Peer review. As an Honours undergraduate I undertook it when I co-wrote a couple of psychology papers and submitted them to some senior journals for possible publication.
It was scary.
I’d just finished four years of study, earned ‘okay’ marks but not high enough marks to get me into a Masters programme, had formed a love relationship with one of my first-year lecturers and her one-year-old son. Lynne was a lecturer and an organisational psychologist, and together we consulted to corporate managers on how to increase productivity and satisfaction among their staff.
We ran workshops, lectures, presentations, wrote reports and pushed Microsoft Word and Publisher beyond their limits.
When it came to writing the corporate reports, I was happy to take that duty on, and Lynne provided the statistical material. When it came to the academic publications, Lynne took on the lead role of writing, because although I had been trained to write essays in an academic style, I was nowhere near proficient enough to even dream of approaching a formal academic journal, let alone a prestigious one. And the journal we approached was certainly top-tier.
Months passed, and we eventually received great feedback from three anonymous reviewers. Some changes in style and the writing shape of the ‘Methods’ section (mostly requesting clarification) were suggested. Reshape the article we did, and on resubmission we were fortunate enough to have our paper accepted. Six months later we received a print copy of the journal edition it appeared in. We were both ecstatic (Millward and Hopkins).
Submitting your precious ‘baby’ to someone else who might not recognise nor understand what it is you are hoping to communicate and hoping to achieve is nerve-wracking. We had to swallow our pride when it came bouncing back to us with suggestions, recommendations and ‘must haves’.
My only other academic submission was for a conference in Melbourne, written when I was researching for a PhD at UniSA (Hopkins). It required no feedback from the organisers, but my doctorate supervisor cast her eye over it and made a few suggestions before I sent it off. Since I already had a good working relationship with her, I had no fear that the comments she might make would break my spirit and crush me. The opposite of my feelings when submitting the psychology paper to the journal.
Did I survive? Absolutely. Would I do it all again? Absolutely. Peer review is good for you—for your knowledge, for your experience, for your courage, for your resilience…
Just do it.
Hopkins, L.J. “3d Virtual Environments: Businesses Are Ready but Are Our ‘Digital Natives’ Prepared for the Changing Landscape?” 25th Annual ASCILITE Conference, 2008.
Millward, L.J. and L.J. Hopkins. “Psychological Contracts, Organizational and Job Commitment.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology, vol. 28, no. 16, 1998, pp. 1530-56.