Publishing pedagogic research - choosing an outlet for writing

Conferences
If you are new to writing for publication then you might consider presenting your work at conference first. This has the benefit of allowing you to test the water and get feedback on your ideas. If you choose your conference carefully, you may also be able to write up your work in the Conference Proceedings. Many conferences now put proceedings online but print versions are often created following larger conferences.

Journals
General higher education journals
The more general HE journals will bring a larger readership to your work but you will need to be more careful about situating your work in a broader literature/framework. You will need to think about the language that you use in writing for a general audience. Because peer reviewing is seen as the gold standard, most publications will have some form of peer review but this will vary in the standards expected with the peer review journals i.e. the international academic journals being the most stringent (see section on impact). For an explanation of the peer review process, see the Authors' Newsletter (Page 3) by Taylor and Francis.

Newsletters and magazines: these will want a clear and accessible style and subject area which is relevant to a broad readership. They will publish a range of types of work including short articles, book reviews and opinion pieces.

Electronic-only journals: these have the advantage of a quick turn around time, meaning that the time from acceptance to publication is short. They are likely to have some form of peer reviewing.

University-based print journals: these journals are started up by a single institution or a group of institutions. It is worth looking at who is involved and how much success they have in attracting outside submission. They are also likely to have peer reviewing.

Peer-reviewed journals: these are the most prestigious and therefore obviously the most difficult to get into. These journals may be general or more specialised. The review process and time between acceptance and publication will be longer than other outlets (although some now have advanced publication online). They are more likely to have a focus on empirically-based articles.

Discipline-specific journals
Although the readership will not be as large as for the more general HE journals, you will be writing for a more specialised audience - your disciplinary colleagues. This will mean you can retain the detail of your discipline and situate your work within your subject.

HEA subject centres: the subject centres have a range of outlets for publication and some of them use payments to entice submissions. Depending on how active your discipline subject centre is, there will be opportunities to publish case studies, working papers, book/resource reviews, essays etc.

Peer-reviewed discipline journals: these are more prestigious than the subject centre publications. They will generally have a focus on empirically-based articles.