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?