A Practical Approach to Negotiating Authorship and Preparing Manuscripts for Publication

Abstract

The academic publishing process is fraught with challenges, inconsistencies, and the absence of clearly articulated guidelines and recommendations, particularly for doctoral students and other newcomers. Our goal is to overview key information that authors may consider and decisions they will need to make when determining authorship and preparing manuscripts for submission. Specifically, we discuss how authors can consider (a) the ongoing discussion of authorship, (b) identifying a target journal, and (c) submitting a manuscript for review. We draw influence from how processes are conducted relative to the Journal of Teaching in Physical Education in approaching our commentary as a point of reference. Nevertheless, while acknowledging differences in journal style and submission formats, many of the considerations discussed are relevant across publication outlets. Common threads across the discussion impress the importance of being intentional, proactive, and adaptive when engaging in authorship conversations and identifying target journals for submission.