My Asexuality Paper Dilemma: To Self-Publish or To Seek Publication Via a Journal

[alee_grrl]

This past semester I wrote an article on asexuality. It is both an academic research paper and a deeply personal essay. There are not many articles like it available and I think it would be helpful and interesting to others and would like to share it. I've been seriously struggling with the best way to share it though.

It contains enough legal analysis that I could submit it to a law review journal, like Tulane's Law and Sexuality Journal, or another academic journal focusing on similar research topics. Being published by an academic journal shows that the work has achieved some measure of peer review and provides some standing, but it also severely limits the audience. Many journals are only available through libraries, or subscription based archives (e.g. JSTOR, Hein Online).

My other thought is to self-publish and make the article available online in pdf and/or e-book formats. This would make the article available to a wider audience, but might affect the credibility.

I am more than a little nervous about publishing this paper regardless of publication format. I include a lot of personal reflection and history, which, as my professor pointed out, makes the paper more powerful and compelling. It is more than a trifle frightening to put such frank and honest discussion of personal issues out there under my own name, and yet I feel that it should be published under my own name and not a pseudonym. One of the main points of the paper is the importance of visibility, and using a pseudonym to publish the paper takes a bit of power out of that argument. I also have to decide if I want to promote the paper via this blog and other dreamwidth communities like asexuality. I already have an established presence and circle, many of whom have expressed interest in the paper. However, that would very clearly tie my real world identity to my blog. To be honest, the two are not all that disconnected or blurred, but it is a bit scary to give up that last little illusion of anonymity.

The paper was twice reviewed for content, grammar and structure by my professor, and there are a few small edits that I would like to do before publishing. However I would not mind some additional betaing and feedback. You do not need to be familiar with Bluebook citations (standard US legal citation format) as I am less worried about the citation formats than the overall content and spelling/grammar.

If you are interested in providing general feedback (general thoughts on content, flow, etc), editorial feedback (more specific feedback regarding grammar/spelling), or cheerleading purposes (feedback on whether or not it should be published) please PM me with an email address so that I can send you a .pdf of the article (or an alternate format like .doc).

Also please feel free to comment with your thought/suggestions regarding publication options.

Comments

[jelazakazone]

How long is the paper and when would you need the feedback by? I would be very interested in reading and giving feedback, but cannot do it until September.

Also, I feel you on giving up the anonymity. That is a really hard issue.

[alee_grrl]

It is 35 pages. Though the first two are table of contents. It has waited this long, waiting a little longer is not a problem. I just want to get the ball rolling as I think it is a pertinent and useful paper to put out there. Let me know and I can send it along, you are free to read it at your own pace/time. :) Thank you for your offer of help and for your support and encouragement.

[jelazakazone]

Ok, send it along! I'll see if I can understand it:D

[peoppenheimer]

I'd be happy to have a look, depending on your timetable. If you need editorial feedback, copyediting feedback, or any other response very soon, I probably won't be able to do it. But if you can wait a while, I'd be happy to see whether I have anything useful to say. I'll PM you an email address.

Regarding the power of the piece and your concerns about public self-revelation, we're all here to listen as you think and feel your way through the decision.

Regarding self-publishing versus publishing in an academic journal, unless there are issues I'm failing to see, I don't see a conflict. My strictly academic papers are self-published on my website and/or the website(s) of my collaborator(s), usually while they are in the review process, or even before that, while they are in revision. My collaborators and I, whenever possible, do not grant exclusive rights to other publishers. Of course they have exclusive rights to the print version they print, and to whatever online version they put up on their websites (usually behind a paywall). But that doesn't mean I can't have the version my collaborators and I typeset up on our websites. You can also use archival sites such as arXiv (although I haven't checked whether there's a category there for legal or gender studies - probably not), academia.edu, PhilPapers, etc. You could put it in a GitHub repository, or on SciGit. So, in short, you can put it up on your own web hosting, or on a variety of public repositories. You do not need to give up your right to publish your own work. Now maybe this is all different with law journals. I wouldn't know. But for most of the work I've published, my co-authors and I have been able to retain enough of the rights to our own work that the rights we've granted to our publishers have not been a problem. I'd be happy to discuss this in more detail privately if that would be of any use to you.

Please permit me to say that I send you every encouragement, and thank you for being willing and able to combine the deeply personal and the academically rigorous in a single project. I'm very much looking forward to reading the piece, even though I am nothing of a legal scholar.

[alee_grrl]

Thank you for your response. It was very helpful! The legal academic world is a bit odd at times, like the legal world in general, but I think that you are right and I might be able to do both. Need to look into that and read the fine print at the submissions sites for the journals I was considering.

While I would like to get it up relatively soon (which in my head means sometime in the next six to eight months versus sometime in the next year/year and a half), the timetable is flexible. The paper is a blend of social science research, legal studies, QUILTBAG theory and history, and personal reflection. It is truly interdisciplinary. I could not get at the legal issues without first explaining and exploring what asexuality is (and what it isn't). At some point down the road it may turn into a book. But that will have to wait. :)

[shanaqui]

I'm interested, and I should be able to manage all types of feedback! PDF or .doc would work: email thebrightspark[at]gmail[dot]com.

[alee_grrl]

Excellent! Thank you! Email will be on its way shortly.