Publishing an academic paper



A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.

As a student, you may be required to research and prepare an academic paper. An academic paper is the output of scholarly research work that is usually published in an academic journal after peer review.

Courses at the post-graduate level which incorporate an academic paper as part of the assessment requirements would normally require a paper of "publishable standard" to be produced. This means that your research paper will need to meet the generally accepted standards for academic publishing. Some courses may take this a step further by specifying the requirement for your paper to be accepted for publication in a peer reviewed journal.

Preparing your first academic paper can be a daunting task in the absence of first-hand experience in academic publishing. A good place to start is to identify a peer-reviewed journal and to study the submission requirements. This resource is based on the the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, a peer-reviewed open access journal in the field of open distance learning to help you get started. We thought it would be a good idea to ask an experienced journal editor to offer a few thoughts on guiding new researchers in preparing an academic paper.