Thesis finally published in a scientific peer-reviewed journal

I thought the day would never come, but on 26 March 2015 my modified master thesis was finally published in Government Information Quarterly, a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Two and half years after I submitted it for my graduation as MSc in Public Administration in August 2012.

After graduating I used several months to rewrite the thesis as a publishable article together with my thesis supervisor dr. Dimiter Toshkov, who is also the co-author. We then submitted to the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. This is a very prestigious journal so we were not surprised it was rejected for publication, but we benefited from the feedback of the reviewers. We then resubmitted to Government Information Quarterly.

The wheels of academic publishing are known to turn very slowly, but the period of the time we had to wait for a verdict was exceptional: more than half a year if I remember correctly. After asking for information it turned out that our paper had gotten lost in the process. Fortunately, it was eventually accepted for publication after some minor modifications. I wish the process had been faster so I could have taken advantage from mentioning a scientific publication on my CV more soon.

Reflecting on it all, I’m very proud we managed to get this published. There aren’t many graduate students who get to do so. I learned R and the required statistical knowledge relatively easily, even though I used to have an aversion of statistics in the past.

The perfectionist inside my head is still slightly dissatisfied, telling me that I could have given even more thought to the subject and method of my research. That it would have been even better with more survey responses. The layout could have better. But the bottom line is that a temperate sense of satisfaction triumphs over my hot-headed perfectionism. Ten years ago, when I was an academic failure with serious procrastination issues, this achievement would have been but a dream.

It’s a pity the article is not Open Access, but behind the publisher’s paywall. Fortunately, you can find my own pre-print on my website. The source files for LaTeX and R are attached to the document for those who a curious about how the statistical analysis was performed with R and how the paper’s layout was done with LaTeX.

Regarding LaTeX, I’d like to point out two issues. Documents with two or more columns are too difficult. You need some specific commands to make sure that lines on both columns match vertically. Placement of figures becomes more complicated too, even though I’ve mostly managed with workarounds. If I would write my article again, I would take a serious look at Scribus, a free software desktop publishing application. Unlike LaTeX it follows the “what you see is what you get” principle. It seems to make several things much easier to do than LaTeX.