Publishing your Education Studies work

“The work you are already doing matters. The dots you are trying to connect could have consequences outside in the world…Being represented in publishing your work is a social justice issue.” – TZB, March 2021

You have created new knowledge about education in your Ed Studies classes and as part of the capstone. The research, the stories, the ideas you tell deserve to be out in the world. Let’s talk about what it takes to get work published, and how you might think about a variety of different venues. None of these venues are likely to pay you for writing for publication – most academics are grateful to get their work published.

This document is a work in progress. Please email me to add your suggestions! MD

A note on your sources: If you do a project that is academic research, make sure that you have permission from your research subjects to publish your work. It’s always a good idea to notify participants that the work may be published. Depending on the approval you receive from the Yale IRB, you can decide to give someone a pseudonym. If they are hesitant, another option is to tell them that you will check quotes with them before publishing. It’s always good practice to share the published article with participants when it has been published.

Yale-Specific Venues

Pros: Publish quickly, relatively low barrier to publishing, audience of Yale students, you can link your work on a resume as part of your career search

Cons: May not reach a wider public audience. Since it’s easier to get published on campus, this publication may not have the authoritative impact of a journalistic publication or an academic journal article

Mainstream Journalism Venues

Pros: Wider readership than academic writing, can potentially have policy impact, can be great career visibility, faster than academic publication

Cons: If you’re interested in academic work in your future, an op-ed can help get your research out there, but it doesn’t “count” as an academic publication helping you towards grad admissions or further in your academic career.

1. Op Ed Projects guide to writing op eds and pitching: https://www.theopedproject.org/oped-basics
2. A guide on where to pitch: https://rethinkmedia.org/blog/millennial-guide-companion-where-pitch-your-op-ed

Some possible ed journalism sources:

  1. New York Times – Well and Family Sections, Op-ed (like winning the lottery) – eg. Serena Puang’s essay on Anaphasia written for Jane Karr’s Education Beat course.
  2. Atlantic
  3. Chalkbeat, online education journal with local ed reporting, pitch a first person story firstperson@chalkbeat.org
  4. Valerie Strauss, Answer Sheet blog, Washington Post – general focus pro teacher and public school, anti-ed reform, anti-charter, anti-testing
  5. Alexander Russo, The Grade, a blog on Phi Delta Kappan, interest in education journalism coverage more broadly
  6. Hechinger Report, covering inequality in education
  7. The 74 – features ed reporting across the spectrum, but generally prochoice and charter
  8. Medium – open venue for publishing, no review process, less reputable, but a good way to get your ideas out quickly
  9. Chronicle of Higher Education
  10. Other education blogs…

Academic Journals

Pros: Academic legitimacy ++ – useful for jobs, if you’re interested in applying to graduate school, ed policy, etc.

Cons: Process takes a long time, and often involves rejection and a lot of revision. Are you invested in spending the next 1-3 years working on this piece? Academic articles are often behind a paywall, leading to a small readership.

For academic journals, you may be asked to co-author with someone with a PhD. This is why co-authoring with your superv

Choosing an academic journal – consider

  1. What are the journals that you cite most commonly in your paper’s works cited?
  2. Check out their impact factor score – this gives you an idea of how widely read and cited each journal is. American Education Research Journal (AERJ) is one of the top education journals. It has an impact factor of 2.4. Education Researcher’s impact factor is 4. Comparative Education is 1.5.
  3. Pick the top 2 or 3 journals that you cite.
  4. Consider – What are the word count and citation formats of each journal?
  5. When did each journal last publish something on topics connected to your project? This helps to make a case that your work is in conversation with work the journal is publishing.
  6. What would be your top choice journal based on this information? 2nd and 3rd choice?
  7. Do you care about publishing in a top journal? Or are you happy to get it published academically? If it’s the latter, it might be worth aiming for a middle-tier journal.
  8. Who are the scholars who could be potential reviewers, based on who you cite?

Be on the lookout for scam journals that sound similar to legitimate journals and ask you to pay money to have your paper published.

Co-authoring capstone research with a Yale prof: For the collaboration between Lana Apple and Mira Debs published in Research in Comparative International Education (impact factor 0.8), we worked together to revise Lana’s Ed Studies capstone where Dr. Debs served as the mentor. Lana was the first author & Dr. Debs second.

With this process, Dr. Debs helped with a final edit of the paper after Lana did the first round of revisions to reduce the capstone to journal article length.

Dr. Debs served as the corresponding author with the journal, supporting and supervising subsequent rounds of revisions after reader reports back from journals, and helping draft letters to the editor and revision letters. In total, the revision and submission process took 9 months. This is REALLY fast for an academic journal submission.