Writing a journal paper and getting it accepted by a journal can be a daunting process sometimes. Most of the students believe that it would be much easier if these papers had been published on any other channel. The modern channel would have been published much faster.
The overall process is daunting and time-consuming, but it is still worth it to write articles for academic journals. Writing research papers for peer-reviewed journals seems old-fashioned. For the students, it can feel very old-fashioned, as if they had to do something that needed to be done before there was the internet.
The reason is that the content written on blogs gets published faster and without much hassle. Also, platforms such as servers and websites make it easy to publish and to give access to the readers.
In fact, the students can even believe that there is no need to write and publish journal papers. There can be far more alternatives to writing a journal paper in order o communicate with peers.
Therefore, it is important to look critically at the different aspects of publishing journal papers. Here are some of the pros and cons that are associated with journal paper writing.
Pros of Writing the Journal Papers
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- High Quality: When a journal paper is submitted to a peer review journal, it is reviewed by the experts. These will be subject matter experts who will guide you to eliminate the weak points of your research paper. Thorough quality control will take place at this stage. When your paper is reviewed, it is made sure that it fulfils a certain level of academic quality and is good enough to get published.
- Quality Stamp: Once the research paper is reviewed by the experts, it is evident that it has a quality stamp. This also means that you have done extremely good work in this area. The students can use this quality label to testify to their work and qualifications and excellence in their work. Writing a journal paper also creates your identity in the field of research. When you publish multiple papers, it will increase your credibility in a specific area of research.
- You become a trustworthy source: When your research work gets published in a peer-reviewed journal, it is quite clear that your work’s quality is high enough that it passed an expert’s quality check. This also makes your work and research a trustworthy source. This adds a lot of value to your work and makes it a source that can be trusted for the quality of research.
- Career Development: Students who want to start their career in the field of academics, as a researcher or as a lecturer, should go for the task of research paper publishing. Published papers in peer-reviewed journals will make their journey simple, working as a steppingstone. When an individual publishes several papers in different journals, it helps them to build their reputation in the market.
- Grant Attraction: Candidates who want to advance their careers in the area of research might have to write applications in the different research councils to get the required funding for the research. When the students have a good record for publishing articles, it increases their chances of their bid getting accepted easily. A strong portfolio with research papers developed in a specific area will make it easy.
Cons of Writing the Journal Papers
Writing a journal paper might attract a lot of criticism from the outside and within academia. Here are some of the common points of criticism.
- Not Open to Everyone: When a paper is written and published in a journal, it is said to be an elite activity. Not all can do it, and only the best are able to make it to them. This also means that not everyone is able to make it to publishing a journal. The entire concept can contradict the idea that research is free and open to everyone.
- Lengthy and Expensive: Publishing research papers in journal articles can be expensive at times. Authors of the journals demand high fees. Also, it takes a lot of time to prepare the research papers. Additionally, it might take a lot of time to write a paper to get it published in a journal.
- Lower Quality: Researchers who are young might have a lot of pressure to publish a research paper at the initial stage of their career. Such individuals have quantity in mind as compared to quality. So, there are more papers that can be seen that have a considerably low quality than the others. One of the reasons behind it can be the pressure that comes from their institutes.
- Biasness in the Selection Process: In some cases, it is observed that the journals prefer to accept and publish works submitted by some people or across only some selected subjects. Also, it is observed that the paper selection process for journal publications is not always transparent. Sometimes it is difficult to understand a set of specific criteria that is followed by the journals in selecting the papers and creates confusion as to which paper will be accepted and which will not.
- Out-Dated Manner: Some people believe that writing research papers and getting them published in different journals is an old way of scientific communication. It is also said that this method has poor possibilities for interaction and comments between the writer and the people who read their work.
Now that both the negative as well as positive sides of writing a research paper have been discussed, it plays a significant role in developing a strong portfolio of a candidate who wants to grow in the area of research in the future.
So if you have not started writing journal articles yet, get started today. It is evident that the pros are more powerful than the cons, as we know that no system is perfect.