Professor Peter Gilroy
Interviewed by R Grayling
Peter Gilroy is currently the Director of Research & Development at the Manchester Metropolitan University. He has written many books and papers in the area of continued professional development and has research interests in the general areas of philosophy and education.
Professor Gilroy presented us with a large amount of information covering subjects such as preparing research papers, refereeing procedures and policies and rejection/acceptance letters. I have tried to distil this down into bite size chunks. [RG]
What is the most important advice you give your students when it comes to getting their work published?
"I'm running a session tomorrow (yes, Saturday!) in Manchester for the university's post-graduate research students, who all need to publish in order to develop their academic career (the usual line I give them is that for an academic the rule is 'Publish or die').
I'm giving them a pack of materials and will talk them through what's involved. I start with the general stuff on WHY they need to publish in academic journals, then move on to the more specific HOW (basically tips and tricks).
I then explain that they have to get through the double-blind refereeing system and that any high ranking journal will have a very high proportion of rejections (my own international journal rejected 94.6% of first submissions in 2005/06, and that is about the norm for such journals, so our editorial board was told by our publisher, Taylor Francis Routledge, perhaps the biggest academic journal publisher in the world).
One tip is to make sure they follow the instructions that the journal/publisher gives them - to the letter. To check this I give them my journal's instructions and a test.
So then I go on to how to cope with rejection which, given that percentage, everyone tastes and I give them the worst rejection letter I know of as well as the set of standard letters we use."
So Peter, basically you are saying that, in order to have your work taken seriously (whatever field you are trying to get published in), you must follow the submission instructions to the letter to get your foot in the door. Do you have any advice on the actual content?
"As with writing generally, there are different ways of approaching writing an article. There may be something you want to write about – do it then consider the journal/magazine/field, or, research a particular journal that you use a lot and try and link in to the current debates in the journal.
1. Study back issues of a particular publication you are interested in
2. Look for papers which are related to your topic and in your paper/piece either:
i. confirm something which you’ve read
ii. extend or take forward a particular argument which has already been made previously
iii. critique something
iv. argue that a particular angle or point has not been raised in the literature so far.
Don’t forget to reference articles which have appeared in previous journal issues.
It is important to follow the guidelines for presenting the article – these vary."
Lastly, do you have any particular method of writing?
"Yes, I have a discipline for writing:
THE DISCIPLINE OF WRITING
_________________
Set deadlines.
Write regularly.
Create a rhythm of work.
Write up a minimum number of words per writing session.
Stop writing at a point where it is easy to resume writing.
Leave time for revisions.
Use a word-processor (for data, for references and for writing).
Publicise your plans
And, do you think that 'sticking at it' and producing volumes of work is the way to eventually succeed?
"I think that what you say at the end of your e-mail is spot on - you just have to keep going and that allows you to keep improving. I've probably told you that I've published a lot of academic journal papers and
four academic books. In every case I've thought it's probably the nearest a man can get to a woman's experience of pregnancy - the long drawn out gestation and then once the material is finished/born the huge feeling of relief and the promise never to do it again, followed by the protective feeling you have when people start to criticize what you've produced - and then somehow it all starts up again!!"
Once again Peter, many thanks for your help - from all of us.
Recent Publications
As Professor Gilroy is continually publishing papers, we have listed just a few of the recent ones below.
Gilroy P., Edwards A. and Hartley D. (2002) Rethinking Teacher Education: collaborative responses to uncertainty. Routledge/Falmer
Gilroy P., Garratt D., Saxon D. and Cairns C. (2002) Are FE and HE staff ICT competent? A report from the tRISSt research project. in Banks S., Goodyear P., Hodgson V. & McConnell D. (eds) Networked Learning 2002 pp378-384
Gilroy P., Long P., Rangecroft M.& Tricker T. (2001) Quality evaluation and the invisible student: theories, practice and problems in evaluating distance education provision. Quality Assurance in Education 9 (1) pp14-22
Gilroy P., Long P., Rangecroft M.& Tricker T. (2001) Evaluating distance education courses: the student perception. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 26 (2) pp165-177
Gilroy P. (1999) How to destroy university-based teacher education. in Graham J. (ed) Teacher Professionalism and the Challenge of Change pp 7-21 Trentham Books, London
Gilroy P. (1999) Education's Aims: essentially contested or relatively sound? in Marples R. (ed) The Aims of Education pp 24-33 Routledge, London
Gilroy P. (1999) Towards a theory of teaching in Higher Education. The Bulletin of the UK-Japan Education Forum number 3 pp 72-84
Gilroy P. (1999) The future of teacher education in England and Wales', The Bulletin of the UK-Japan Education Forum number 3 pp 7-22
Gilroy P. (1999) Inspecting the inspection of teacher education in England and Wales. The Journal of Education for Teaching 25 (3) pp 215-219
Gilroy P., Long P., Rangecroft M.& Tricker T. (1999) Measuring the satisfaction gap: education in the market place. The Journal of Total Quality Management 10 (4 & 5) pp 773-778
Gilroy P., Long P., Rangecroft M.& Tricker T. (1999) The evaluation of course quality through a service template. Journal of Evaluation 5 (1) pp 80-91
Gilroy P., Long P., Rangecroft M.& Tricker T. (1999) What is important to distance education students? Open Learning 14 (1) pp 17-24