Rifenburgs Guide to Undergraduate Publishing

Overview
You are about to do something with your writing that all writers should do but is
absolutely terrifyingsubmit it to an editor. But rest assured: writing is meant to
be read by others, to be considered, to be critiqued, to be scrutinized. This is
writing.
Keep in mind that the publishing process is not easy. The majority of the essays
received by a journal are rejected. The big journals in my field have an acceptance
rate of around 15%. But you have something worth sharing and some solid ideas.
If one journal says no, another will say yes. I see this process happen all the
time.
Journal Options
I am aware of three journals publishing undergraduate work:

Queen City Writers: at the University of Cincinnati

Young Scholars in Writing: at the University of Missouri, Kansas City

Papers and Pubs: at the University of North Georgia

QCW accepts papers on a rolling basis (i.e., throughout the year).

YSW and P&P only accept papers during a specific time of the year.
Check out the websites and look under Submissions or Submissions
Guidelines for more information.
How is a Submitted Essays Different than a Class Essay?
What you are sending to an editor of a journal should be much different than
what to send to a teacher. An editor is an editor; your teacher is your teacher. The
editors job is to select essays that contributes meaningfully to an important
ongoing conversation and a conversation that readers of the journal will find
interesting. A teachers job is to point out how your writing can improve and then
assign a grade.
What you write for your teacher is in response to a very specific assignment and
certain restraints (e.g., page length, number of sources, due date). When looking
over the essay you want to submit for possible publication, think about what you
added in your essay just because the teacher told you to. For example, I
sometimes require 3 footnotes, section heads, and two images when I teach
Intermediate Composition. But an editor? An editor really only wants a certain
length and a topic that is of interest to the readers.

Delete parts of your writing that you only added because the teacher made you.
Your audience is no longer your teacher; your audience is readers of this journal.
Formatting Your Essay
Submitting an essay for publication is different than submitting your essay for a
teacher.
When you submit for publication, you will not have any contact information on
your essay.
Format your essay accordingly:
Shortened Version of Title 1
Title
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Emailing Submission to the Editor
All journals have editors. Usually this is one or two people who are professors at a
university. The editors job is to get people to review submitted essays and to
decided, based on the reviewers feedback, which essays to publish and which
ones to reject. You will only talk with the editornever the reviewers.
Before you submit, spend time reading and rereading the submission guidelines
on the journals website. Make sure you know what the maximum word count or
page length is, make sure you know if they require APA or MLA.
Also, spend some time looking over their previous issues if these are avaible on
their website. Browsing through the back issues (sometimes called Archives)
will give you a great sense of what the journal is interested in publishing.
Once you have formatted your essay accordingly (see section in this Guide to
formatting), you are ready to email your essay to the editor.
When emailing your submission to the editor, follow this template:
Professor X,
Please find attached to this email, my manuscript Title.
I have followed the submission guidelines on your website, and this essay
is not under consideration elsewhere.

Please let me know if you have trouble downloading my materials.

Best,
Name
Be sure to attach your essay as a word doc, either .doc or .docx. Do not have your
name anywhere on your attached document.
Finally, some undergraduate journals ask that your professor, or whoever teaches
the class in which you wrote your essay, send an email saying Student X wrote
this paper in my X class during X semester, etc. If this is needed, be sure to
communicate with your professor.
Timeline
Patience is key here. Editors get back to you much slower than teachers. You may
receive a quick email telling you your submission has been received. But most of
the time, you may have to wait more than 5 weeks to hear anything. I have waited
as long as 4 months before I heard anything.
How an Editor Responses
When an editor of a journal responses to you, they respond usually in one of
three ways:

Acceptance
Rejection
Revise and Resubmit

The first two make sense, so lets look at the third. When you submit, the editor of
the journal sends on your essaywith your name and contact information
removedto two reviewers from around the country. These reviewers look over
your essay decide on: acceptance, rejection, or revise and resubmit. R&R means
that the reviewers kinda like your piece but want you to consider making some
changes. These suggested changes are sent to you and you do what you want with
them.
If you get an R&R, be proud. You are halfway there. The challenging thing now is
to look over the comments and return to your writing with gusto. Oftentimes an
editor asks that you include a page indicating what changes you made to your
essay based on the reviewers feedback. Be as detailed as possible in this page and
be sure to address all the feedback you received.
Finally, let me know how I can help during the process.