Figuring Out Publication as an Undergraduate, and the Years After

A journal article I wrote during my undergraduate years was accepted by a Q1 journal in anthropology. During the last year of my undergraduate studies, a professor who had mentored me pushed me into the quest for publication, for which I am grateful. For many months, I attributed that publication largely to luck and to the fact that I had chosen a topic that happened to attract wider scholarly and public interest at the time. Now that I am working toward publication again, however, I have been thinking about that experience more carefully. In the years since, I have reflected often on what worked, what did not, and what I would approach differently now. In this article, I go through some of these reflections. While some of this explains what I felt "worked for me" back then, the other advice has more to do with what I hope to change in my approach as a master's student approaching a second round of journal applications and rejections. This article explores several aspects of the publication process, including choosing a topic, selecting the right journal, approaching data collection and theoretical frameworks, and some of the broader lessons I have learned over the past few years. Choosing a topic: the midpoint of what the academic world is interested in, and what you care about When I talked to my mentors about attempting to get published, or, as was more the case, was instructed by one of them to embark on this journey, I was often given different types of advice which contradicted one another. There was the "You should focus on what academia wants" strain of guidance, embedded in the idea that my topic of choice should have "universal appeal," which is at times equated with Western academia when you are a scholar in the "Global South". I was also told to pursue purely what I wanted, and that if I was passionate enough, something would come out of it. There are ways in which both threads of advice can be problematised. I did not want to write something solely for the intention of getting published, but also knew my contribution had to exist within current academic debates and interests. As a younger academic, I had to give in to certain expectations to some extent, since my work did not yet carry the kind of inherent value that comes with years of academic training and recognition, which I lacked at the time. So, I ended up coming to a midpoint of both. I realised I could focus on a topic that was "popular" back when I started my research, the Rohingya refugee crisis, but approach it through my research interests and subtopics I cared about. I always found resource- and land-related conflicts interesting, as I was always curious as to how it can transform rural social networks and inter-group relations. It also bothered me how strongly these issues were shaped by rural elites, and how much they can benefit during moments of crisis while other groups face extreme forms of loss. I felt that creating a monolith of the Bangladeshi rural/ peasant classes regarding the Rohingya refugee crisis and the problems associated with it was a disservice to those affected and suffering. I love plants, gardening, and bird watching. I enjoyed doing fieldwork where I was surrounded by trees, slopes, and birds you never see in urban Dhaka. I took all of this together and explored how deforestation associated with the Rohingya crisis affected intergroup relations and class-based dynamics in Teknaf, which ended up being both within the range of my interests and that of "the western academic world" at that specific time. I think it is important to balance both because there is a high chance you will probably be working on this paper for at least a year, if not more, so there has to be some connection you build with it over time - be it based on your research interests, the things you love, or community issues that bother you or one you are invested in. What other disciplines wanted from me, and the importance of smaller steps Over the last two years, I noticed that many of the citations my work received came from outside of anthropology and the social sciences as a whole. A lot of researchers seemed to use my work as the “social justification” for their purely ecological or environmental research. A slightly smaller number engaged more deeply with the main argument of the article or tried to empirically build on the ideas I raised qualitatively. This made me realise that working on interdisciplinary topics can potentially help your chances of getting cited or published since research that connects anthropological or sociological questions to fields like ecology, environmental studies, or economics may attract a wider audience base. While at first I hoped for more direct engagement with the arguments I was making, it was rewarding on its own to contribute to other disciplines, especially ones which took a more pragmatic approach to the issues I discussed. It is also easier, especially when starting, to aim for this kind of connection: one that engages with different subdisciplines at a more modest, even introductory level, or takes small steps toward contributing to well-established debates, rather than attempting to make grand theoretical interventions or going into the deep depths of trans-disciplinary work. While “grand” contributions can feel more feasible earlier on, as I sometimes assumed during my undergraduate years, pursuing my master’s made me realise how difficult they truly are. It also helped me see that my earlier attempts at such contributions often came across as forced, superficial, and generally inexperienced. It helps to know what your limits may be with your level of training, and to attempt to make contributions accordingly. Picking the right journal The publication process usually becomes a lot easier when you find the right journal. Quite a few factors go into this usually. How do they approach analysis? What kind of topics do they gravitate towards within the subfield of their specialisation? Are they selective about which regions they focus on? Do they prefer quantitative, more purely empirical work than yours? Qualitative work that gives you more space for your own interpretations? Or mixed methods? To figure this out, it is important to go through some of their already published articles to see how your work can "fit" into their broader scope of publication trends. Websites like Schimago can help here too. When I was preparing the submission that eventually became successful, I tried to study the structure and flow of articles the journal had previously accepted, so that my own article would feel familiar to the editor and reviewers. I also noticed that the journal’s writing style and expectations regarding the balance between quantitative and qualitative data were similar to my own approach. Most journals tend to follow a recognisable structure, which becomes clearer after reading a few articles: what components are expected, how they fit together, and how the analytical approach is presented. Some journals may even be specific about the descriptive or narrative voice of the article. If you are aiming for a more selective journal, it helps to review how the journal has handled debates around your specific topic in previous articles, and to look at the work of academics who have covered similar areas. This can help you see how your contribution sits in relation to existing work and established debates within the journal of your choice, and whether some of those articles should be brought into your analysis or used to contextualise your argument. With more selective journals, it helps to make sure you are working within existing conversations that have to do with your topic — be it by building on what has already been said, or contradicting slightly — rather than writing out of “context”. Some things do leave your realm of control As a younger academic, one thing you may not have as much control over is your voice. The political tone of your paper, the approach you take in presenting your ideas, and even your viewpoints are often edited out or required to be changed by peer reviewers. It can also be difficult to stand your ground early in your career, as you may feel that even if they change things a bit, a publication is still a publication. While these changes can sometimes be subtle, at other times you may be asked to add "angles" or theories you do not necessarily agree with. I am glad that the journal I was published in did not push too heavily to change my approach, but this is often not the case for others. This is why it is important to send your work to journals whose political views and values align with yours, and those which take similar approaches to the topics you are interested in working on. However, no matter how careful you are, sometimes your voice does get changed in the publication process, which can be underwhelming. Avoiding theory bias Sometimes, it can be easy to rely too heavily on theories developed in Western academic contexts when analysing Bangladeshi social problems. This can unintentionally turn the field site into a testing ground for theories developed elsewhere, including in regions that may not fully speak to the specific histories, social relations, or political conditions of the context being studied. Instead of beginning only with the question of how your field site fits into an existing theory developed elsewhere, it can be more useful to ask what patterns, tensions, or phenomena your own work reveals within the specific context of your study. This does not mean that broader theory is not important - as I said before, it does help to contribute within the existing realm of debates and conversations. Rather, the point is to avoid using theory in a way that flattens the complexity of your own case. It helps to ask how your work adds to broader academic conversations and debates, instead of simply adding another layer of nuance to theories already created elsewhere. What does your case allow us to see differently? What assumptions in the existing literature does it challenge or complicate due to the nuances of the lived social reality in Bangladesh? In these cases, it also helps to focus more closely on what your respondents have to say, and to let “theory” and academic semantics take a back seat, especially during initial interviews and data collection. This approach can help you find novelty much quicker, because theoretical bias can cloud and limit how you approach your data. If you enter the field too committed to proving or expanding a theory, you may miss the actual novelties of your case and how those who live through the phenomenon you’re analysing articulate it. The importance of picking the right "regional" cluster during analysis My subfield at the moment, broadly, can be called critical agrarian studies. Some of the themes I regularly engage with have to do with land grabs, mega projects, neo liberal intervention, elite capture, the state, gender and social reproduction, ethno-religious conflict, corruption and violence. Depending on the theme I am focusing on, there are often regions, both within South Asia and the broader "Global South," where there are similarities in how these social processes and phenomena unfold. It helps to focus on scholars working on these regions, or on work produced in similar contexts, when trying to formulate your literature review or analytical framework. For example, in my own work, I found far more relevant theoretical material for analysing my findings when I focused on South Asia and parts of Africa with similar colonial histories of divide and rule, especially when trying to understand issues related to the commons, mega-projects, development agendas, and group conflict. If I were to rely mainly on theories developed in regions with very different histories, such as North America, they might be less relevant to my work and could leave my contribution ungrounded in its actual socio-historical context. On the other hand, when I tried to understand the role of gender in the agrarian political economy, I broadened the regional cluster a bit more to the east, including Southeast Asia as a part of my "regional" cluster. Key Takeaways A useful starting point is to choose a topic that sits between what you genuinely care about and what the academic world is already interested in. Choosing the right journal also matters: reading its published articles can help you understand its structure, tone, methods, and analytical style. It also helps to situate your work within the broader arguments in the journal of your choice. Early on, smaller and more grounded contributions are often stronger than broad theoretical claims that are not yet fully developed. Most of the time we may not have the training needed as an undergraduate to aim for something grand - and that is totally fine, expected even! Choosing the right regional cluster for analysis means grounding your analysis in literature from places with comparable histories and social processes, rather than relying only on theories developed from contexts that may not fully speak to your case. Finally, strong research uses the case itself to refine, question, or redirect existing theory, a process that is often easiest when participants’ voices are favoured over existing theories that may restrict how you approach the field.