Friday, September 28, 2007

Ask GWP...

So as promised, I'm occasionally posting readers' questions (and my answers!) about the intersections of feminist blogging, scholarship, and journalism here.

Q: I've been working on an essay I'm thinking about posting, but it's also one that I want to try and get published once I've had a chance to do some more research and polishing. In your experience, does publishing a portion or draft of a piece on a blog make it difficult to get that piece published in a scholarly journal later on?

GWP: I sometimes use blogging as a way to think through ideas I am writing about for publication elsewhere. More often, I'll do a post around links that I want to return to and mull over for a piece I'm working on. But here's the thing: When I rework an idea I've blogged about for the purposes of publication (ie, the non-blog variety), I will word the idea very differently. My blog voice is much more off-the-cuff and this-just-in sounding than anything I would write for a magazine or journal. Scholarly journals, like magazines, generally want proprietary content. But that doesn't mean that you can't do a post around an idea that's part of an article you are submitting elsewhere. I would argue against posting a large portion (ie more than 500 words) of something you will repurpose verbatim -- both because the publication may not favor that and because you don't want to be plagarized before you've published in the journal. But if you do decide to post a portion, I suggest being up front about it when you submit the article to the journal. Does anyone have additional thoughts, or experiences around this issue to share?

2 comments:

Girl Sailor said...

Deborah, thanks so much for what you do. You're such an inspiration to aspiring feminist scholars like myself!

Deborah Siegel said...

Aw, you flatter me Girl Sailor. YOU are an inspiration. I am so enjoying your blog. Yours is a voice seldom heard. Let me know how I can continue to be helpful.