Publishing is on of those topics often bandied about in grad school, but rarely discussed in a way that demystifies the process. I distinctly remember the second day of my department’s orientation program for incoming PhD students when one of the professors encouraged students to try getting published during their time in the program. My first thought was, how do I do that?

 As a first-generation student, I often encounter situations where others have insider knowledge that I lack, but it turned out this wasn’t one of them: I quickly learned that publishing is seen as a daunting and somewhat opaque process by virtually all graduate students, regardless of background. We are told to publish, but not necessarily provided the practical guidance to do so. Even students who work with professors on co-authored papers may not get much insight into how academic publishing works if they are just doing data collection and writing some parts of the manuscript. After all, that’s just research and writing. Those are certainly valuable skills for 21^st century professionals, but they do not relate directly to getting one’s work published.

 In the abstract, publishing is a very simple process: do research, produce a manuscript, submit it to a journal, and wait for a decision. Of course, practice is much more complex than theory in this case. The research process, arduous as it usually is, represents only a fraction of the work and is often not even the most important part when it comes to publishing. Instead, what matters most is presenting your ideas in a manner that resonates with your readers (Lary McEnerney of Little Red Schoolhouse offers a straightforward breakdown of how to think through this aspect). Any worthwhile graduate program should endow you with the skills and knowledge to do effective research, but, in speaking with grad students from across the United States and abroad, very few departments or institutions pay much, if any, attention to writing and communicative strategies.

 Part of that no doubt stems from the fact that most students with an academic record that will get them into a graduate program, particularly a PhD program, are already strong writers. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say they have an impressive vocabulary and can follow standardized writing structures: there are plenty of academics whose ability to write coherently in their native language is lacking. Even when the writing is clear, conciseness is a major stumbling block for academics. Perhaps journals will relax word limits as more and more publishers switch to hybrid or online-only models, but such restrictions remain very much in place, forcing authors to strike a delicate balance between including sufficient detail to get the point across clearly while also prioritizing brevity wherever possible.

 There are plenty of in-depth guides on the finer points of how to write an article manuscript. I’ve personally found Wendy Belcher’s book, Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks, to be incredibly useful. Talking with numerous graduate students—whether others in my department or colleagues I meet at conferences— though, the biggest obstacle most people mention is purely psychological: fear of criticism/rejection. The idea of sending one’s work out to be read and judged by editors or, even more daunting, anonymous reviewers, can be paralyzing for some; major impostor syndrome can set in, especially when submitting to a journal for the first time. There is no magic cure for this mental hurdle.

 But there are some ways to make it seem less daunting. One of the most common is to present your draft at a conference. Talk with faculty and advanced graduate students for input on which conferences are best for different things: level of pressure, quality of feedback, ease of submission process, etc. Having to stand in front of an unfamiliar audience and not just present your project, but also respond to questions and critiques, is great preparation for the publication process.

 Another highly recommended step is to know which journal(s) you plan to submit to well in advance. Publishing a peer-reviewed article is almost never going to be as simple as taking a seminar paper and sending it out somewhere, even if publishing in a student journal. If you’re not sure where to submit, a quick trick is to peruse your bibliography and see which outlets you are using repeatedly and decide which one you think makes the most sense. Contributing to larger conversations taking place in the journal should increase your odds of at least getting to the review stage. And always make sure to check the formatting requirements for articles in that journal before submitting!

 However, counter-intuitively, one strategy to consider, just to get your feet wet, could be to send a project you aren’t as invested in out that you think is likely to be rejected, just to get the first one out of the way. This approach won’t really help you engage productively with the publication process, but it’s a low-effort option for confronting and processing rejection in order to move forward.

 A somewhat more productive option, depending your ultimate goal, is to submit to a lower-tier journal than you think your project merits. Getting a solo-authored publication in a top-tier journal as a graduate student is challenging but certainly possible. (Side note: it’s generally better not to tip your hand in advance and don’t indicate your status as a graduate student. Fair or not, it may bias some editors against opting to invite you to revise and resubmit in borderline cases where reviewers are split.) With extremely high desk rejection rates at most prestigious journals, the odds are against you.

 In short, if concerns about harsh critiques and/or rejection are holding you back from pursuing publication, a top-tier journal isn’t an ideal target. Consider looking at journals in the second or third quartiles for your field instead (ScimagoJR is a good resource for checking journal tiers). At the end of the day, unless you need an article in a top-5 journal for some reason, the mere fact of publication as a graduate student is an often end in itself, one that garners you accolades from peers and faculty advisors alike, as well as bolstering your CV/resume.

 Finally, the best advice I can offer regarding the publication process is simply to accept that nothing is perfect. You’ll likely always look back on your first peer-reviewed academic article with a touch of pride, but, at the same time, as you hone your craft further, you’re also likely to become more aware of the flaws that persist even after getting it to a publishable state. You do not need a “flawless” manuscript to get an article published. That’s part of the peer-review process. Both of my scholarly publications to date went through not one, but two rounds of revision before being accepted. The more manuscripts you submit, and thus the more feedback you get from various journals, the better sense you’ll get of when a draft is good enough to send to a journal for consideration.

 Writing is an iterative process, so, if you’ve already gotten feedback in other fora (conferences, department presentations, and so on), sometimes it’s worth it to submit a manuscript just to get a clearer picture of how close it is to publishable. The main thing is to not let the publication process feel overwhelming. The results are not always as we wish, and there will be plenty of times your ego and self-confidence will take a hit. There will be setbacks, reviewer feedback you consider unfair or disingenuous, and maybe even editorial decisions rendered without any reasoning given. But try to find the validity in any criticism and focus on that instead of how the critique was worded. Do that and you’ll likely find the entire publishing experience is an excellent way to become a better scholar, taking your research and writing to levels you won’t be able to reach just writing seminar papers.