Writing deadlines can get you out of meetings, and get you through many a long night. Once you have a publishing deadline, or even a sign of interest from an editor about an idea you’ve pitched, you have a concrete reason to opt out of bothersome extraneous duties or superfluous obligations.
I’m not saying that all committee work is a waste of time. Indeed, much of it ends up involving publishing, or the assessment thereof. But a publishing deadline is a rock-solid excuse for saying no to things that may otherwise become a mere time sink.
It fuels your teaching. When you publish new work, your students will be excited to learn about it. That may sound ridiculous and Pollyannaish, but I’ve seen it happen again and again.
A few years ago, when I suggested teaching an English seminar — based on my own research — about the environmental impact of airports, I’m sure some of my colleagues thought I was nuts. And to be fair, I wasn’t sure if any students would be interested. This was to be an English class, after all, not a course on urban development or human geography.
If you are feeling low about your job, write something and send it out to be published.
But my course filled up, and students seemed to legitimately love participating in my research. I revised the course and taught it again a year later, with similarly enthusiastic students. When my new book came out this past fall, I thanked those students by name in the acknowledgments section, and offered a copy to each of them. It was a thrill to see them turn up at my office over the course of the semester to pick up their copy. They were tickled to see their names in print; they, too, had tasted the elixir of being published.
I’ve seen the same phenomenon with my colleague Laura Murphy’s Modern Slavery Research Project. Students get involved with her research only to become quickly passionate about its aims, methods, and day-to-day activities as the academic work merges with public interest in urgent and tangible ways. Their energy and fervor is palpable, and spills over from and back into her classes.
Speaking of students, you can help them get published, too. If a particularly smart student is drawn to your field, offer to write a paper together. If a student submits an exceptionally savvy piece of writing, suggest an appropriate venue for publication, and help find the right contact person. Your efforts may not work out but you are teaching students how to take that first, daunting step in the publication process — clicking “send” on an email query to an editor. The payoff is even better when a student’s work that you’ve helped shepherd into existence is actually published. I’ve seen the excitement in their eyes when my colleague Mark Yakich helps students fine-tune their book reviews for publication in the New Orleans Review, our nearly 50-year-old literary journal.
It’s easier than ever to find publishing outlets. Publishing does not mean only in the top journal in your field, or with only your dream press. There are so many quality, dynamic venues for research, creative work, and public intellectual engagement. There is simply no excuse for not sending out your work, to see what receptive audiences are there for it.
That doesn’t mean groveling for attention, or worse, paying to be published. You don’t have to respond to every cryptically worded “call for papers” that flits across your inbox, or send something to every start-up journal or publisher that invites you to contribute. It only takes a little homework to see whether a journal or press is lively and viable — or whether you would be sequestering your writing behind a thick paywall or to a place of dubious sustainability.
It’s just another way to communicate. Publishing is a way of externalizing a job that can feel all too internal or insulated. Teaching can feel very isolating because a lot of the prep work, grading, and decompressing are done in relative solitude. And student appreciation (much less the respect of colleagues) can seem minimal at best — and crushingly so as that feeling accumulates over the years.
Publishing becomes a way of connecting with a broad network of readers, colleagues, and students you will never meet, but who read your work and are influenced, piqued, or inspired by your writing. Publishing means building a community of writers, editors, and venues that are dedicated to scholarly work — indeed, to your scholarly work, however esoteric, traditional, or experimental it may be.
It means not perishing. Publishing may not be something to live for, but it can at least remind you that you’re alive. It’s something to live with. Publishing is what it means to be truly alive as an academic. It need not be an existential menace, and it might even be a source of energy and engagement.
Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not saying that writing is easy. It’s hard. It’s always a challenge to sit down and put in writing something that is coherent, clear, and persuasive. Life inevitably gets in the way. You try various methods — none of them seem to work, or not for long. Writing happens in spurts, or seems to resist you like a stubborn child.
To advocate publishing is not to mitigate the difficulty of writing. What I am trying to do here is to dispel the murkiness of the publishing process, to clear the desk of that particular worry so that writing — be it scholarly, creative, or scientific — might actually take place and lead to you getting published.
