Academic writing on Medium

The Fifth Way?: Why Academics Should Publish on Medium

Here’s why Medium is fast becoming the first choice for academicians to publish their research and writing today

Introduction

Those of us in academia often talk about alternative solutions. We can spend days, weeks, or months searching for alternative ways to solve a problem. And yet, as in life, oftentimes the obvious solution is right there in front of us — we just don’t see it.

Whatever your academic discipline might be, there tend to be rules of the road when it comes to publishing and presenting your work to a wider audience. Sometimes, these are more traditional norms rather than explicitly stated expectations. Norms in our business — about how and where to publish and what conferences to go to and present your work — often are transmitted almost linearly from your major professor in your doctoral program and/or other influential professors you have had in graduate school. The norms also come from those you work with at your institution, who in the spirit of collegiality are often those you research, write and publish with — at least early in your academic career before you become established. However, as many of us have experienced, there are oftentimes very explicit expectations when it comes to how to disseminate your work — i.e. the prescribed list of what are considered to be the A, B, and C journals and conferences for faculty to target. The message is clear in such cases: if you don’t publish your work in one of these outlets, all your efforts won’t count — at least from an institutional — and evaluation — standpoint.

Now on the other side of the tracks of higher education, away from the flagships and true research-intensive institutions, there is a whole other world today for academic publishing. There are journals and conferences out there that do provide academics an outlet to publish and present their works — at a cost.

The way the journal system review works does seem unorthodox to those who are outside of higher education.

Now there is a wide range of pay to play publishers and conference organizers out there worldwide, matched by a wide array of opinions across academia as to just how legitimate or illegitimate these journals and conferences are in today’s environment. Certainly, major publishers and even accrediting agencies have tried to discredit such groups by labeling them as predatory journals and fake conferences. However, in today’s academic environment and with the intense, constant pressures to yes, publish or perish, there is a ready demand for outlets in which to publish and present one’s works. With the global reach of the internet and the ability to pay to publish or present, there will continue — for better and for worse— to be even more of these outfits in the future.

The Four Options for Academics to Publish Today

And so for those of us in academia, there are four established ways to publish one’s work today.

1. Traditional Academic Journals and Conferences: These are hard (to next to impossible) to get a hit in, especially for what is regarded as the top-tier journals. The review process can take a year — or perhaps even a number of years — and can necessitate numerous revisions to please what are largely anonymous reviewers. To make matters worse, the communications process is not precise — at all — with such reviews. This is because the revise and resubmit process generally entails the author(s) responding to a static list of concerns/queries, often coming from multiple reviewers whose feedback might even conflict with one another. So, needless to say, the correspondence involved is not exactly 21st century — and can often lead to miscommunication and extra work for all involved — especially the author(s).
2. “Pay to Play” Academic Journals and Conferences: As covered previously, such outlets are proliferating in today’s environment. However, while there are some reputable journals that do charge fees, and of course, all conferences generally do to sustain their operations, the pay to play journals, and conferences charge fees that are next level. Such journals and conferences commonly charge submission, review, and/or publication fees (and perhaps even all of the above), and such fees can add up to some sizable amounts — ranging from the low hundreds of dollars to even in excess of a thousand dollars today.
3. Trade Journals and Popular Press: There are many, many outlets that welcome the articles of academic contributors in the ranks of trade journals and the popular press. Publishing one’s articles in these outlets is perhaps the best way today to help build one’s personal brand, and in the media age in which we live, can lead to opportunities as a recognized expert (many of the academic talking heads you see on news and commentary shows today gained traction and attention doing so.) However, there are three downsides. First, this type of writing is not for everyone as it requires a different writing style — direct and word-limit conscious. Secondly, it is not conducive for every field — although prior to the pandemic, many would have said this about the areas of epidemiology and public health. And finally, there is a world of competition in this area, with everyone from freelance writers and other experts seeking to publish their own works.
4. Self-publishing: There are a wide array of self-publishing opportunities available to academic authors today, ranging from self-publishing your own book (through sites like Smashwords) to simply publishing your research/writing on your own blog or website. Both options do have their advantages in helping one to build your own personal brand and yes, perhaps some money can be made (through selling your book or Good Adsense and other online ad revenue that might be placed on your blog or website). Without the influence of any reviewers, self-publishing does give one more control over the content and form of your published work. And yes, there can be an immediacy factor that one can achieve through self-publishing. However, there is also a significant downside to such efforts, as generally, they likely would not be considered to be academic works and may not count anyway in advancing your career — at least inside academia.

However, based on my own experience, I would propose that today, Medium affords academicians with what is in essence a fifth way to get their works, their research, and their thoughts out in the public. And today, I would hold that Medium — along with other similar outlets such as Vocal — afford academics with a unique opportunity — and potentially, a better way to publish much of their work and yes, to have it be seen and actually read.

Medium and Other Alternative Publishing Sites: The Fifth Way?

So, why should academics look at Medium as their fifth way to publish — and when would Medium be their best publishing choice? To me, it boils down to one word: visibility. Medium provides academics with a platform that enables them to publish what they want, when they want, and in the form that they want. There are no length requirements, no formatting requirements, and yes, no reference requirements (although if you want to provide a bibliography, in-text citations, or even endnotes, you can do so as well.)

For those academicians who may not be familiar with Medium, actually publishing your work on Medium is quite easy. In fact, it can be almost as easy as cutting and pasting your completed article from your Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or Pages document into the Medium submission system. While there are many easy formatting tools that Medium provides in its user interface — like providing two levels of headings and two ways to indicate quoted materials — along with the ability to insert live links into your text — the heart of the Medium system is that you literally could take your prepared text and have it published on Medium in probably less than a minute (and yes, basic formatting — like bolded and italicized text, along with hyperlinks, do transfer easily from your document into the Medium submission system). You can also write your article in the Medium submission system directly, and as it is cloud-based and saves your draft in-process continuously as you work on it, the Medium platform, in effect, becomes a cloud-based word processing alternative for you.

If you want to go beyond the basics in terms of formatting your article, writing on the Medium platform enables you to produce an article that looks as if you know a great deal about web design, even if you know little about coding — because the platform does the work for you. You can easily integrate graphics and photos into your article. You can add any photo that is in the public domain or that you have permission to use. And in addition, the Medium submission system has a simple way for you to add any of the approximately 2.3 million photos (and the numbers are growing every day) from the photo-sharing site, Unsplash, that you can search as you create your article. You can also add videos from Youtube or Vimeo, as well as embedding social media posts from Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram simply by providing the link to them.

And so if you are an academic who, like me, tends to write about more current topics — and topics that lend themselves to being far easier to talk about with such graphic content being displayed within your article, these tools — and the ease with which one can use them — makes publishing on Medium a far better choice than a medium (no pun intended, well maybe) where one could not display such media along with your work. Pure and simple, it’s kind of hard — well, impossible — to integrate a YouTube video into a print publication.

So, what separates publishing on Medium from simply writing articles for your own blog or website? To me, the true value of Medium lies in the publications that you find on Medium. There is a multitude of publications that are within the Medium platform, and whatever your interest might be, there is likely to be a publication that is already well-suited for what you are interested in writing about. And if you believe there is a niche that is being underserved in your areas of interest and expertise, you can even start your own publication and be the editor of it (or start to build a team of editors for the publication). So for example, while there are a number of business-oriented publications on Medium, I have created my own, Modern Business, which I hope to be an outlet for academicians across all fields of business.

Publications are a key way to differentiate articles on Medium in terms of there being some editing/screening process for articles. For those unfamiliar with Medium, it is true that you can publish directly on Medium, so long as what you write conforms to their guidelines. However, if your article is accepted into a publication on Medium, this means that it has been reviewed by the editor(s) of that particular outlet. So while there is no standard review process for Medium publications, the very fact that an article appears in a Medium publication — rather than directly on Medium — means that there has been at least some degree of review — and sometimes even editing and queries with the author. This makes the fact that an article appears in a Medium publication a key differentiating factor from making Medium just a better, easier, and faster way to publish than a personal blog or website. This is not saying that a Medium article has gone through the kind of review process that a journal article would undergo in most cases, and yet, an article in a Medium publication has indeed been reviewed by a publication editor and approved for that publication. Thus, acceptance into a Medium publication does show that the article has passed a certain threshold, and while the rigor and quality of such oversight may indeed vary quite a bit between these publications, article acceptance into a publication does indicate that the author’s work has passed a quality standard in the eyes of the editor(s).

What Type of Academic Work Is Geared for Medium?

As I stated earlier, I have found publishing on Medium to be a good first choice for my own research and writing. That is because the type of work that I am engaged with — current business, marketing, and tech topics — is geared for publishing today, rather than a year and a half from now. Moreover, due to the fact that I often choose and need to integrate visual material (videos, pictures, charts, etc.) into my articles, the Medium platform makes this not just possible, but rather easy to do — no matter your level of tech-savviness.

What other academic fields likely have great potential to have their members publish on Medium as a first choice? The range is quite broad. From fields as diverse as art and music to even history and the sciences, having the ability to integrate visuals can be key to getting your message across. When this is the case, publishing an article to Medium makes for a far better end product than what can be achieved through traditional academic publishing.

There are other reasons why Medium presents a superior choice in many instances for academicians to publish their research and writing. For one, when timeliness is of the essence — when one cannot afford to have an article be in process for a year and a half rather than appearing in a matter of days — Medium is a far better option than going through the normal academic review process that would make any publication, in effect, irrelevant by the time it appears. For instance, a political scientist publishing in the lead-up to the 2020 election would not find an audience for his or her work, say in late 2021 or 2022, after working through a typical journal review process. And yes, there is the matter of length. While many academicians are schooled in only writing in long-form for journal publications, Medium allows them the freedom to publish works in shorter, more direct forms. On the other hand, with no word limit, as is common in many trade and popular press publications, a writer is not constrained to a 750, 1,000, or 1,500-word limit. On Medium, the length of an article is totally up to the author, giving you the freedom to express your thoughts and ideas in as concise or as expansive a form as you deem necessary. And yes, on Medium you will find everything from short poems to very long essays. So yes, you have the freedom to create on this platform.

What is holding academics back from publishing on Medium and other alternative platforms? To me, the central problem is simply the lack of awareness that the opportunity is there for them to publish in what to them is a new area, but one that has been used by many thousands of individuals around the world for years. This article is just one small part of trying to spread the word about how Medium can work for them. I look forward to talking more about this in the future, both here on Medium and in other venues to help spread the message of opportunity. Secondly, I think academic evaluation and tenure/promotion guidelines need to catch-up with the realities of such alternative publishing venues today. And while this may indeed be a department by department, college by college, and institution by institution discussion — and maybe even battle — that needs to be held today, it is one well worth having. If the rules of the road that academicians live and work by are out of sync with the realities that are out there today, then we are holding back what literally might be a torrent of information and though that our colleagues are willing and eager to share with the world if their works are not adequately recognized and rewarded.

Finally, many academics simply do not recognize the potential that Medium and other similar sites have for them. Many of us have been schooled to create whole works — large projects — not recognizing the value of iterative, interim, and shorter-form articles. Changing that mindset will take time, and exposing more faculty to the works of academicians on Medium will provide a model to others throughout all fields of higher education on how they might pursue alternative publishing opportunities for their own benefit. And lastly, one of the frustrating things that I see on social media today is the fact that I have seen colleagues at my institution and contemporaries elsewhere publish what are in essence articles on their social media feeds — both on Facebook and on Twitter. If exposed and educated on how to turn their thoughts into an actual article rather than a social media post or series of posts (or yes, even a rant), they can quickly see how Medium works as a better, and still easily shareable, venue for their expertise and opinions.

Conclusion

What are the next steps? Well, I’d like to hear from you if you, like me, are an academic — from any field — who has chosen to publish on Medium. Please send me samples of your work (to [email protected]) here on the platform. But even more importantly, tell me a couple of things (and you can answer anywhere from one to all five questions below):

1. What led you to begin publishing on Medium?
2. What do you personally see as the advantages — and yes disadvantages — to publishing on Medium?
3. How has publishing on Medium helped you professionally and in your career (i.e. recognition, brand building, media contacts, etc.)?
4. What has been the reaction within your institution to your publishing on Medium (i.e. is it encouraged or discouraged, is it recognized/rewarded, what has been the reaction from your colleagues/superiors, etc.?
5. How did you make the decision to publish something on Medium versus more traditional academic venues?

I look forward to your feedback and your input. This will form the basis for future articles both here on Medium and beyond, as I hope to make the case for publishing on Medium to the Lion’s Den, discussing this in more traditional academic journals and conferences. Your thoughts (and yes, articles) will be key as I try to make the case that Medium, which is the fifth way for academicians to publish their work, may indeed be becoming a first choice alternative for many of us in higher education today.

Join Me in Writing on Medium

Want to begin your own writing journey? Want to better build your personal brand by publishing articles you create? Consider joining me in writing on Medium today and use this link: https://davidwyld.medium.com/membership. In doing so, you will help support my writing as I receive a portion of your Medium membership fee.