How can I get a paper published urgently for my degree?

Question

How can I make sure that my research paper gets published in the first attempt. Getting a paper accepted as it is compulsory for my master’s degree and the deadline is in a month.

Answer 1

How can I make sure that my research paper gets published in the first attempt

Write a good paper. That’s it really.

That is, unless you’re ok with compromising on venue. Most disciplines have low rank journals/conferences that will accept papers based on very low standards (in some cases, just paying a fee). That’s generally a bad thing for science and your work in particular, but it may be your only real option if you have to graduate.

I personally think that requiring publications in order to graduate leads to perverse incentives such as these and should not be done.

If this is not an option, you can submit your work to workshops. There you can present it to a smaller crowd who’ll be more forgiving and if that counts you’re all good.

Good luck!

Answer 2

While I like the answer of Spark, it isn't quite complete. The more accurate answer is that you cannot guarantee anything about publication. The rules and practices and decisions are up to others, not to you. Certainly writing a good paper increases the chances, but most reputable editors will still ask for a review report (or three). The reviewers will accept or not. If they accept then they will take time.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

There are no guarantees. The most you can do, in reality, is to submit a good paper and hope for the best. Then take the fact of submission to whoever it is that has control over your graduation and see what can be done.

Only a predatory journal will "publish" it in one try and that is because it wants money from you for doing so. But that isn't likely to help you, especially if you want to build a career.

Answer 3

First, unfortunately there is no general express service for students. While many would certainly be okay with this under severe circumstances, it would probably be easy to abuse the system.

I would advise you to first talk to other students. Hopefully you are well-connected -- there could be somebody who can waive this requirement (provided you did X). This could be written in the official paper or not.

Next, I would advise you to talk to your advisor about this. Maybe in your certain field there is a journal for publications of students? Or your university has an own journal which could treat your publication more urgently? In my field, publications take really a long time -- if there was such a rule about publications, it is likely that this problem have happened before to some other student. Then, your advisor should know what (or if) one could do.

If all fails, you should try to find statistics about the acceptance time of possible journals and choose your journal accordingly.

Or you maybe could send the paper to a journal, find a "real" job while they are reviewing, and when they accept it, you do the final exam (if there is one). If this is possible or not, depends on the university.

Answer 4

Here's what I would do:

Create a spreadsheet that contains a list of all of the journals that you are interested in publishing in (include only the kinds of journals that are acceptable in your area/department - if you're unsure, look at the journals that other students have published in), then create a new column for acceptance rate, and another column for average time for acceptance. I assume what you need is for it to be accepted for publication (and not necessarily having been published), correct?

You can then search for data on all the individual journals that you listed; what is the average acceptance rate and what is the shortest average time to get a response. You then publish in the journal that has the highest acceptance rate and the shortest average time for decision on acceptance. If that data is not available on the journal's website, you can always ask the editor and usually you can get a response.