Cara Jordan // Robin Veder // Preparing Your Journal Article for Submission

CAA Conversations

How can authors improve their chances for publication in academic journals? In this podcast, editors Cara Jordan and Robin Veder approach the topic with empathy for all who are navigating what can be an unnecessarily mysterious and intimidating process. We share strategies for how to prepare your manuscript for the best possible outcome, including how to select the right venue for your article; what you can do to ensure that journal editors and peer reviewers focus on your ideas; and what to expect in editorial relationships. Among other resources for pre-submission feedback, we discuss offerings from the Flatpage editorial agency and the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Toward Equity in Publishing professional development program, which aims to remediate the inequitable conditions that precede and impede publication. Upcoming deadlines are September 15, 2022, and March 15, 2023. To apply, click here: https://americanart.si.edu/research/toward-equity-publishing. Cara Jordan received her PhD in art history from the Graduate Center, CUNY, and is currently the president and chief editor at Flatpage, an editorial agency and publishing house based in Washington, DC. With a roster of academic editors with PhDs (many in art history) and varying expertise, Flatpage offers manuscript evaluation and editing, as well as job application assistance, book proposal critique, and other forms of writing support for authors of all backgrounds and levels. Cara has seen many sides of the academic journal publishing industry: as an author, a managing editor of a journal, and as a freelance developmental and copy editor. Robin Veder is the executive editor of American Art, the peer-reviewed journal co-published by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and University of Chicago Press, and founder of the journal’s Toward Equity in Publishing program. Before joining the journal in 2017, Veder was a tenured associate professor of humanities, art history, and visual culture at Penn State Harrisburg. She is a cultural historian whose publications include a study of kinaesthetic modernism in early twentieth-century US art—The Living Line: Modern Art and the Economy of Energy (2015)—and various articles on visual culture, landscape, pastoralized labor, and history of the body. She earned her BA (1991) in interdisciplinary art from San Francisco State University and her MA (1995) and PhD (2000) in American studies from the College of William and Mary.